🤖 The Battle for AI: Inside the OpenAI Implosion
The world of artificial intelligence (AI) has been rocked by a monumental split between two battling figureheads fighting over the future of AI. In the last 48 hours, there have been exclusive accounts of what happened, and it seems like the original OpenAI is imploding in real-time. This article will not only cover developments up to the last few minutes but will try to provide one of the clearest accounts as to what has transpired and the personalities behind it. This has truly been a weekend that has changed the course of AI.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction
2. OpenAI Implodes
3. The Birth of a New AGI Lab
4. The Rift Between Ilia Satova and Samman
5. The Success of Chat Chpt
6. The Firing of Samman
7. The Fallout After the Firing
8. The New CEO of OpenAI
9. Retaining Talent
10. The Future of OpenAI
OpenAI Implodes
Let's start with a series of posts on Twitter from OpenAI senior staff saying, "OpenAI is nothing without its people." It seems like the original OpenAI is imploding in real-time, and for some, it's gotten personal. One research scientist at OpenAI said, "Ilia does not care about safety or humanity. This is just ego and power hungriness that backfired." In the last few moments, we learned that Ilia Satova himself regrets what happened. He says, "I love everything we've built together, and I will do everything I can to reunite the company."
The Birth of a New AGI Lab
With perhaps ten crazy revelations to get to, we're not going to spend too much time on the Twitter wars because first and foremost, we have a new AGI lab within Microsoft. Sam Alman is going to be the CEO of this new group, and Greg Brockman is joining him. Of course, with what we've seen on Twitter, it looks like hundreds of OpenAI former employees might be joining them. The group doesn't even have a name yet, but with Microsoft's compute, they look set to become one of the major AGI players. The CEO of Microsoft has already confirmed that Microsoft will quickly provide this new group with the resources needed for their success.
The Rift Between Ilia Satova and Samman
OpenAI isn't dead yet, and I'll get to their new CEO in a moment, but first, we have a bit more info about what led to this monumental split. A key division arose between the visions of Ilia Satova, the chief scientist of OpenAI, and Samman, the CEO. In October, Samman moved to reduce Suk's role at the company, which obviously infuriated him. Then, according to Bloomberg, there were announcements at devday that further angered Satova. Apparently, the safety team really didn't like the customized versions of chat chbt that allowed anyone to create chatbots, and particularly, they didn't like the idea of those chatbots becoming autonomous agents.
The Success of Chat Chpt
The rift goes further back than that. This exclusive extract from a book was released in the Atlantic in the last few minutes. Apparently, the November release last year of chat BT caused a rift inside the company. One faction felt the company and indeed the world wasn't ready. The extract says, "This strained the already tense relationship between OpenAI factions, which Alman referred to in 2019 as the different tribes within the company." The success of chat chpt caught the company by surprise, and computing power from research teams was redirected to handle the flow of traffic. These servers kept crashing, and safety teams within the company pushed to slow things down.
The Firing of Samman
When GPT-4 was launched, apparently, customers tried to take advantage of the $20 free credit offered. Then what happened was that employees from the already small trust and safety staff were reassigned from other abuse areas to focus on that fraud issue. Some employees in the safety team struggled with mental health issues, and communication was poor. In an ironic twist, co-workers would find out that colleagues had been fired only after noticing disappear on Slack. But according to this book, what also started to happen was that Ilia Satova began to behave a bit like a spiritual leader.
The Fallout After the Firing
His constant enthusiastic refrain was to feel the AGI, and at one of their holiday parties, Satova led employees in a chant, "Feel the AGI, feel the AGI." In the last few minutes, we learned that Ilas Satova was using that question, "Do you feel the AGI?" in job interviews. This researcher Adam Roberts ended up at Google Deep Mind, and it only gets weirder from here. Apparently, Satova commissioned a wooden effigy that's like a miniature statue, and that was intended to represent an unaligned AI. He then set that effigy on fire to symbolize OpenAI's commitment to its founding principles.
The New CEO of OpenAI
Things seem to have come to a head when Samman began to fundraise for a billion-dollar new chip venture that was apparently codenamed Tigris, which is a major river flowing through the Middle East. He wanted a high-focus chip to compete against Nvidia. There are strong hints that Sam Alman not being candid about this activity could have been the proximate cause of the firing. Anyway, I've covered the 15-minute firing in my previous video, but now for an hour by hour account of what happened after that.
Retaining Talent
The first thing that happened was that the CEO of Microsoft, which don't forget, has invested 13 billion into OpenAI, was apparently livid at the announcement. Remember, he was blindsided and only given a minute notice of the firing. For Nadela, don't forget, OpenAI and GPT-4 was his way, and I quote, of making Google dance, and that investment seemed to be crumbling before the shock move that he made next. But back to the moments after the firing, the pressure from Microsoft and other investors caused the board to even consider resigning themselves.
The Future of OpenAI
Apparently, Sam Opman and Greg Brockman wouldn't return with the current board in place. At this point, it looked like there would be a complete reversal, with the board resigning, and Samman returning. Even the interim CEO Mira Murati apparently was asking Samman and Greg Brockman to come back. That's around the time we got the tweet from Samman, "I love the OpenAI team so much," that got 29 million impressions and caused hundreds of OpenAI staff to retweet hearts. Everything looks set for his return.
Highlights
- OpenAI is nothing without its people.
- A key division arose between the visions of Ilia Satova, the chief scientist of OpenAI, and Samman, the CEO.
- The success of chat chpt caught the company by surprise.
- Ilia Satova began to behave a bit like a spiritual leader.
- Samman began to fundraise for a billion-dollar new chip venture that was apparently codenamed Tigris.
- The CEO of Microsoft has already confirmed that Microsoft will quickly provide this new group with the resources needed for their success.
FAQ
Q: What is OpenAI?
A: OpenAI is an artificial intelligence research laboratory consisting of the for-profit corporation OpenAI LP and its parent company, the non-profit OpenAI Inc.
Q: Who is Ilia Satova?
A: Ilia Satova is the chief scientist of OpenAI.
Q: Who is Samman?
A: Samman is the CEO of OpenAI.
Q: What is AGI?
A: AGI stands for Artificial General Intelligence, which is the hypothetical ability of an AI to understand or learn any intellectual task that a human being can.
Q: What is GPT-4?
A: GPT-4 is the fourth generation of the Generative Pre-trained Transformer language model developed by OpenAI.
Resources:
- https://www.openai.com/
- https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/ai/ai-lab.aspx
- https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-02-06/openai-implodes-as-ceo-sam-altman-is-fired-by-board
