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How ChatGPT Fractured OpenAI - The Atlantic

theatlantic.com · 2,532 words · saved by 1 readers

To truly understand the events of the past 48 hours—the shocking, sudden ousting of OpenAI’s CEO, Sam Altman, arguably the figurehead of the generative-AI revolution, followed by reports that the company was in talks to bring him back, and then yet another shocking revelation that he in fact would not return—one must understand that OpenAI is not a technology company. At least, not like other epochal companies of the internet age, such as Meta, Google, and Microsoft. OpenAI was deliberately structured to resist the values that drive much of the tech industry—a relentless pursuit of scale, a build-first-ask-questions-later approach to launching consumer products. It was founded in 2015 as a nonprofit dedicated to the creation of artificial general intelligence, or AGI, that should benefit “humanity as a whole.” (AGI, in the company’s telling, would be advanced enough to outperform any person at “most economically valuable work”—just the kind of cataclysmically powerful tech that demands

Listen − 1.0 x + Seek 0:00 18:08 Updated at 8:15 a.m. ET on November 20, 2023 To truly understand the events of this past weekend—the shocking, sudden ousting of OpenAI’s CEO, Sam Altman, arguably the avatar of the generative-AI revolution, followed by reports that the company was in talks to bring him back, and then yet another shocking revelation that he would start a new AI team at Microsoft instead—one must understand that OpenAI is not a technology company. At least, not like other epochal companies of the internet age, such as Meta and Google. OpenAI was deliberately structured to resist

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