Pros
The Partnership on AI operates at the very unique intersection between titans of industry, grandfathers of AI disciplines in academia, and progressive ideas presented by civil society. There's an endless sea of cool topics and projects under the broad "responsible AI" agenda that can be done with some of the brightest minds in the field. The organization has welcomed new leadership that seems to grasp the issues and challenges created in the nonprofit's founding. At the time of this writing, there's a long-overdue reset in process underway which will establish a strategy and focus for the nonprofit that was sorely lacking in its early years. Joining PAI at this juncture presents an opportunity to be a part of a rebirth of an organization that has more discipline and clarity of vision.
Cons
Critically acclaimed academics from big tech were behind some of the original founders of the organization, but they, unfortunately, lacked experience in structuring or scoping a functional organization for success. The organization's founding mandate was very United Nations-like in nature where it attempted to mean all things to all people -- which ultimately led to a lot of mismatched expectations from its early partners and collaborators. Bringing this broad vision into practice became a deeper challenge with foundational leadership at the organization. Fundamental concepts like "trade-offs" and "prioritization" took YEARS to understand. Some directors played to nepotism in whom they hired for very orthogonal spin-up projects; or weren't focused on the domain of their department in contributing to organizational strategy. At times, I wasn't sure if I was crazy for illustrating resource constraints in entertaining a great number of disparate projects at once which sought to reach very different audiences using similarly different methods and measures of success. Basic practices in staff management and supervision were still novel to the leadership that led to a series of faux pas that the organization is still reeling from in attempting to correct course to this day. I look back at the last two+ years I spent at the organization with intense disappointment. For an organization that held such promise and posed such an opportunity to change the field of artificial intelligence for good, my time felt wasted in falling on the sword for decision-makers who had a lack of direction or focus. In a recent staff departure celebration with the board, positive comments from the board felt tone-deaf in not realizing the systemic challenges the org has been facing for the last couple of years. It was concerning to see such a disconnect from reality.