A Dramatic Moment in the AI Revolution

THE COMPANY THAT UNFURLED the artifi­cial intelligence revolution is OpenAI after it first introduced ChatGPT to the world. It could answer questions like a human being and that seemed to be some sort of fundamental advance. The man responsible for this, or at least, who helmed the creation of OpenAI and steered it to this point was Sam Altman, also its chief executive officer. He had great standing with the entrepreneurial community of Silicon Valley, having been with Y-Combinator that incubates new startups. It was his own mission that OpenAI would not be a for-profit venture, instead its primary end would be to make artificial intelligence, when it inevitably arrived, to be as safe for humanity as possible. Soon, however, on the realisa­tion that to be a serious player, serious money was involved, the model became for-profit but one in which profit would be capped so that the pressure of chasing margins would not lead to ethical compromises in its core mission. It also tied up with Microsoft, the second most valuable company in the world, which gave OpenAI further heft to compete against the other big multinationals also into artificial intelligence. Despite its unique model, and the fact that it was not driven purely by monetary ends, OpenAI still managed to beat everyone else in becoming the first to herald the revolution and few had any doubts that Altman was its driver. He generated great loyalty from OpenAI’s staff. Investors and partners like Microsoft recognised his value and he had the freedom to manoeuvre the company without interference. And then came news that stunned them all—OpenAI’s Board of Directors summarily and without warning fired Sam Altman citing vague reasons like not being “consistently candid” with them. This was done behind the back of the chairman of the Board, who also exited.

Such corporate coups are not uncommon though the Board here was unique in that none of them had skin in the game in terms of money invested in the company. They were mostly independent directors. Of the four who did this, one was an academician, two were founders of other companies and one was the chief scientist of OpenAI, Ilya Sutskever. They were appointed not to protect interest of shareholders but the mis­sion of the company. Matters soon took twists and turns which would have been grist to the mill for a movie thriller. Microsoft almost immediately wooed Altman. Its CEO Satya Nadella announced that they would now be setting up an AI division of their own which Altman would lead. He posted on X that the company looked forward to continuing its partnership with OpenAI but also added: “And we’re extremely excited to share the news that Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, together with colleagues, will be joining Microsoft to lead a new advanced AI research team. We look forward to moving quickly to pro­vide them with the resources needed for their success.” They would therefore be both partners and competitors of OpenAI henceforth. More than 700 employees of OpenAI signed a letter asking for the return of Altman and the sacking of the Board. Now, with Altman starting his own venture, it was clear that all of them would join it, leaving OpenAI with a skeleton staff at most. But it got stranger still. One of the signatories to the letter was Ilya Sutskever, who also posted on X: “I deeply regret my participation in the board’s actions. I never intended to harm OpenAI. I love everything we’ve built together and I will do everything I can to reunite the company.”

With such a rebellion, it was not going to be feasible for Ope­nAI to be functional and on November 22 came the announce­ment that Altman would be returning back as CEO of OpenAI. And the entire Board, except for a director, would now be leav­ing instead. A new one has been constituted and OpenAI will now continue as before with Microsoft’s position considerably strengthened over it given that it backed Altman and informed the market that it was not dependent on OpenAI to lead it into its future with AI. The drama aside, what it is pertinent is the ‘why’ of it and the theories around it. Recently, before all this happened, Altman had during a speech said something that suggested they had made a breakthrough: “…four times now in the history of OpenAI, the most recent time was just in the last couple of weeks, I’ve gotten to be in the room when we pushed the veil of ignorance back.” On November 22, news agency Reuters came out with a report that said employees of OpenAI had written to the Board about the discovery of a powerful new AI tool that could threaten humanity. It added: “The sources cited the letter as one factor among a longer list of grievances by the board leading to Altman’s firing, among which were con­cerns over commercializing advances before understanding the consequences. Reuters was unable to review a copy of the letter. The staff who wrote the letter did not respond to requests for comment. After being contacted by Reuters, OpenAI, which declined to comment, acknowledged in an internal message to staffers a project called Q* and a letter to the board before the weekend’s events, one of the people said.”

This is still in the realm of conspiracy theory but it is indica­tion of the worries than underpin this technology and why many, including Altman himself, has warned of abundant caution as we tread on this path. Artificial General Intelli­gence is the holy grail of the future, when AI becomes entirely autonomous like a human brain, but it is still thought to be decades away. By then, if humans don’t leash in the dangers from such an end, there is no telling what the fallout would be. Meanwhile, every advance presages that dark future. Some of that fear could be reflected in the current episode too. Because this is a brand-new territory, there is no template on how to go about it. Many, including some of the leading personalities of the technology world, have called for a slowing down of AI development. But when corporations compete against each other, their priorities are how to increase market share and not necessarily unseen dangers that are far away.

OpenAI has so far managed to walk that fine line between commerce and ethics because of the nature of its structure and mission. The last few days might be in some ways good because Altman will return more powerful but also aware of the fac­tors that led to his temporary ouster. He has also, according to media reports, permitted an internal investigation into his own conduct that the Board cited was the reason to remove him. AI is a force that is more or less unstoppable and it is not even clear that there will be any agreement on the course that it should take given the enormous number of players, from corporations to countries, who are part of its development. There will be many more, and far bigger, crises around its development in the future, and all humans can do is hope they don’t spiral out of hand.

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