Sam Altman, Microsoft and OpenAI: what happened and what is about to happen
By now the situation between the former CEO of OpenAI, the company and Microsoft is clearing up, and we will try to give you a quick summary.
Why Altman was fired from OpenAI
As Bloomberg reports, before his shocking ouster Altman had spent time in the Middle East raising money for a new AI microchip venture touted as a competitor to Nvidia – a high-cost side project that sources said added further pressure to an already tense.
According to Bloomberg , Altman's side business, nicknamed "Tigris," seems quite ambitious. Nvidia has a suffocating grip on the semiconductor market, as its popular GPU chips remain a favorite among AI startups for their computing power; Altman, according to Bloomberg, wants to take some of that market share away from Nvidia by introducing his own low-cost tensor processing units, or TPUs, to the industry. This would not only replace the market's incumbent, but also give OpenAI more control over its production, likely making its products cheaper in the long run.
While the envisioned chip would theoretically reduce manufacturing costs over time, the effort certainly wouldn't be cheap at the outset. According to Bloomberg, Altman is seeking tens of billions of dollars for the nascent venture from SoftBank, Saudi Arabia's public investment fund and Mubadala Investment Company. So no small effort, and this was the straw that broke the camel's back in his relations with OpenAI which, let's remember, is a non-profit foundation, so Sal Altman's super activity was not welcome. ù
Now Microsoft has bought OpenAI practically for free
Microsoft seized the opportunity, not only did it immediately hire Sam Altman, but also the president of OpenAI, Greg Brockman, who left the foundation with Altman, was immediately hired by Nadella's company. Not only that, Microsoft is ready to hire anyone who leaves OpenAI. He basically built himself an additional AI division without doing almost anything, all because of the foundation's mistakes
OpenAI now risks collapsing
Now OpenAI risks truly collapsing. The board of directors appointed Emmett Shear, former CEO and co-founder of Twich, as interim CEO, who, let's say, is considered to have a somewhat strange social behavior and also a let's say “Imaginative” social media history. Those who have worked with him don't think he will last long.
At the same time, a large number of OpenAI employees have called for the resignation of the board of directors who caused all this chaos, otherwise threatening to leave the foundation and move to Microsoft or Apple, two companies that are strengthening their AI divisions. This is seen as a threat by Elon Musk who is still behind in developing his own and would like OpenAI, of which he was one of the founders, to survive.
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The article Sam Altman, Microsoft and OpenAI: what happened and what is about to happen comes from Economic Scenarios .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/sam-altman-microsoft-e-openai-cosa-e-successo-e-cosa-sta-per-succedere/ on Tue, 21 Nov 2023 06:00:24 +0000.