Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence demonstrated by machines, unlike the natural intelligence displayed by humans and animals, which involves consciousness and emotionality. The distinction between the former and the latter categories is often revealed by the acronym chosen.
In general, my impression of Altman has been more positive than my usual impression of tech execs in recent years. Which isn't to say I'm a huge fan of him, it's to say I felt less hostile to him than to most other CEOs and billionaires you hear about daily.
I'm curious how others feel about this development.
If this stuff about his sister is true, he is not a nice guy.
I can relate. I've listened to a lot of long-form interviews with Sam. Everyone has their skeletons, but he felt like some flavor of an actual good guy. He seemed thrilled at the life's work of helping build responsible AI instead of just money.
Satya Nadella and Jensen Huang, however. . .
This feels like a typical "Doesn't get in line" firing.
Which damages the limited faith I already had in closed source LLMs. Feels dirty to say, but I much prefer Meta's open source model approach. AI can't be utopian if it's owned by companies.
EDIT:
My understanding of the situation was actually pretty backwards and it sounds like the firing took place because AI ethics and safety experts were concerned about how far and how fast the company is pushing. It sounds like they went about it in a way I would associate with hackerspace and non-profit drama (with which I am well antiquated) and that Microsoft and other big backers are furious about it and leading a shareholder revolution to get Altman reinstated. Altman has said he won't return unless the current board is replaced and corporate governance is overhauled.
If anything it's the opposite of that. The board that fired him is the original non profit board comprised of the research scientists and directors whose focus is building AI to benefit humanity as a whole. Altman was the one who brought in external capital and drove a lot of the closed sourcing profit-driven direction lately
That's good to know, and makes me a feel a bit better about it.
Reading the Hacker News post, I get the impression the board were done with the for-profit side being promoted by Altman at the expense of the foundation's primary mission of bringing AI to humanity. It tracks with what I've seen OpenAI become in the last few years.