Genies and Their Fragile Bottles

More than 350 tech leaders, academics and engineers — the people who best understand artificial intelligence — have signed a dramatic statement, warning AI could be a global threat to humanity on the scale of pandemics and nuclear war. But who's listening?

"At the heart of the divide between Altman and OpenAI's directors is whether AI should be a commercial opportunity-- or is a potentially dangerous technology that needs to be checked and scrutinized at every turn."

"The board clashed with Altman and Brockman, who both argued that OpenAI was growing its business out of necessity. Every time a customer asks OpenAI's ChatGPT chatbot a question, it requires huge amounts of expensive computing power -- so much that the company was having trouble keeping up with the explosive demand from users."

"The company was forced to cap the number of times users can query its most powerful AI models daily. In fact, the situation got so dire that Altman at one point announced the company was pausing sign-ups for its paid ChatGPT Plus service indefinitely."

"From Altman's point of view, raising money and finding additional revenue sources were essential. But some members of the board, with ties to the AI-skeptical altruism movement, viewed this in tension with the risks posed by advanced AI."

"Many effective altruists -- a pseudo-philosophical movement that seeks to donate money to head off existential risks -- have imagined scenarios in which a powerful AI system could be used by a terrorist group to, say, create a bio-weapon."

Shirin Ghaffary, Rachel Metz, Peter Elstrom, Vlad Savov, Bloomberg 

Sam Altman (L), US entrepreneur, investor, programmer, and founder and CEO of artificial intelligence company OpenAI, and the company’s co-founder and chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, speak together at Tel Aviv University in Tel Aviv on June 5, 2023.  Jack Guez | Afp | Getty Images

 

Following the shock waves that reverberated through the world of technology at the surprise news that the board of OpenAI had fired its CEO, Sam Altman last week, over 700 of the startups' staff signed a letter threatening to quit en masse should the board not resign and Altman be re-hired -- who in the interim was recruited by Microsoft Corp. to operate a new artificial intelligence team, anxious to support its investment as OpenAI's largest shareholder. 

OpenAI's board defied calls from investors and top executives to reinstall Altman, fired after disagreements with the board on how fast to develop and monetize artificial intelligence. Even Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella who hired Altman for Microsoft's future AI plan development, wouldn't oppose Altman's reinstatement, he said. It makes little difference to Microsoft, he stated, whether Altman runs OpenAI or works under Microsoft; it is prepared to invest up to $13 billion to keep it operational.

So, surprise, surprise, monetization is a powerful incentive for investors who, after all had their way and so did all those employees of OpenAI who demanded Sam Altman's return and an overhaul of the board's directors. Silicon Valley and the global AI industry just heaved a huge sigh of relief. OpenAI is now busy "to figure out the details", it posted on X. With Altman returning as chief executive, the initial new board is to be led by Bret Taylor, former co-CEO of Salesforce Inc, along with Larry Summers, former U.S. Treasury Secretary, and existing member Adam D'Angelo, co-founder and CEO of Quora Inc.

Sam Altman is seen attending an AI-related event at the Asia-Pacific Economics Cooperation Leaders' Week in San Francisco last week. Altman was briefly ousted from his role as OpenAI CEO last Friday. By Tuesday, he'd been hired back. (Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP/Getty Images)