Meanwhile, some new details emerged about the days leading up to Altman’s firing. “In the weeks leading up to his shocking ouster from OpenAI, Sam Altman was actively working to raise billions from some of the world’s largest investors for a new chip venture,” Bloomberg reported. Altman reportedly was traveling in the Middle East to raise money for “an AI-focused chip company” that would compete against Nvidia.
As Bloomberg wrote, “The board and Altman had differences of opinion on AI safety, the speed of development of the technology and the commercialization of the company, according to a person familiar with the matter. Altman’s ambitions and side ventures added complexity to an already strained relationship with the board.”
“According to people familiar with the board’s thinking, members had grown so untrusting of Altman that they felt it necessary to double-check nearly everything he told them,” the WSJ report said. The sources said it wasn’t a single incident that led to the firing, “but a consistent, slow erosion of trust over time that made them increasingly uneasy,” the WSJ article said. “Also complicating matters were Altman’s mounting list of outside AI-related ventures, which raised questions for the board about how OpenAI’s technology or intellectual property could be used.”
Can anyone explain why this guy and his firing have been such big news?
Because “AI” hype is what the venture capitalists are feeding to the financial and tech press theses days and Sam is the venture capitalists biggest “AI” star because he’s a good snake oil salesman.
While not inaccurate, that is extremely reductive. The rapid improvement of AI at the transformer level is currently one of the most interesting things happening across many fields including arts and sciences, that also has the widest deviation between potential good and potential harm. OpenAI and its complex governance model are directly at the center of that growth and embroiled in one of the most fascinating governance struggles in recent history.
This drama when combined with how disruptive this technology is likely to be across a wide range of markets affecting the world’s economies makes this interesting and also has the added benefit of being a news departure from the bombings and other terrible stuff going on around the world. Much more fun for popcorn and chat than wars and such.
We are way beyond hype at this point.
It’s a total game changer.
As a developer ChatGPT has completely changed my workflow and massively increased my productivity.
If you’re not actively using AI for a tech job then you’re leaving yourself behind. It’s look ignoring using Google.
Snake oil actually work you MF punk… 🤣🤣
Chatgpt was one of the biggest game changers in tech in ages. Seeing the company implode over night has been interesting.
Because Microsoft and VC types have thrown many billions of US dollars at this and similar companies, so a lot of (their) money is at stake
While large language models and similar “AI” technologies are very overhyped, they are already plenty usable for things like deepfakes which if left unchecked have significant potential to be weaponised and destabilize societies.
OpenAI is a non-profit that’s behind those machine learning models and practical applications like ChatGPT. In principle it should govern development so that it’s safe and responsible. There are many allegations that Sam Altman became focused on profit betraying non-profit mission.
While OpenAI is not technically controlled by commercial entities (it has 49% stake by Microsoft) it’s entirely dependent on them for funding which likely led to being strong-armed to have Altman regain control.