Silicon Valley in a “Palace Drama”

As the year 2023 comes to an end, the AI field, which has always been in the limelight, is staging a “Palace Drama” – reversing and reversing again.

After five days of chaotic infighting at OpenAI, Sam Altman returned to OpenAI as CEO and formed a new board of directors with Bret Taylor, Larry Summers, and Adam D’Angelo. This “epic power struggle” within OpenAI has shocked the entire tech community, earning the attention of the public, and giving us a chance to take a moment to look back at where AI has been and where it might be headed in the future. And what the future might hold for AI.

 OpenAI CEO Sam Altman

Continuing the “facepalm”

As we all know, OpenAI is currently one of the most highly regarded, influential and valuable AI companies in the world. This year, the company has brought its new version of chat robot ChatGPT into the market, shocking the world with its AI capabilities that are beyond people’s expectation and overturning people’s previous perceptions. Today, OpenAI is at the top of its game, with a funding valuation of more than US$80 billion. At this time, OpenAI has carried out a wave of “miraculous operations”, without warning, but within a few days, it has caused a strong earthquake in the industry.

The incident began on November 17th, when OpenAI, a globally popular Silicon Valley artificial intelligence company, suddenly and without warning released a statement that Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, had failed to maintain honesty in his communications with the board of directors, which had impeded the board’s ability to fulfill its responsibilities, and had thus fired Sam Altman from the company directly. The statement was met with an outcry: the reason was stated, but it was so vague as to be suspicious. The announcement of Sam Altman’s dismissal was followed by the resignation of another co-founder, Greg Brockman. The weekend after the incident, there were signs that Altman might quickly return to his position, but news quickly broke that Altman would be joining Microsoft, a major investor in OpenAI.

In a post on X, the social platform formerly known as Twitter, Microsoft CEO Della Nadella said Altman would lead “a new high-end AI R&D team” at Microsoft. Altman retweeted the post confirming his new job on X, saying “the mission continues”. Meanwhile, OpenAI appointed Emmett Shear, the former CEO of video and audio streaming platform Twitch, as interim chief executive officer. Immediately afterward, more than 700 OpenAI employees signed a letter demanding the resignation of the company’s board of directors over Altman’s removal. In the letter, they questioned the board’s competence, accused it of disrupting the company’s operations, demanded that Altman be reappointed, and threatened to resign en masse to follow Altman and Brockman to Microsoft unless the board resigned and reinstated them. What’s even more incredible is that the letter was even signed by Ilya Sutskever, the chief scientist who is widely believed to be one of the architects of this “earthquake” and the soul of the company’s AI technology.

When Open AI was in its infancy, the participants believed that AI belonged to the entire human community, not to a few people who wanted to make money, so they left the highest authority to run the company in the hands of a group of founders and independent members with outside credibility who shared their goals. However, as the company grows in size with the results of the research and the support of the investors, the investors are demanding a return on their investment, and the participants are faced with the immeasurable results of their work, as well as the challenge of obtaining more funds to face the challengers and promote the original purpose of public welfare. Ilya, as the core of the project, finally supported the decision of the company’s guardians to expel the founder Altman from the company, opening up the reality that Open AI would have to face sooner or later.

The situation has changed from a coup d’état against Altman to an overthrow of the Board of Directors by all employees. Worried that the board’s actions would lead to the company’s collapse and the loss of billions of dollars in value, OpenAI shareholders were prepared to take strong action and file a lawsuit against the OpenAI board. Under pressure, the Board of Directors was forced to re-engage with Altman, and soon announced in a post on X that Altman was “reinstated”; as a prerequisite for his return, the Board of Directors also underwent a major turnover. This farce was put to rest for the time being.

This is a common situation for any company of its kind. As the Chinese idiom goes, “It’s easy to share the hard times, but hard to share the riches.” Not only did the founders struggle with their ideals, but also the employees, who joined the company with their interest, mission, and skills, saw their future bundled up with the company, and became key stakeholders in the benefits of the huge changes Open AI would bring to society. As a result, the initial management philosophy has been challenged by reality.

Innovation meets ethics

In less than a week, Altman was suddenly deposed, three CEOs were replaced in three days, there was a mass turnover of the entire staff, behind-the-scenes deals and lawsuits were threatened, the “push” failed, and the coup d’état “turned against the company”, with the main characters including the expansionist Altman, the gatekeeper of the security Sutzkiewicz, the conflicting interests of the D’Angelo …… power struggles and The power struggles and rivalries are as dazzling as Game of Thrones, and the situations are reversed, reversed, and reversed again. This sudden and rapidly unfolding event has attracted the attention of the entire technology industry and the media, and the outside world is speculating on how this upheaval will affect the direction of the development of artificial intelligence technology, or whether it is just a farce.

In 2015, when founders such as Altman and Musk came together to create the prototype of OpenAI, a non-profit organization based on the philosophical idea of effective altruism, the mission was to create artificial intelligence that would maximize the benefits to humanity and that would not be controlled by any capital or anyone else. But as it turns out, the most promising AI technologies require a lot of arithmetic power, and a lot of money. In a break with Musk, OpenAI has chosen to abandon its purely nonprofit organizational model in favor of a more realistic business path: OpenAI is still governed by a nonprofit board of directors, but has a for-profit subsidiary and is actively attracting venture capitalists and business partners. As founder and CEO, Altman says he has no ownership stake in the company, and Microsoft owns 49 percent of OpenAI.

The development prospect of artificial intelligence is indisputable, the major technology giants set off a new round of competition, as the AI leader OpenAI not to fall behind, can only continue to finance the money to maintain absolute technology leadership, Altman is seeking a series of expansion, the current valuation of OpenAI or reached 86 billion U.S. dollars. In contrast to Altman’s ambition and aggressiveness, Ilya Sutskever has always been very concerned about security, and he set up a “Super Alignment Team” this summer to align the goals of the AI system with the interests of mankind through a variety of technological means, and to prevent the AI system from engaging in behaviors harmful to mankind.

Over time, trust has been steadily and slowly eroding, making the Effective Altruists increasingly uneasy, which has led to questions from the board about how to use OpenAI’s technology or intellectual property rights. On the one-year anniversary of ChatGPT’s release, a “court battle” ensued as the Effective Altruism directors took the reins of power. Today, OpenAI is back to business as usual, as if nothing had happened, but the core conflict cannot be ignored. The end of this “court battle” reflects the difficulty of balancing idealism against reality, and the difficulty of balancing “profitable expansion” with “non-profitable visions.” Behind OpenAI’s “shock” is an unpredictable clash of philosophies between the company’s rapid development and its imminent need for security governance. With the rapid development of AI technology, these two voices may need to be better balanced and understood.

The fight is now on hold, but the problems remain, and the further development of Open AI and other similar companies will need to address them. The challenge for governments around the world is how to ensure that Open AI can continue without compromising human safety, bring development to society, and provide returns for investors and workers. In totalitarian countries, AI is likely to be used by ambitious people as a tool to suppress humanity. In democratic countries, people may not be aware of the possible dangers of AI, and society will have to pay a heavy price for the full-scale use of AI in the end. Therefore, governments around the world can’t stay away from these issues and see them as purely a challenge to the business process.

Still Foggy

Within OpenAI, Elysium and its supporters represent the relatively radical “left”, who want an “AI paradise” that is almost free of “commercialization sludge”, while the Altmans are on the more moderate “right”, who want a sustainable commercial company that gives due consideration to the vision of benefiting mankind under this premise. Ilya Sutskever’s subsequent reaction shows that he is remorseful for his involvement in the dismissal of the Ultramen. This may be a sign that he realizes that the long-term development of OpenAI will not be possible without Altman’s business operations. After all, the philosopher Karl Popper long ago said, “The attraction of utopianism

is the failure to realize that we cannot build a kingdom of heaven on earth. And people grow up.

OpenAI seems to have no choice but to give in and bring back Altman, who has already been kicked out, in order to keep OpenAI from destroying its leading position in the AI industry. Once again, this incident has undoubtedly brought to the forefront what’s right and what’s wrong with AI. It’s reasonable to ask: What’s going on inside the company? Where is the debate and competition over how AI should be developed going? Will the chaos that has characterized the AI industry finally change?The OpenAI drama is over, but an even bigger mess may have just begun.

With the return of Sam Altman, the details of his dismissal are beginning to emerge. A few days before Altman’s dismissal, several OpenAI researchers sent a letter to the board of directors warning that they had discovered a powerful artificial intelligence technology that could threaten humanity. The letter, which has never been revealed, and the “AI technology” mentioned in its contents, may have been one of the catalysts that led to Altman’s dismissal, but the details behind it are still not clear enough. At this point, we have to admire Elon Musk’s candor, “If you’re scared to fire the CEO, you should tell us why. 200 years have passed, and biologists haven’t created life with a body yet, but computer experts have created intelligence without a body. But our fear of “them” that are “like us” but not us remains unchanged.

In this farce, some have even linked Altman to Steve Jobs, who was fired from his own Apple company at the age of 30. What needs to be clarified here is that the 30-year-old Jobs really lacked some maturity and sophistication in management, and at the time he gave people the impression that he was “stubborn, headstrong, and temperamental. And after many years when Jobs with 10 million dollars to buy Pixar, his management style and temperament has changed a lot: in the management style has become relaxed, in the control of the right to become the slightest bit of the fight, these changes make the return of Jobes to play a greater value. And these two points are exactly 38-year-old Altman lack of. Of course, after this battle, Altman did not experience Job’s years of stings, sudden dismissal, and then quickly returned, whether Altman can have Job’s reflection and change, it is worth further observation.

Text/Editorial Department
Photo / Internet