Good. Biden's appointment of Altman to the AI safety and security board is up there with his Garland and Fauci appointments. Bad decisions.
The man has been accused by those who know him in his own inner circle of being "not consistently candid" and if there's anyone who should not be deciding AI risk issues it's someone not candid.
"Scarlett Johansson scandal puts OpenAI's Sam Altman back in the hot seat"
#ScarlettJohansson is threatening #legal action against #OpenAI for copying her #voice for its latest #AI model, GPT-4o, which will be accessible through #ChatGPT.
In a statement provided to The Washington Post by Johansson’s publicist, she claimed that she received an offer from OpenAI CEO #SamAltman in Sept to be the voice of its AI system. Johansson… declined….
“Mr. #Altman even insinuated that the similarity was intentional, tweeting a single word ‘#her’ - a reference to the film in which I voiced a chat system…” #ScarlettJohansson’s statement continued.
The “Sky” voice was one of 5 voices #OpenAI unveiled in September when it added an audio conversation mode. WaPo noted at the time that “#Sky” sounded similar to Johansson.
"Generative AI’s environmental costs are soaring — and mostly secret
Last month, #OpenAI chief executive Sam #Altman finally admitted what researchers have been saying for years — that the artificial intelligence (#AI) industry is heading for an #energy#crisis."
Don’t worry he has an escape plan - although I think he missed the bit about an ego the size of a planet for emergency levitation via hot air balloon.
“I try not to think about it [democracy] too much. But I have guns, gold, potassium iodide, antibiotics, batteries, water, gas masks from the Israel Defense Forces, and a big patch of land in Big Sur I can fly to.”
Le Profezie di Sam Altman! Tra cambiamenti epocali di internet, reddito universale ed energia pulita. Facciamo il punto
Sam #Altman è il CEO di #OpenAI, la #startup che ha sviluppato #ChatGPT che conosciamo tutti. Nel novembre 2023 è stato improvvisamente licenziato dal consiglio di amministrazione e trasferito per un breve periodo a #Microsoft. È tornato dopo che tutti in OpenAI hanno minacciato di dimettersi.
OpenAI researchers warned board of AI breakthrough ahead of CEO ouster, sources say
Ahead of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s four days in exile, several staff researchers wrote a letter to the board of directors warning of a powerful artificial intelligence discovery that they said could threaten humanity, two people familiar with the matter told Reuters.
The previously unreported letter and AI algorithm were key developments before the board's ouster of Altman, the poster child of generative AI, the two sources said.
Prior to his triumphant return late Tuesday, more than 700 employees had threatened to quit and join backer Microsoft (MSFT.O) in solidarity with their fired leader.
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.
An OpenAI spokesperson said that the message, sent by long-time executive Mira Murati, alerted staff to certain media stories without commenting on their accuracy.
Some at OpenAI believe ♦️Q* (pronounced Q-Star) could be a breakthrough in the startup's search for what's known as artificial general intelligence (🔸AGI), one of the people told Reuters. OpenAI defines AGI as autonomous systems that surpass humans in most economically valuable tasks.
Given vast computing resources, the new model was able to solve certain mathematical problems, the person said on condition of anonymity because the individual was not authorized to speak on behalf of the company.
Though only performing math on the level of grade-school students, acing such tests made researchers very optimistic about Q*’s future success, the source said.
Reuters could not independently verify the capabilities of Q* claimed by the researchers.
'VEIL OF IGNORANCE'
Researchers consider math to be a frontier of generative AI development.
Currently, generative AI is good at writing and language translation by statistically predicting the next word, and answers to the same question can vary widely.
But conquering the ability to do math — where there is only one right answer — implies AI would have greater reasoning capabilities resembling human intelligence.
This could be applied to novel scientific research, for instance, AI researchers believe.
Unlike a calculator that can solve a limited number of operations, AGI can generalize, learn and comprehend.
In their letter to the board, researchers flagged AI’s prowess and potential danger, the sources said without specifying the exact safety concerns noted in the letter.
There has long been discussion among computer scientists about the danger posed by highly intelligent machines, for instance if they might decide that the destruction of humanity was in their interest.
Researchers have also flagged work by an "AI scientist" team, the existence of which multiple sources confirmed.
The group, formed by combining earlier 🔹"Code Gen" and 🔹"Math Gen" teams, was exploring how to optimize existing AI models to improve their reasoning and eventually perform scientific work, one of the people said.
Altman led efforts to make ChatGPT one of the fastest growing software applications in history and drew investment - and computing resources - necessary from Microsoft to get closer to AGI.
In addition to announcing a slew of new tools in a demonstration this month, Altman last week teased at a summit of world leaders in San Francisco that he believed major advances were in sight.
"Four times now in the history of OpenAI, the most recent time was just in the last couple weeks, I've gotten to be in the room, when we sort of push the veil of ignorance back and the frontier of discovery forward, and getting to do that is the professional honor of a lifetime," he said at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit.
Tous ceux qui s’étaient opposés à lui, et notamment Ilya Sutskever, responsable scientifique et membre du conseil d’administration, ou qui s’inquiétaient de la fuite en avant technologique de l’entreprise sont mis ou appelés à être mis à l’écart.
Les membres du conseil d’administration qui l’ont évincé sont à leur tour éjectés : Sam Altman en a fait une condition non négociable pour revenir
> On va tenter de résumer ce qu’il s’est passé chez OpenAI et #Microsoft ces derniers jours. Histoire de bien spoiler le reste de l’actu, voici la fin de la (première ?) saison des aventures de Sam #Altman et des employés d’OpenAI.
Je dois bien avouer que je m'en branle de leurs histoires mais que c'est marrant à lire malgré tout.
"Da sich Führungspositionen jedoch ändern können, empfehle ich, die neuesten und zuverlässigsten Quellen für die aktuellsten Informationen zum derzeitigen CEO von OpenAI zu überprüfen." #chatgpt#altman#openai#microsoft
Buongiorno da @openai e anche un po' da Microsoft, protagonista suo malgrado (e inizialmente a sua insaputa) della vicenda che ha monopolizzato le attenzioni del mercato AI e buona parte di quello IT.
Sam Altman non è più CEO di OpenAI, Sam Altman è ora un dipendente Microsoft, Sam Altman vuole fondare una nuova startup...insomma che sta succedendo? Scopriamolo in questo lungo buongiornone monotematico!
#OpenAI promised to „put ethics before profits and safety before a race to develop and commercialize a #technology that its founders believed could pose an existential threat to the human race. (…) On Friday, for the first time, it yanked on that e-brake by publicly firing #Altman — and the lever broke off in its hand.”
Very good analysis of #AI#Artificialintelligence turmoil: (Gift link) https://wapo.st/40JhzIJ
#OpenAI future in chaos as most workers threaten to leave for #Microsoft
Former CEO #SamAltman could still return to OpenAI, despite Microsoft announcing he would join the #tech giant
Nearly all employees at the #AI company threatened to quit & join ousted chief executive Sam #Altman at Microsoft if he isn’t reinstated as CEO, extending the dramatic Silicon Valley boardroom saga.
i'm behind on my feed, maybe someone already said this, but i noticed that #openai experienced a ton of operational issues right before #altman was fired.
was he redirecting resources away from research to deal with the ChatGPT explosion?
For those who missed it: Sam #Altman is back as #OpenAI#CEO. Here's a summary of the events, allegiations and alleged (but also denied) letters hinting about #AGI.