The sudden ousting of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman on Friday initially seemed to suggest one thing: he must have done something really, really bad. Possibly illegal. So when OpenAI's board of directors publicly announced that Altman was fired after "Failing to be consistently candid," within hours of Altman himself hearing the news, and before significant investors like Microsoft were informed - the unprecedented speed seemed to indicate unprecedented malfeasance by Altman. The decision to restore Altman and appoint a new board of directors is a victory for both OpenAI and Microsoft. The fact that the OpenAI board member who fired Altman reversed his decision less than 48 hours later - is impulsive. Ironically, the OpenAI board members claimed that they ousted Altman over concerns that the company was moving too quickly. In the past year, Sam Altman's ability to work well with technologists, members of Congress, and researchers made him the face of generative AI. Altman's stewardship positioned OpenAI as not just advancing technology, but also engaging with policymakers and advocating for safe AI development. His return holds promise for the continuity of leadership that brought OpenAI to its current preeminence - and questions about how the unprecedented chaos of the past week may impact the overarching pace of innovation and public confidence in AI. The Right Kind of Disruption. That's OpenAI. No alternative offers anything close to its generative AI capabilities. OpenAI has put safeguards in place to mitigate abuses of its platform, and was initially structured as a nonprofit organization "To ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity," independent of demands to generate revenue. Only when Elon Musk left the organization in 2018 - and stopped funding its substantial computing costs - did Altman incorporate the for-profit LLC under the nonprofit. A week ago, OpenAI was riding high on cascading wins that positioned it as a beacon of responsibility, innovation, integrity, and independence. There are myriad potential consequences if the entire OpenAI team had moved to Microsoft, including: slowing down the pace of innovation, concentrating the power of generative AI into the hands of a tech giant, and allowing competitors - many of whom do not display the same concern for responsible AI - to close OpenAI's significant lead. If Altman didn't return, 95% of OpenAI's 770 employees threatened to leave and join Microsoft-including the CTO and other senior leaders. If that had happened, OpenAI would become a husk of the company it is. Microsoft's model of generating revenue from sales of its hardware and software products thrust the monetization of generative AI algorithms and functionality into question - causing uncertainty that would have delayed innovation in AI as Microsoft's newly acquired team ramped its capabilities and OpenAI's tech remained stagnant or declined. This could have opened a window for global competitors, including those in China, to accelerate their efforts and challenge the lead that OpenAI established. The inevitable slow-down of generative AI's capabilities would cause the delay of the life-saving or life-changing advancements in medicine, education, bias mitigation, and science that are currently being built with OpenAI. Some would never be developed at all. A nonprofit board is supposed to hold the CEO accountable: but who holds the board accountable? Only its other members. Much has been made of the unusual governing structure of OpenAI. More importantly: OpenAI is revolutionary not just because of its unprecedented technology, but also because it's independent from the tech giants whose primary revenue streams are advertising or enterprise software sales. The challenge for OpenAI now, and for the entire tech industry, is to navigate increasing complexity without losing sight of its larger goal: advancing AI in a way that is responsible and ethical. Microsoft was already in an advantageous position as an investor and with its perpetual license of OpenAI, which includes crucial knowledge of the weights of the algorithm nodes.
This Cyber News was published on www.forbes.com. Publication date: Thu, 30 Nov 2023 23:19:27 +0000