OpenAI makes it official: Sam Altman is back as CEO
- Reference: 1701323950
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2023/11/30/sam_altman_openai_ceo_restored/
- Source link:
A Wednesday [1]post delivered the news, sharing two missives sent to OpenAI employees and shared with the world: one from Altman and the other from board chair Bret Taylor.
Both deliver news that the OpenAI board will henceforth include a non-voting observer from Microsoft.
[2]
Altman's letter thanked those who worked to secure his return, and states he has no ill will to those who opposed him. The restored CEO also thanked partners and users, and revealed no customers bailed during the org's paroxysm of governance weirdness.
[3]
[4]
The CEO explained OpenAI has "three immediate priorities" – the first of which is "Advancing our research plan and further investing in our full-stack safety efforts, which have always been critical to our work." Describing his brief exile as "a wonderfully focusing time," he set "Continuing to improve and deploy our products and serve our customers" as his second priority.
Appointing a new board that features "diverse perspectives," plus "improving our governance structure and overseeing an independent review of recent events" is third on his to-do list.
[5]
He'll be assisted in that task by CTO Mira Murati and Greg Brockman, who returns as president.
Bret Taylor, the former co-CEO of Salesforce who was drafted as board chair during OpenAI's days of turmoil, retains that post.
[6]AI threatens to automate away the clergy
[7]Now AWS gets a ChatGPT-style Copilot: Amazon Q to be your cloud chat assistant
[8]Author hopes to throw the book at OpenAI, Microsoft with copyright class action
[9]OpenAI's CEO merry-go-round tosses out voice feature for ChatGPT
He also got to write a letter of his own in which he professed to understand "the central role of OpenAI in the development and safety of these awe-inspiring new technologies."
Taylor offered a little more detail about the review of recent events, promising he will "further stabilize the OpenAI organization so that we can continue to serve our mission. This will include convening an independent committee of the board to oversee a review of the recent events."
That board, however, is currently not complete – comprising only Taylor, former treasury secretary Larry Summers, and Adam D’Angelo, the CEO of question-and-answer site Quora.
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They're all white men, meaning the diversity promised for the OpenAI board is currently hard to see. As are details such as how many directors OpenAI plans to appoint, and what Altman means by "improving our governance structure."
Nor is there a reconciliation of Altman's intention to oversee the review, and Taylor's suggestion it will be run by an independent committee of the board – a seeming contradiction as boards are supposed to advise CEOs, not be overseen by them.
Whether the findings of that review will be publicly revealed is also not discussed in either missive. That's significant, as seemingly well-founded rumors have circulated that the old OpenAI board fired Altman for not disclosing risky AI research.
If OpenAI is as central to the future of AI and its safety as Taylor professes, transparency surely seems appropriate.
Perhaps Microsoft's observer will suggest that? ®
Get our [11]Tech Resources
[1] https://openai.com/blog/sam-altman-returns-as-ceo-openai-has-a-new-initial-board
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2ZWhrVXqefnAmQfGrrsTwXwAAAA0&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZWhrVXqefnAmQfGrrsTwXwAAAA0&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33ZWhrVXqefnAmQfGrrsTwXwAAAA0&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZWhrVXqefnAmQfGrrsTwXwAAAA0&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2023/11/29/ai_clergy/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2023/11/28/amazon_q_aws/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2023/11/22/openai_microsoft_copyright_complaint/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2023/11/22/openai_adds_voice/
[10] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33ZWhrVXqefnAmQfGrrsTwXwAAAA0&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[11] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
They’re all white men”
I’m center left politically and mixed race, have many(not just the one) friends, worked with and hired the most diverse set of people imaginable over decades in tech, yet for some reason this sentence irks me. Choosing skin colour as the sole characteristic to represent the diversity of experience and thought necessary for this critical role feels ridiculous and having just running a thought experiment where the word white was replaced with any other skin colour/racial group/identity driven divisor and could not come up with an acceptable equivalent, made me question whether we have gone too far. El Reg was never a source of divisive identity politics in the past. People should be judged and accepted based on the entirety of what they have said and done, not what they look like.
Re: They’re all white men”
FYI: Satya Nadella is not white. The clue is in the name.
I suspect Mira Murati might not be either.
How many exceptions can we ignore while we keep that "all" for maximum outrage?
Re: They’re all white men”
Mira Murati is apparently from Albania, so probably white.
Re: They’re all white men”
I guess she's not a man though ...
To the Valiant Victor the Worthy Venerable Viral Spoils.
Is Uncle Sam Altman also back at the helm of the OpenAI/Microsoft vessel because of the understandably secret [as in proprietary intellectual property] in-house research which led to others declaring him as not being “consistently candid in his communications,” now being outed as a leading AI development being bred and groomed for public deployment and new virtual flight operations from a UK/USA Google DeepMind facility ..... [1]https://www.theregister.com/2023/11/28/ai_agents_can_copy_humans/ ....... and thus is there something of a cyber space race on between the two mega metadata base protagonists to be first past the post as often as is possible to pick up any sponsors' prizes, technocrat rewards, noble and Nobel awards?
Strangers things have happened whenever allies tangle as competitors and become Sp00Key Quantum Leap Entangled ...... :-) Licensed to Thrill.
[1] https://www.theregister.com/2023/11/28/ai_agents_can_copy_humans/
Re: To the Valiant Victor the Worthy Venerable Viral Spoils.
And here's some opinion providing similar context to the above alien speculation on the OpenAI shenanigans ..... and from someone well known for not suffering the useless fool.
The xAI founder warns that "AI is more dangerous than nuclear bombs," when asked about about OpenAI (the company he co-founded):
“I have mixed feelings about Sam,” Musk said about CEO Sam Altman, who was recently ousted and reinstated.
“The ring of power can corrupt.”
Musk added that he wanted to know why OpenAI cofounder and chief scientist Ilya Sutskever "felt so strongly as to fight Sam."
"That sounds like a serious thing. I don't think it was trivial. And I'm quite concerned that there's some dangerous element of AI that they've discovered, " he added.
Musk said he believes Sutskever has a "strong moral compass."
"He really sweats it over questions of what is right," Musk told Sorkin.
"And if Ilya felt strongly enough to want to fire Sam. Well, I think the world should know what was that reason." ..... [1]https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/they-can-go-fk-themselves-musk-slams-advertising-boycott-blackmail
Now, .... regarding these more dangerous than nuclear bombs/NEUKlearer HyperRadioProACTive IT Bombes.? Who/What do you think is in command and control of them and able to drop them on humanity with impunity/without suffering colossal collateral damage?
[1] https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/they-can-go-fk-themselves-musk-slams-advertising-boycott-blackmail
> Microsoft joins the board in non-voting role
Embrasure complete. Begin operation Extend.
non-voting role
I'm imagining the future board meetings: meeting opens, Microsoft rep says what he wants, everyone else votes "yes", meeting ends. "if you don't do what we want, then you have no computers and all your staff are taken away " is rather more powerful than having a vote.
"Error: replace Toner"
Board member Helen Toner has been ousted.
The little I've seen of her suggests dizzy parroting of buzzwords and vague melodramas, and she's in the same "effective altruism" club as Sam Bankman-Fried, so her absence probably won't be noticed.
Sun Don't Shine
A genuine salad tossing bummer IMHAIO!