what you should Know
- Sam Altman has reportedly negotiated a new deal with Apple to bring ChatGPT to the iPhone.
- OpenAI’s partnership with Microsoft gives it access to infinite computation and eternal clients.
- Two employees left OpenAI when it announced its new flagship GPT-4o.
Reports flooding the internet indicate that OpenAI and Apple are ironing out the final details in a new deal that will see ChatGPT debut on the iPhone and the recent iOS 18 update.
Along with the new GPT-4o flagship, OpenAI unveiled its new macOS app that ignores Windows despite Microsoft’s heavy investment in the company. OpenAI explained that the decision to ship ChatGPT to Mac users was based on the fact that the priority is where the users are. This potentially indicates that most ChatGPT users are using Apple devices.
OpenAI’s top executives are leaving the company
OpenAI had a busy week with the launch of a new flagship GPT-4o model at the just-concluded Spring Update event, which can reason on audio, vision and text in real-time, making interactions with ChatGPT more intuitive.
Oddly enough, the creator of ChatGPT lost several employees during this crucial week in its history. Ilya Sutzkever, co-founder and chief scientist at OpenAI, has announced that he is leaving the hot startup after nearly a decade for a project that is “personally meaningful.” Although details remain scarce, Sutskever indicated that he will reveal more details about his next move in due course.
Sutskever added:
“The company’s trajectory has been nothing short of miraculous, and I am confident that OpenAI will build AGI that is both safe and useful under the leadership of Sam Altman and other senior executives.”
After almost a decade, I have made the decision to leave OpenAI. The company’s trajectory has been miraculous and I am confident that OpenAI will build AGI that is both safe and useful under the leadership of @sama, @gdb, @miramurati and now, under…May 14, 2024
A few days later after Sutskever, @signüll at X (formerly Twitter) announced that they had also withdrawn from OpenAI. They’ve since updated their X profile to reflect that they’re now a general partner at Sequoia Capital, a financial services firm that helps “build legendary companies from idea to IPO and beyond.”
The former OpenAI employee didn’t reveal why they’re leaving the company, but did give some insight into what’s going on at the company. In an X post, Signüll described OpenAI CEO Sam Altman as “a genius master strategist. He uses the “enemy of my enemy” principle to perfection.”
Sigül listed the following as a premise for the statements highlighted above:
- It completely neutralizes the threat of Elon Musk.
- He negotiated an incredible deal with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella for infinite computers and forever customers.
- He negotiated a new deal with Apple to make OpenAI native to the iPhone to capture the zeitgeist and user usage.
sam altman is a master class genius strategist – he uses the “enemy of my enemy” principle to perfection. 1) it completely neutralizes the elon threat. 2) negotiated an amazing deal with satya for infinite computation and forever customer. 3) now negotiated a deal with apple to make openai… pic.twitter.com/RiTTrsslHTMay 15, 2024
“OpenAI now sits squarely between two of the biggest companies for both consumers and enterprises. He forever cemented OpenAI as the defacto name when anyone in the world thought of “AI” and turned every single weakness of OpenAI into a strength – the one person who could make Google dance and be put in a hugely awkward position. Absolutely amazing performance.”
Microsoft and OpenAI’s complex partnership can be overwhelming to understand
Microsoft’s multibillion-dollar investment in OpenAI and its technology has allowed it to adapt to AI and integrate it into most of its products and services, and it is now the most valuable company in the world with a market capitalization of over $3 trillion, overtaking Apple.
But the partnership isn’t a walk in the park either, that’s especially true after last year’s OpenAI fiasco that led to Sam Altman being fired and reinstated as CEO by the board. Microsoft has been quiet during this period, but rumors hitting the windmills have indicated that the company is ready to welcome hundreds of OpenAI employees into its new artificial intelligence division at LinkedIn’s San Francisco offices.
As you may know, Microsoft holds a 49% stake in OpenAI’s for-profit division, which essentially means it stands to lose a lot if OpenAI’s success is short-lived. Interestingly, this doesn’t seem to bother Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella:
“We were very confident in our own abilities. We have all intellectual property rights and all rights. I mean, look, if OpenAI goes away tomorrow, I don’t want any of our customers to have to worry about that, quite frankly, because we have every right to continue to innovate, not only service the products, but we can do what we’ve been doing in partnership, alone and so we have the people, we have the calculations, we have the data. , we have it all.”
Satya Nadella previously pointed out that OpenAI would not exist without Microsoft’s early investment and adoption of its technology and services. Interestingly, the former OpenAI employee revealed that most people don’t understand the complex partnership between Microsoft and OpenAI. The deal reportedly includes a “very entertaining clause.”
what most people don’t understand or realize is that @sama negotiated a very funny clause in the deal with microsoft. as soon as openai hits AGI microsoft has zero IP and at 49% they have no control. who can declare when/if they have AGI? that would be openai & @sama.May 16, 2024
Once OpenAI reaches its desired AGI status, Microsoft will have zero IP and, despite its 49% stake, no control. OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman will reportedly take all the credit.
Sam Altman and Satya Nadella on Superintelligence
Last year, a report indicated that OpenAI was on the verge of achieving superintelligence (codenamed Q* (Q-Star)), which may have contributed to Sam Altman’s firing. It’s also revealed that the company will hit on AGI within a decade or so, with chief scientist Ilya Sutzkever leading operations on that front at the time.
OpenAI’s CEO isn’t shy about his AGI ambitions, but Microsoft’s Satya Nadella doesn’t seem too concerned about superintelligence. His focus is elsewhere, as highlighted in a previous interview:
“I am much more focused on the benefits for all of us. I am haunted by the fact that the industrial revolution didn’t hit the parts of the world where I grew up until much later. So I’m looking for the thing that might be even bigger than the industrial revolution, and really doing what the industrial revolution did for the West, for everybody in the world. So I’m not worried at all about AGI coming or coming quickly. Great, right? That means 8 billion people have abundance. It’s a fantastic world to live in.”
During an interview with The Economist’s editor-in-chief, OpenAI Sam Altman and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella talked about the future of AI. Altman revealed that the company is still pursuing the AGI benchmark, though he did not specify whether the company is taking a radical or incremental trajectory as it explores opportunities in the space.
When asked about the safety of such a major technological breakthrough, Altman acknowledged that there is no big red button designed to stop AI development. He added that if OpenAI wants to achieve super-intelligent AGI, humans will have the standard “two-week hiatus” before things return to normal:
“One thing I say often is that no one knows what will happen next, and I can’t see the other side of that horizon in any detail. But it seems that deep human motives will not go anywhere.“
As for maintaining privacy and security around AI, Sam Altman says there should be an “international agency” mandated to check the safety of the technology and regulate AI like an airplane to prevent it from harming humanity.
Elon is suing OpenAI for a gross betrayal of its core mission amid copyright infringement concerns
Earlier this year, Elon Musk recently filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and Sam Altman for abandoning their original mission and vision – to make AI available to everyone for free. The billionaire claims that OpenAI has been transformed into a de facto closed-source subsidiary of Microsoft and is now more focused on generating revenue, while referring to the ChatGPT maker’s GPT-4 model as “Microsoft’s de facto proprietary algorithm.” .
Musk added that the GPT-4 model represents AGI and wants the law to force OpenAI to return to its core mission, which includes making its research, discoveries and technological achievements readily available to the public.
Elon Musk has been quite vocal about the progress of AI and has even pointed out that we are on the cusp of the biggest technological revolution with AI, but there won’t be enough power until 2025. He believes there is a 20% chance that AI will end humanity , but still says the technology should be explored despite its inevitable demise.
