The story runs thus: On Friday
afternoon the company posted in a blog saying that Altman “was not consistently
candid in his communications with the board”, hindering its ability to exercise
its responsibilities. It also said, “The board no longer has confidence in his
ability to continue leading OpenAI”. All this sounds pretty wild.
Perhaps, to express his solidarity, Greg Brockman, the President and cofounder of OpenAI, who along with Altman had spoken for the rapid commercialization of the Company’s technology, quit his job.
The company appointed Ms Mira Murati, its present Chief Technology Officer— who according to the Board had a “unique skill set” that would enable her to provide “a seamless transition …”— as its interim CEO. She has often been praised by tech leaders for her passion and technical knowledge. In a piece written for Time magazine, Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, said, “She has a demonstrated ability to assemble teams with technical expertise, commercial acumen and a deep appreciation for the importance of mission” and “as a result”, he said, “Mira has helped build some of the most exciting AI technologies …”
By the weekend, it was heard that Microsoft had hired Altman to lead an AI-research lab. And, latest reports indicate that OpenAI appointed Emmett Shear, the former CEO of Twitch as CEO replacing Ms Murati.
Latest reports indicate that as many as 700 employees signed a letter saying that they may leave the company and join Altman at Microsoft if he and Brockman are not reinstated at OpenAI.
So, what does it all mean for
OpenAI? An existential challenge? Perhaps! Some say that it must have been an
explanation for the simmering tension that has been going on at the company for
a long. One section was of the opinion that launching products and putting AI
in the hands of users was the right path forward. On the other hand, the other
group felt that stronger safety measures needed to be put in place before its
release.
OpenAI was originally started in
2015 by Elon Musk and Sam Altman, Sutskever and Greg Brockman as a non-profit
organization to “advance digital intelligence in the way that is most likely to
benefit humanity as a whole.” It was more as an entity to counteract Big Tech that
it was established.
And since then, it has been in
the crosshairs of a lot of different ideas about AI such as the very purpose of
technology, the structure of the entity, etc. In 2018, Elon Musk wanted to take
control of the company stating that the venture had fallen fatally behind
Google, but it was opposed by the rest. As a result, he walked out of the
company.
In order to raise funds from the
market that are required to pay for the computer power necessary to pursue the
most ambitious AI models, OpenAI announced that it turned into a for-profit
organization. It also said that it was capping profits for investors of the proposed for-profit subsidiary, with any
excess going to the original non-profit. Altman also made it public that he
would take no equity in the new for-profit entity believing that would help him
stay aligned with the original mission, i.e., the non-profit motto, while of
course, the mission is carried forward.
Around six months later, OpenAI
took $ 1bn from Microsoft. It also provided infrastructure know-how. They then
jointly built a supercomputer to train massive models that eventually created
ChatGPT which has 1 trillion parameters and the image generator DALL-E. But with
the launching of ChatGPT, the game of thorns got quite strengthened and finally,
it culminated with the firing of Altman, perhaps.
Now the question is: Will OpenAI remain
as a company with 700-plus employees contemplating leaving it and joining
Altman in Microsoft? If this happens, OpenAI will disintegrate while its erstwhile
employees who joined Microsoft might continue with the commercializing of AI inventions
at Microsoft.
On the other hand, if a significant number of employees stay with OpenAI, it obviously continues to move forward with perhaps a new model to stay put with its original non-profit objective.
Either way, both are trying to own up to the power of technology —either through the banner of capitalism or morality. But the most surprising element in this whole game-plan of Altman that remains unappreciated is: Altman does not own even a tiny equity of OpenAI. His only crime if it could be termed so, is: one, his hurry to commercialize the company and two, his ambition to raise, as an insider said, tens of billions of dollars from Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds to establish AI chip startup.
Now, the investors of OpenAI are reported to be pressing its board to reverse their decision to fire Altman. And, it is also reported that Altman is not averse to return. Another scenario that is making rounds is that the board would step down.
In all this uncanny uncertainty, Microsoft, which has pumped in billions of dollars and uses OpenAI’s technology for most of its AI offerings, appears to have emerged as the big winner, for it could succeed in hiring the ousted CEO, Altman, and other key staff who left OpenAI along with him. It could thus also avert a potential flight of them to its rivals, which shall certainly help it deepen its lead in the AI race.
With Sam Altman, the founder of OpenAI as the head of the newly created AI research team, Microsoft is likely to march ahead of its rivals in accomplishing AI capabilities. Indeed, experts gave credit to Nadella's ability to get Altman on board within two days of his firing. Market expects that Satya plus Altman could make Microsoft the leader in AI.
So, we may have to wait and see who wins the race for a hold on the power of technology.
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