OpenAI Heads in a New Direction — or So We Thought
ChatGPT has developed into one of the most significant tech platforms in the entire world. However, OpenAI, the “mother company” of ChatGPT, has been recently put under a different spotlight: power. This time, it’s not only about the technological power of the company but rather the power struggle of its leaders.
From owning a small nonprofit in 2015 to a billion-dollar company today, CEO Sam Altman (along with co-founder Greg Brockman and chief scientist Ilya Sustkever) has brought OpenAI to the next level by strategically structuring the business to make a profit. His success seems brilliant at first glance, but in reality, members of the board began to see OpenAI as a safety threat to society and believe Altman was the chaotic spark of it all. “We don’t have a solution for steering or controlling a potentially superintelligent AI, and preventing it from going rogue,” Sutskever said in a blog post. “Humans won’t be able to reliably supervise AI systems much smarter than us.” Sustkever and others claimed that Altman was prioritizing the business prospects of the company and believed it was time to prioritize safety, even if that would decrease the profits of investors. Hence, they banded together to remove Altman from control.
This public outing on Friday, November 17 created a chain of humiliation for Open AI. Altman was hired by Microsoft, one of OpenAI’s most prominent investors, just three days later. Meanwhile, Brockman resigned in honor of Altman, and more than 500 of the company’s 770 employees threatened to resign if the board didn’t reinstate Sam Altman. His loyal followers even posed to recreate OpenAI platforms outside of the company. This potential uprising made the current board worried about the future of the company, as they quickly called back for Altman.
For some time, it seemed as if it was too late to bring Altman back and that the damage was already done. As retold by CNN, OpenAI assigned Mira Murati as interim CEO for two days, then switched to Emmett Shear as another interim CEO for a little over a day. But to everyone’s surprise, Altman made a swift return as CEO of OpenAI.
Some skeptics speculate that this five-day facade could have been orchestrated to strengthen OpenAI as a whole and its partnership with Microsoft. This is especially believable since the CEO of Microsoft, Satya Nadella, has a great alliance with Altman. By strengthening their relationship, Microsoft won’t need to create an AI structure of its own but will still be involved with present-day technological advancements, claims Mike Isaac of The New York Times.
Now that Altman is back in action, his new board is centered around business and tech professionals rather than the previous academic and research professionals. Sustkever remains an executive of the company but is no longer a part of the board.
This brief standoff raises a lot of questions and concerns about the future of artificial intelligence. There are two opposing sides here: those who want to advance technology to help benefit all of humankind and those who want to take things slow, steady, and safe. Chat GPT can be a valuable tool but it can also be a dangerous weapon. Technology is complex and although it can help people in the practical advancement of daily life it is also hard to manage and needs to be dealt with carefully to prevent it from rising above us. Altman being the ambitious and strategic person he is went a bit overboard, but now it seems that there might be a system of “checks and balances” to keep things in order at OpenAI and prevent something like this from ever happening again. The ultimate goal is that no one side will be able to outweigh the other and OpenAI can do what it does best while equally protecting and advancing humanity.
