“You’re Fired” AGI to Sam Altman ?

Interesting (& troubling news) — change in OpenAI Management ! The change is interesting, but the firing is troubling.

Till we know why OpenAI fired Sam Altman, we can only speculate ! And … speculate we must … My theory “#AGI did it” !

P.S: I am capturing updates & interesting analysis at the end of this blog … with a final “Aftermath … looking Back” and more interesting links on the Microsoft/Open AI relationship

I have a feeling that OpenAI actually has achieved AGI !

It is not new[Here], but probably closer than we think

And, here (3 days after my post!)

And, was surprised to see that 11% of the betting board thinks so too ! And looks like it is true — see [Here] !

Remember, Open AI quietly changed their values to AGI only a few months ago ! “Anything that doesn’t help with that (AGI) is out of scope” !

Incidentally, the OpenAI board determines when and what AGI is; but MSFT doesn’t get AGI

I was surprised to see that Jeremey Howard had some concerns about OpenAI’s progress — “ChatGPT was an accident” and it could have trouble scaling ! [Here] Very prophetic !

Update v1 (11.17.23) : An hr after publishing the blog ! Information is coming fast, I will try to keep up) :

• More details from Jeremy [Here] “The first point to make is that the Dev Day was (IMO) an absolute embarrassment. … The plan was AGI, lifting society to a new level. We got Laundry Buddy”
• From Greg Brockman [Here] — An inside view of the events …

Update v2 (11.19.23):

• Kara Switzer [Here] — Chronology of events after Greg’s timeline
• The Atlantic [Here] — “Inside the Chaos at OpenAI” — an analysis
• ArsTechnica [Here] — An analysis, I like the diagram of the OpenAI structure

As Simon Willison points out [Here] “The fundamental issue here is that OpenAI is a weirdly shaped organization, because they are structured as a non-profit, and the non-profit owns the for-profit arm”

The Finale (11.19.23 11:53 PM): (Turned out there is more …)

Satya Nadalla had an interview [Here]. Couple of quotes from him

• “At this point, I think it’s very clear that something has to change around the governance,” Nadella said. He added that Microsoft would have “a good dialogue with their board on that.”
• “We want to make sure that we’re dealing with not only the benefits of technology, but the unintended consequences of the technology from day one, as opposed to waiting for things to happen,” Nadella said.

That is a beautiful quote, indeed

Another analysis, by NYTimes [Here]-The heading says it all …

Gary Marcus — What went down at OpenAI — “nobody does something that dramatic without some kind of serious motivation” [Here]

This is where it stands on 20th Nov 2023, afternoon PST. Keep tuned for more developments.

1. Will the OpenAI team be distributed into other companies ?
2. Will Sam be back at OpenAI ?
3. Will MSFT rule the earth ?
4. Finally, does AGI/our new overlords care about any of these ?

At least we got an answer for Q#1 & #2

“Aftermath looking back” — couple of insightful articles:

• New Yorker [Here] — “We’ve always tackled super-challenging problems through technology. And so we can either tell ourselves a good story about the future or a bad story about the future — and, whichever one we choose, that’s probably the one that’ll come true” — Kevin Scott, Microsoft
• The Economist[Here] — “The structure defies corporate physics,” says an AI investor. Sooner or later it will need shoring up
• NYTimes has an even more interesting take on the evolution of AI [Here]
• NY times on AI & OpenAI[Here]
• Behind OpenAI Meltdown, Valley Heavyweight Reid Hoffman Calmed Microsoft Nerves [Here]
• The Clever Crafting of Microsoft’s Open AI Deal [Here]

… more to come, of course …