Throw in a huge investment, a 90 billion dollar valuation and a rockstar ceo. It’s pretty clear the court of public opinion is wrong about this case.
It would be wise to view any investment in OpenAI Global, LLC in the spirit of a donation. The Company exists to advance OpenAl, Inc.'s mission of ensuring that safe artificial general intelligence is developed and benefits all of humanity. The Company's duty to this mission and the principles advanced in the OpenAI, Inc. Charter take precedence over any obligation to generate a profit. The Company may never make a profit, and the Company is under no obligation to do so. The Company is free to re-invest any or all of the Company's cash flow into research and development activities and/or related expenses without any obligation to the Members.
I guess safe artificial general intelligence is developed and benefits all of humanity, means an open AI (hence the name) and safe AI.
It is entirely possible a program that spits out the complete code for a nuclear targeting system should not be released in the wild.
Whether we can actually safely develop AI or AGI is a much tougher question than whether that's the intent, unfortunately.
IP lawyers would sell their own mothers for a chance to "wanna bet?" Microsoft.
According to FT this could be the cause for the firing:
“Sam has a company called Oklo, and [was trying to launch] a device company and a chip company (for AI). The rank and file at OpenAI don’t dispute those are important. The dispute is that OpenAI doesn’t own a piece. If he’s making a ton of money from companies around OpenAI there are potential conflicts of interest.”
Bigger concern would be the construction of a bomb, which, still, takes a lot of hard to hide resources.
I'm more worried about other kinds of weapons, but at the same time I really don't like the idea of censoring the science of nature from people.
I think the only long term option is to beef up defenses.
this is the future that orwell feared.
And they can pick two. Gpus don't grow on trees so without billions in funding they can't provide it to everyone.
Available means that I should have access to the weights.
Safe means they want to control what people can use it for.
The board prioritised safe over everything else. I fundamentally disagree with that and welcome the counter coup.
The average postgraduate in physics can design a nuclear bomb. That ship sailed in the 1960s. Anyone who uses that as an argument wants a censorship regime that the medieval catholic church would find excessive.
There are many people that would do great things with god-like powers, but more than enough that would be terrible.
Monumental, like the invention of language or math, but not like a god.
Now, I feel even just "OK" agential AI would represent god-like abilities. Being able to spawn digital homunculi that do your bidding for relatively cheap and with limited knowledge and skill required on the part of the conjuror.
Again, this is very subjective. You might feel that god-like means an entity that can build Dyson Spheres and bend reality to it's will. That is certainly god-like, but just a much higher threshold than what I'd use.
Then, he progressively sold more and more of the companies future to Ms.
You don’t need chatgpt and it’s massive gpu consumption to achieve the goals of openai. A small research team and a few million, this company becomes a quaint quiet overachiever.
The company started to hockey stick and everyone did what they knew, Sam got the investment and money. The tech team hunkered down and delivered gpt-4 and soon -5
Was there a different path? Maybe.
Was there a path that didn’t lead to selling the company for “laundry buddy”, maybe also.
On the other hand, Ms knew what they were getting into when its hundredth lawyer signed off on the investment. To now turn around as surprised pikachu when the board starts to do its job and their man on the ground gets the boot is laughable.
Can you fill me in as to what the goal of OpenAI is?
Whether fulfilling their mission or succumbing to palace intrigue, it was a gamble they took. If they didn't realize it was a gamble, then they didn't think hard enough first. If they did realize the risks, but thought they must, then they didn't explore their options sufficiently. They thought their hand was unbeatable. They never even opened the playbook.
That would imply they couldn’t have considered that Altman was beloved by vital and devoted employees? That big investors would be livid and take action? That the world would be shocked by a successful CEO being unceremoniously sacked during unprecedented success, with (unsubstantiated) allegations of wrongdoing, and leap on the story. Generally those are the kinds of things that would have come up on a "Fire Sam Pro and Cons" list. Or any kind "what's the best way to get what we want and avoid disaster" planning session. They made the way it was done the story, and if they had a good reason, it's been obscured and undermined by attempting to reinstate him.
Benefit and available can have very different meaning when you mix in alignment/safety concerns.