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From OpenAI To Closed Doors – The Weekend That Turned The Tech World Upside Down

**UPDATED** – Sacking, revolt, return: how crisis at OpenAI over Sam Altman unfolded (via The Guardian)

This was, potentially, the strangest week in AI.

OpenAI‘s board of directors abruptly fired CEO (and visionary) Sam Altman last Friday, leading co-founder Greg Brockman and dozens of other OpenAI staff to quit in protest.
By Sunday evening, Emmett Shear (ex Twitch) was appointed as the new interim CEO of OpenAI.
More details emerged, indicating the firing was because of increased tensions over the speed of AI development.

Has AGI been achieved?

That speculation ran rampant over the weekend, with many believing the moves were made in response to AGI (Artificial General Intelligence – when AI is truly autonomous/as smart as human beings) being achieved.
Following the late Sunday night news, chaos ensued as dozens of OpenAI staffers quit.
The next day close to every staff member (700 employees) signed a leader threatening to leave, if the board does not reinstate Altman.

The Microsoft Factor.

Microsoft has invested over ten billion dollars into OpenAI.
Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella, got involved.
Nadella announced that Altman and Brockman will join Microsoft to create a “new advanced AI research team.”
He also invited every OpenAI team member to join him.

Some bigger questions to ponder:

  • If the best staff leaves… and goes to Microsoft… how long will it take Microsoft to ramp up, and does this diminish the power of OpenAI?
  • Might this move push clients of OpenAI to move to competitors (like Cohere, Anthropic, and Gemini)? Even Meta’s LLM, Google, X, Amazon, Apple… who isn’t competing in the AI race?
  • Does this create a mini-vacuum and opening for someone else in the AI field?
  • If OpenAI has achieved some level of AGI, what do we do with regulation?

This is what Elias Makos and I discussed on CJAD 800 AM. Listen in right here

https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/1674390438

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Mitch Joel

Mitch Joel lives at the intersection of technology, business transformation and consumer culture. He is the Executive Director of Next Era Institute, a strategic intelligence platform helping leaders understand the forces reshaping business, technology, culture and society. The Institute identifies which shifts matter, explores their wider significance and translates them into strategic direction and momentum. Mitch is also a globally recognized keynote speaker. He has delivered thousands of presentations across both B2B and B2C industries to organizations including Google, Walmart, LEGO, Shopify, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble and Unilever. Strategy Magazine has called him “one of North America’s leading visionaries.” Mitch built his career by working directly inside the waves of change that reshaped modern business. He founded and built a digital marketing agency that worked with some of the world’s largest brands and was later acquired by WPP, where he served as President of a firm operating in 25 countries with almost 3,000 employees. Mitch is the bestselling author of Six Pixels of Separation and CTRL ALT Delete, and the host of Thinking With Mitch Joel, one of the longest-running business podcasts in the world. His writing and commentary appear in outlets including Harvard Business Review, Fast Company and Inc. Magazine. He is a member of Dr. Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches and was named to the Thinkers50 Radar. Mitch also hosts Groove – The No Treble Podcast, documenting the oral history of electric bass players. Mitch is also Co-Founder of ThinkersOne, a platform that enables companies to bring personalized thought leadership from world-class experts into meetings, events and off-sites in focused 15-minute bursts.

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