ChatGPT’s surprising capabilities, such as solving complex puzzles and handling questions that appear to require human-like reasoning, have stunned AI researchers, amazed the public, and sparked an arms race among major tech companies to build more powerful AI. The robot’s success made Altman a tech celebrity, consulted by world leaders on the future of AI technology.
Altman appeared at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in San Francisco yesterday, telling hundreds of business and government leaders that AI systems could solve humanity’s most pressing problems if their development was pursued responsibly.
“We are currently on a path to self-destruction as a species,” he said, sitting alongside Meta and Google executives. “We need new technologies if we are to thrive for tens, hundreds of thousands and millions more years. »
Altman acknowledged that success was not certain, but he expressed confidence that AI would ultimately be beneficial, describing the technology as his life’s work, dating back to his childhood. “It will be the most transformative and beneficial technology humanity has ever invented,” he said.
OpenAI was founded in 2015 as a nonprofit organization focused on safely developing AI that is smarter than humans. It was funded by Musk and others, including Peter Thiel and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman.
OpenAI became a for-profit company in 2019, as the cost of creating and training advanced AI became difficult. It entered into a partnership with Microsoft in 2019 that saw the software giant invest $1 billion and provide cloud computing power to train OpenAI’s algorithms. This year, Microsoft agreed to invest an additional $10 billion in OpenAI.
OpenAI has developed a number of cutting-edge AI projects in the years since its founding, but the introduction of ChatGPT in November 2022 has quickly made the company one of the most valuable companies in the world.
Microsoft was briefed today on OpenAI’s announcement of the management changes, according to a person familiar with the matter speaking on condition of anonymity. They declined to say what Microsoft had learned about the OpenAI board’s rationales.
Microsoft later released a statement from CEO Satya Nadella saying the company was committed to its partnership with OpenAI as well as Murati and his team. “Together, we will continue to bring the significant benefits of this technology to the world,” Nadella’s statement said.
Updated 11/18/2023, 1:10 a.m. EST: This article has been updated with Brockman’s message on the OpenAI board’s actions.
Updated 11/17/2023, 8:25 p.m. EST: This article has been updated with the announcement of Greg Brockman’s resignation.
Updated 11/17/2023, 7:25 p.m. EST: Updated with statement from Microsoft CEO.
Updated 11/17/2023, 6:20 p.m. EST: This article has been updated with comment from an OpenAI investor.
Updated 11/17/2023 at 5:30 p.m. EST: This article has been updated with additional comments from Microsoft.
