The Sam Altman Saga: Is AI the Place to ‘Move Fast and Break Things’?
The OpenAI board was reportedly not happy with the former CEO’s plan to profit from its powerful AI. But this is Silicon Valley. Is it possible to develop ethical AI and still make billions?
By Chris Stobing
Though the full details of former OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s widely publicized departure from his own company last week are still emerging, the fallout could be far-reaching, from Microsoft’s tighter grip on this year’s most talked-about technology to a potential shift in the way things are done at OpenAI. But in the world of AI, can you really “move fast and break things”?
OpenAI Gets Messy, Fast
For those out of the loop, OpenAI abruptly announced on Friday that Altman had been voted out as CEO, with OpenAI chief scientist and then-CTO Mira Murati taking over in the interim. In a blog post, the board praised “Sam’s many contributions to the founding and growth of OpenAI,” but argued that “new leadership is necessary as we move forward.”
Since that announcement, the board has swapped out Murati for former Twitch CEO Emmett Shear as interim CEO after considering (and dropping) a plan to have Altman return.
Though much of the drama leading up to the board’s vote is still just rumors and hearsay, sources within the company point to a rift between the board and Altman over the supposed “nonprofit” mission of OpenAI, which came to a head after OpenAI’s first DevDay on Nov. 6.
In a keynote, Altman unveiled the GPT Store, which will allow independent developers and OpenAI itself to sell what the company is referring to as “GPTs,” or custom-made applications of its large language model (LLM), ChatGPT. Similar to an app store, OpenAI gets a cut of the profits.
This did not sit well with the board, which apparently wants to stick to its nonprofit roots. “The developer day and how the store was introduced was in inflection moment of Altman pushing too far, too fast,” tech journalist Kara Swisher tweeted on Friday.
Satya Nadella Has Entered the Chat(GPT)
One of OpenAI’s earliest champions, Microsoft has invested a little over $13 billion into OpenAI to date. But as OpenAI says on its website, “Microsoft has no board seat and no control.”
Until this weekend, that is. After Altman’s dismissal was announced, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella tweeted that “We have a long-term agreement with OpenAI with full access to everything we need to deliver on our innovation agenda and an exciting product roadmap.” As of Monday morning, it was clear that what Microsoft needed was Altman himself.
In the early morning hours, Nadella announced that Microsoft would hire Altman and OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman to head up a new “advanced AI research team” within Microsoft.
That research team may soon be staffed with 700+ former OpenAI employees, who signed an open letter demanding that that the board reinstate Altman and Brockman or they’d defect to Microsoft, too. “Microsoft has assured us that there are positions for all OpenAI employees at this new subsidiary should we choose to join them,” the letter says.
When asked about that during an interview on Bloomberg, Nadella danced around the topic slightly. “We are very committed to Sam and Greg and the team that want to join us if they’re not at OpenAI. And anyone else at OpenAI who wants to go somewhere else, we want them to come to Microsoft and continue to work here and in partnership with OpenAI.”
Nadella seems to want to keep the peace and preserve that $13 billion investment. He acknowledged that “surprises are bad” as it relates to the board’s unexpected action, but insisted that “we want to partner with OpenAI, and we want to partner with Sam.”
Later, Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott tweeted that “if needed,” OpenAI employees “have a role at Microsoft that matches your compensation and advances our collective mission.”
For now, OpenAI employees have been tweeting “OpenAI is nothing without its people” en masse. Altman has liked or responded to dozens of these tweets, showing that while he may be down for the time being, he’s certainly not out.
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OpenAI Is an Open-Ended Question
So where does that leave one of the most powerful LLMs on the market today?
For starters, I personally wouldn’t trust the CEO of Twitch to know what to do with a nonprofit AI company. The Amazon-owned live-streaming site has been in tailspin ever since the end of its pandemic high, stagnating in both viewership and cultural relevance across the board.
Similarly, if 700+ OpenAI employees jump ship to Microsoft, or an AI rival, will there even be an OpenAI left to run? Could ChatGPT go offline as soon as this week?
Though greed is a human flaw that AI may someday replace, it’s a driving factor that keeps US technology at the bleeding edge on the global stage.
The whole saga has not been without its conspiracies; this is artificial intelligence we’re taking about, after all. Shortly after the news went live, the internet was abuzz with suggestions that a next-gen version of ChatGPT had achieved sentience-what’s commonly referred to as artificial general intelligence (AGI). For now, a profit-focused power struggle seems more likely.
Just How Fast Is ‘Too Fast?’
While the board was right to have concerns about Altman’s “move fast and break things” ethos, to pull from a famous Silicon Valley adage, OpenAI is not the only game in town these days.
Google’s Bard, Microsoft’s Copilot, Meta’s Llama, and about a dozen other startups are all gunning for the AI crown, and that’s to say nothing of efforts going on abroad. The fear that China may produce an all-knowing, all-seeing AI before the US isn’t exactly a comforting thought, and ultimately a company like OpenAI does need to bring in some kind of capital to keep the innovation churning at a steady rate. Especially when you consider the fact that much of China’s AI development is state-funded, rather than privately funded by VCs as it is here in the States.
Though it’s fair to be cognizant of what AI may or may not do to our society as we know it and the number of jobs it may eventually automate, finding a way to make it as strong and profitable as possible is not the worst idea either. Sam Altman and his team are brilliant minds, and though greed is a human flaw that AI may someday replace, today it remains one of the driving factors that keeps US technology at the bleeding edge on the global stage.
It’s easy to see both sides of the issue. Some OpenAI employees may be content sticking to modest salaries in the pursuit of a greater good. But one could also see the benefit in properly compensating the people who brought ChatGPT to life.
So, Who Controls the Big Bad AI?
Late on Monday, Altman posted a cryptic tweet that says he and Nadella are “committed to fully providing continuity of operations to our partners and customers.” He didn’t say how and where he’ll be providing that continuity, but the situation remains fluid. Stay tuned for more news on who will control one of the most powerful AIs in the world.
Originally published at https://www.pcmag.com.
