OpenAI Part 5: Beware the Ides of November
Foundering
Bloomberg
4.7 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 27 June 2024
⏱️ 50 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Right as Sam Altman was at the peak of his success, touring the world to espouse the virtues of AI, his board turned on him. Altman was unceremoniously fired. OpenAI’s coup is a story of secrets, betrayal, employee revolt and Altman’s expert political maneuvering to regain his position of power. In this episode, reporter Ellen Huet also examines Altman’s history of broken promises and alleged manipulation.
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| 0:00.0 | Join global business leaders and investors at the Bloomberg Sustainable Business Summit, returning to Singapore on July 31st. |
| 0:09.0 | Take part in solutions driven discussions on how to drive business value and unlock opportunity |
| 0:14.8 | while remaining nimble in times of change and greater ESG accountability. |
| 0:19.5 | Learn more at Bloomberg Live.com slash sustainablebiz Singapore. That's Bloomberg Live.com slash Sustainable Biz Singapore. |
| 0:23.7 | That's Bloomberg Live.com slash sustainable Biz Singapore. |
| 0:27.6 | In the fall of 2023, Sam Altman was more powerful than he'd ever been. |
| 0:37.3 | He and his armies of researchers had conquered new frontiers of technology |
| 0:42.4 | and reaped the financial rewards. |
| 0:45.4 | He had defeated those who challenged his power, like Elon Musk. |
| 0:49.9 | His dominance was cemented or so it seemed. |
| 0:55.0 | Though he occupied the throne, there was in fact a powerful and mysterious board that governed |
| 1:01.1 | him. |
| 1:06.0 | They had the ability to fire him, to dissolve the whole company if they saw fit. |
| 1:10.0 | On this board, there were six people, and one of them was a woman named Helen Toner. |
| 1:16.7 | She was a researcher who studied AI systems, and you can hear her passion here on the TED stage. |
| 1:22.8 | AI is already all around us so we can't just sit around and wait for things to become clearer. |
| 1:29.2 | In October 2023, Helen co-authored a paper about various companies in the AI industry. |
| 1:36.1 | As a researcher, Helen published lots of papers, but this one was not like the rest, |
| 1:41.7 | because this one mentioned Open AI, and it wasn't fully |
| 1:44.9 | complementary. Here's my colleague Sharon Gaffari. |
| 1:48.3 | Toward the end of this document, they contrast open AI with a big competitor. The competitor is |
| 1:55.6 | anthropic. The rival company started by former open AI employees. So it was a bit of a |
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