artificial intelligence (AI) and Microsoft. Image: GETTY IMAGES
The Microsoft CEO says the chaos at OpenAI is not about AI safety.
A dispute about safety was not the cause of the current upheaval at OpenAI, according to Microsoft’s president.
The dismissal of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman sparked concerns that the ChatGPT inventor had made a “dangerous” finding.
Brad Smith informed the our reporter that the shocking firing “wasn’t fundamentally about a concern like that.”
Prior to his reinstatement last week, Microsoft—the leading investor in OpenAI—offered to recruit Mr. Altman.
The dramatic event brought into sharp focus the ways in which business pressures are influencing the rate and nature of AI system development.
Tech heavyweights, including X-owner Elon Musk, have speculated that a dispute over artificial intelligence safety led to Mr. Altman’s dismissal and reappointment.
“I really doubt that is true,” Mr. Smith told the reporter. Disagreement existed between the board and other parties, in my opinion.
Having a new board in place is, in my opinion, the most critical thing. As before, OpenAI and Microsoft are working closely together.
Mr. Altman became known as the face of OpenAI’s revolutionary chatbot ChatGPT following its introduction last year. He was a co-founder of the company.
He was successful in getting $13 billion (£10 billion) in investment from Microsoft, which helped launch the company to new heights.
Microsoft offered Mr. Altman a position as team leader for advanced AI research after the OpenAI board fired him.
However, he was reinstated following a business mutiny in which over 700 OpenAI workers threatened to follow him to Microsoft unless the board reinstated him.
Except for the board’s statement, which stated that they “lost confidence” in his leadership due to his alleged failure to be “consistently candid in communications” with them, no explanation has been provided for the dismissal.
Mr. Smith was in London to announce a £2.5 billion investment in state-of-the-art data centers that will propel the UK’s future AI usage.
“[The UK] stands to gain from both this investment in innovation and the healthy rivalry between tech giants like Google and Microsoft,” he said at the event. In my opinion, it is the direction things are heading in the future.
“And I think that what we’ve done the last couple of weeks in supporting open AI will help advance that even more.”
He dispelled the myth that artificial intelligence will surpass humans within a year.
This so-called artificial general intelligence, in which computers outperform humans, is highly unlikely to materialize in the next twelve months. Years, if not decades, will pass.