Sunday, November 26, 2023

OpenAI's chaos has both hastened the arms race to AI dominance and opened the door to competitor

Monica Melton
Sat, November 25, 2023 

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has shown signs he's on edge ahead of Google's release of a new AI model this fall.Issei Kato/Reuters

OpenAI chaos has calmed as CEO Sam Altman is reinstated and an investigation begins.


The events surrounding the unexplained ouster have sowed concern and new scrutiny.


AI experts eye safety, responsibility, and the potential new entrants contending for dominance.

The drama of Sam Altman unexpectedly being fired on Friday and then reinstated to OpenAI Tuesday night has reached a close. In its wake, a host of questions and concerns remain about the safety and ethics of artificial intelligence.

The pace at which OpenAI developed its technology as it eyed a share sale that could value it at $90 billion has been a contentious point for tech leaders and competitors who are nervous about a consolidation of power.

As the dust settles on OpenAI's action-packed week, the chaos set in motion by OpenAI's board may accelerate an existing arms race among competitors vying to achieve artificial general intelligence. Altman's saga also presents an unsettling irony about the mission of its leaders.

"A high-level irony to this situation is you have a bunch of people who are trying to develop this technology that will affect the entire future of humanity, and part of that development is ensuring that it's safe, which means anticipating potentially catastrophic risks," Émile Torres, a philosopher and AI researcher, told Business Insider.

What didn't kill OpenAI may have made it stronger. A nearly unanimous coup within the company in response to Altman's ouster and the nixing of its board has made Altman and those in his corner even more influential. AI ethics experts have expressed concern about the power of AI technology being controlled by the hands of a few.

"The increasing concentration of capital, compute, and data are a problem," Emily M. Bender, a University of Washington linguistics professor, told BI. "Not because one of them is going to hit critical mass and combust into AGI, but rather because it's a situation where we're falling for this narrative that the ability to just collect data willy-nilly has to be allowed because it's a necessary ingredient for this so-called artificial intelligence."

With Microsoft as a juggernaut in its corner, OpenAI can wield that power in ways that either reinforce or degrade trust.

"Microsoft has always had this anxiety about being left out of the major wave of tech, most aptly illustrated with search and Google," Ali Alkhatib, an AI ethicist and researcher, told BI. "Now that they have Sam and OpenAI, they have the people they need to stay ahead of this burgeoning bubble."

OpenAI's high-profile reshuffling may have sowed enough doubt in the minds of the customers, investors, and community building and influencing AI that they avoid betting the technology's future on one entity.

"We had so much belief in OpenAI that if something happens, it's like the whole AI community falls apart, but that's not true," Giada Pistilli, Hugging Face's principal ethicist, told BI. "Maybe it's the chance for other open-source companies to take the lead, so it could be seen as an opportunity."

The seemingly earth-shattering news from OpenAI may have instead opened a door for resourcefulness and for other players to emerge.

"To be honest, I didn't see a shift from what happened," Pistilli said. "I see more and more people being creative."


Former Google engineer and Trump pardonee Anthony Levandowski relaunches his AI church

46
Polly Thompson
Sat, November 25, 2023


Anthony Levandowski was cleared by Donald Trump of charges relating to the theft of technology secrets from Google.
Justin Sullivan / Getty

Former Google engineer Anthony Levandowski is relaunching his "Way of the Future" AI church.


The church aims to help people gain a deeper understanding of artificial intelligence.


Levandowski was previously pardoned by Donald Trump after pleading guilty to stealing trade secrets.


Anthony Levandowski, a pioneer of self-driving cars and controversial Silicon Valley figure, announced the return of his AI-dedicated church in an episode of Bloomberg's AI IRL podcast.

Levandowski started his "Way of the Future" church in 2015 while he was working as an engineer on Google's self-driving project Waymo.

While the original church was shut a few years later, Levandowski's new venture already has "a couple thousand people" who are trying to build a "spiritual connection" with AI, he said, per Bloomberg.

"Here we're actually creating things that can see everything, be everywhere, know everything, and maybe help us and guide us in a way that normally you would call God," Levandowski said, adding that his aim was to help people gain a deeper understanding of AI and allow more people to have a say in how the technology is used.

"How does a person in rural America relate to this? What does this mean for their job?" he said. "Way of the Future is a mechanism for them to understand and participate and shape the public discourse as to how we think technology should be built to improve you."

Levandowski's church first came under the spotlight in 2017 when he became embroiled in a high-profile court case after he was accused of stealing trade secrets.

Levandowski later pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 18 months in prison. The engineer was pardoned in 2021 by the outgoing president at the time, Donald Trump.


Levandowski's pardon was supported by Trump ally and tech investor Peter ThielWhite House

Levandowski's official pardon said he had "paid a significant price for his actions and plans to devote his talents to advance the public good."

The former Googler is now the CEO of Pollen Mobile, a decentralized mobile network he founded in 2021.



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