A year ago, we saw a stand-off between OpenAI's non-profit board and its leader, Sam Altman. Since then, the board has been reshuffled, Altman has consolidated power, and under his leadership, some strange things have happened. If AI might change the world, and OpenAI is leading the field -- how worried should we be? We check in with tech reporter Casey Newton of the newsletter Platformer and the podcast Hard Fork. Listen to our previous OpenAI episode (https://pjvogt.substack.com/p/who-should-be-in-charge-of-ai) Support the show: searchengine.show To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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Contact your participating dealer or visit FordService.com for important details and limitations. Welcome to Search Engine, no question too big, no question too small. This week, should we be worried about OpenAI? So last fall, we reported a story about OpenAI, the leading company in artificial intelligence, led by charismatic co-founder Sam Altman.
The company was famous not just for its runaway success, but also for their unusual ethos and structure. Rather than simply being a for-profit company, it was a non-profit in charge of a for-profit company. And that nonprofit could seemingly disable the for-profit company at any point if it decided that the company was acting in a way that was dangerous for society.
It was like a tech company with a doomsday switch built into it. A recognition both of AI's potential power to reshape society, as well as an understanding perhaps that the last round of technological innovation has not been completely wonderful for the world. Our last story was about how OpenAI's nonprofit guardians had decided that the company had in fact gone off course.
In November, 2023, they deposed their own leader, suddenly and dramatically. Sam Altman is out as CEO of OpenAI, the company just announcing a leadership transition.
The godfather of chat GPT kicked out of the company he founded.
It looks like things were over for Sam Altman until his loyalists got on board with a counter coup. Nearly every rank and file employee at the company signed a petition demanding his return.
90 percent of the company's 770 employees signed a letter threatening to leave unless the current board of directors resigned and reinstated Altman as head of OpenAI.
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