The exit of Sam Altman set in motion a series of events that saw the upstart company's biggest investor, Microsoft, swoop in to hire the toppled CEO and begin a process of building an OpenAI clone in the Redmond, Washington-based tech giant.
In some ways the looming result to the weekend saga is hardly a surprise, with many wondering how the board members could be naive enough to think they could outmaneuver Altman.
Silicon Valley was left aghast by Altman's firing, with the investor community and OpenAI's own staff furious that the four-person board got in the way of going faster into the AI age.
"We are not happy about it. We want stability here," said Ryan Steelberg, CEO of Veritone, a company that helps firms develop artificial intelligence.
Instead of OpenAI becoming the new Apple or Google, the harsh critics see a deeply troubled startup that fell victim to the pearl-clutching of an incompetent board.
"We reached this point because minuscule risks have been hysterically amplified by the exotic thinking of sci-fi mindsets, and clickbait journalism from the press," veteran venture capitalist Vinod Khosla, an early investor in OpenAI, wrote in The Information.
- 'Fallible people' -
Other observers warned that the drama in San Francisco proved that AI was too vital to be left in the hands of its creators.
"This is an important reminder that as brilliant as the designers of tech like AI -- scientists or engineers -- are, they are still just fallible people," said Paul Barrett, deputy director of the NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights.
"That is why it is important not to just defer to them on a technology that everyone agrees has significant risks even as it promises tremendous benefits," he added.
Gary Marcus, a respected AI expert, said OpenAI's civil war "highlights the fact that we can't really trust the companies to self-regulate AI where even their own internal governance can be deeply conflicted."
Government regulation, notably by the tougher-minded European Union, was needed more than ever, he added.
OpenAI was actually created in 2015 with the goal of being a counterweight to Google, which was by far the leader in developing AI technologies that mimic the operations of the human brain.
Though nothing is known for sure, assumptions are rife that Altman's increased efforts to monetize the company's leading GPT-4 model, all while keeping its inner functioning a secret, was becoming too problematic for the company's board.
Already, several senior staff at OpenAI deserted the enterprise in 2021 to build rival Anthropic over concerns that Altman was moving ahead too recklessly.
- 'OpenAI is done' -
Many are shocked that the board had the power it did, or were naive enough to think they could actually use it.
Three of those board members are thought to have connections to the effective altruism movement, which frets over the risks of AI, but that critics say is cut off from reality.
Whatever their beliefs, by Monday the board were overseeing a company in name only, with virtually the whole staff committed to a pledge of quitting the firm for Altman's project at Microsoft if the board refused to go.
"Unless OpenAI can block those departures, OpenAI is pretty much done at this point," analyst Rob Enderle told AFP.
This could mean a history-making victory for Microsoft, which has already seen its share price reach record levels over its ties to OpenAI.
"This is like the best possible scenario for them, and the OpenAI board I am sure is kicking itself. They were clearly detached from reality," said Carolina Milanesi, analyst at Creative Strategies.
Altman drama: twist in seven-year Microsoft, OpenAI relationship
Paris (AFP) Nov 20, 2023 -
Microsoft's hiring of ousted OpenAI CEO Sam Altman on Monday marks another twist in the seven-year-old partnership between the US giant and the startup that created ChatGPT.
Here are key moments in the history of their partnership:
- Founded as a non-profit -
OpenAI is founded in 2015 by entrepreneurs and investors, including Sam Altman, Greg Brockman and Tesla chief Elon Musk.
It is established as a not-for-profit organisation that publishes open source research and software available to all.
- Teams up with Microsoft -
Musk quits the project in 2018 following clashes with the board of directors.
Altman transforms OpenAI into a "capped profit" company and seeks new investors.
- Microsoft injects $1 billion -
In 2019, Microsoft invests $1 billion in OpenAI, largely in the form of computing credits, in exchange for a role in the future commercialisation of its technologies.
The goal for Microsoft is to develop its cloud offering, where it competes with Google (Alphabet) and Amazon.
- GPT-3 launched -
OpenAI launches GPT-3 in 2020, the third version of its large-scale language model, trained on huge volumes of text scraped from the internet by Microsoft's computing infrastructure.
This model is far more powerful than its competitors, with some 175 billion parameters.
- Supercomputer trains AI -
Microsoft in 2020 says it has built a supercomputer exclusively designed to train large OpenAI models.
Its cloud network, Azure, can now make these systems available to Microsoft customers.
- AI-generated images -
OpenAI in 2021 says it has developed DALL-E, an AI model capable of generating images when provided with descriptions.
- ChatGPT goes public -
OpenAI achieves worldwide attention with the November 2022 launch of ChatGPT, a language model open to the public, initially available free of charge.
- Microsoft reportedly seeks stake -
In January 2023, Microsoft announces "an investment of several billion dollars over several years" -- $10 billion, according to US media.
It says it is "investing in the development of specialised supercomputer systems" for its partnership with OpenAI, but makes no mention of acquiring a stake in its capital.
According to US media, Microsoft had sought to buy 49 percent of OpenAI, in an offer that valued it at $29 billion.
- Microsoft integrates GPT-4 into products -
In March 2023, Microsoft says it is integrating the GPT-4 version of OpenAI into its consumer products such as search engine Bing, Outlook email and Office suite (Word, Excel), but will charge users extra.
- Microsoft not informed of dismissal -
Microsoft is not notified of the OpenAI board's decision on Friday to dismiss Sam Altman, according to US press reports.
After trying over the weekend to get him reinstated, the group announces that it is hiring him and co-founder Greg Brockman.
Brockman suggests that they will continue to create AI products at Microsoft, and he announces the recruitment of several key OpenAI managers for these projects.
Meanwhile, hundreds of OpenAI staff members Monday sign a letter threatening to leave the company and join Microsoft if the board is not replaced.
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