On OpenAI: Let Them Fight – by Dave Karpf
…What I keep fixating on is how quickly the entire story has unwound itself. Sam Altman and OpenAI were pitching a perfect game. The company was a $90 billion non-profit. It was the White Knight of the AI race, the responsible player that would make sure we didn’t repeat the mistakes of the rise of social media platforms. And sure, there were questions to be answered about copyright and AI hallucinations and deepfakes and X-risk. But OpenAI was going to collaborate with government to work that all out. Now, instead, OpenAI is a company full of weird internet nerds that burned the company down over their weird internet philosophical arguments. And the whole company might actually be employed by Microsoft before the new year. Which means the AI race isn’t being led by a courageous, responsible nonprofit — it’s being led by the oldest of the existing rival tech titans. These do not look like serious people. They look like a mix of ridiculous ideologues and untrustworthy grifters. And that is, I suspect, a very good thing. The development of generative AI will proceed along a healthier, more socially productive path if we distrust the companies and individuals who are developing it.
(tags: openai grifters microsoft silicon-valley sam-altman x-risk ai effective-altruism)