OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman Is Fired…or Not?

My goodness! What is happening? Sam Altman has  resigned as the CEO of OpenAI. And we’ll talk   about this new AI tool too, which will be the  future of music creation, according to DeepMind. But firing Sam Altman? Really?   Why? Everything seemed so good! This isn’t news that you expect to hear after  a the first OpenAI developer conference,   where they announced GPT-4 Turbo, and perhaps  the first AI app store in a historic moment,   and more. And in the meantime, work on GPT-5  is also underway. They also created GPTBot,   a web crawler as a preparation for  GPT-5. OpenAI also needs to raise   more money than the 10 billion they have from  Microsoft, and work is underway on that too. And at that moment, the news just drops  out of the sky: Sam Altman has been asked   by the board to step down. Wow. And what  happened then was absolute pandemonium. Dear Fellow Scholars, this is Two Minute  Papers with Dr. Károly Zsolnai-Fehér. So, what happened then? Well,  shortly after, Greg Brockman,   co-founder and president of OpenAI also resigned. And that’s not all, then, shortly after, three  high-level researchers also resigned. Clearly,   there are big disagreements within the  company as to how they should proceed.    What I hear is that one side would like to take  a slower, more aligned approach, while the other   is more interested in moving more quickly. It is  very difficult to say which is the right approach,   especially in the presence of this pace of  progress that you see here on Two Minute Papers.    Sometimes you see a paper that is kinda okay,  but a bit like a toy, like the DALL-E 2 text to   image AI. And then one or two more works more down  the line, DALL-E 3, an absolute powerhouse drops. Also, that’s not all. OpenAI is a  non-profit entity, as it has been   created by its founders. But it is a for profit  entity too. Now I hear you asking, Doctor,   what is going on here? How does that happen? You  see, both are true. OpenAI is a non-profit entity   that owns the for-profit entity. And the board  of directors controls the top level. Clearly,   there are differences in opinion whether that  is a good thing or not. Is OpenAI going to   become a big trillion dollar company, or is it  going to be a small and scrappy startup with   these miracle AI systems? Differences  in opinion in there too, I am sure. Now, in the meantime, Microsoft, major investor  in OpenAI - they are likely as surprised by   this as we are. But they have billions of  dollars invested here and they are not happy. Especially because of what happened next. Next,  Altman said that he is ready for the next venture,   presumably with his co-founder Greg Brockman  and a bunch of researchers by his side,   I expected that an announcement will be  made about the next chapter for them. And then, another bombshell news appears:  presumably due to the wishes of investors   and Microsoft, Altman is in talks again to be  reinstated as CEO just about a day later. So,   what could happen here? Well, option one, if that  happens, Altman would be back and would likely   be way more powerful than before. I can’t imagine  Microsoft not asking for at least a board seat, or   perhaps even an entirely new board may be created. Or, option two, otherwise, Sam might create a   competitor to OpenAI, and I am sure there will  be investors who are eager to be a part of it. But wait, it is still not done.   The talks have already started,   and Altman was ambivalent about coming back.   Not so sure. A key deadline was missed,   which may trigger the mass resignation  of even more scientists at OpenAI. So what is going to happen now? Who really  knows, the story is still ongoing. So far,   this is absolute pandemonium.   There are likely intense,   and I mean intense talks in  the situation room right now. And in the meantime, DeepMind showcased an  amazing new music creation AI where you can   do as little as just hum a song, and it  will come to life as a saxophone solo,   or any kind of music you wish. It even  creates music in the style of popular artists,

wait for it Fellow Scholars, only a few select  artists who have agreed to this program. These will be typically 30-second song  snippets, to be used in Youtube shorts,   so you don’t have to listen to the same few songs  that dominate the market at the time. Instead,   new stuff, all the time. Really cool. Now,  interestingly, these songs will also be   digitally watermarked. It’s completely  inaudible, you will not hear anything,   but a computer will be able to detect it as a  piece of AI-generated content. Interestingly, this   watermark will also survive if someone converts  or re-compresses the file into a different   format. I am happy to hear that we are starting to  figure out how to mark AI-created content on the   internet. For music and images, there is already  great progress on this, loving it. Once again,   the papers that you see here in these videos  are coming to life. What a time to be alive! Note that the sources for  hopefully everything that I   said here are available in the video description.