Hi it's Mathias from Applai 👋 Here's what you need to know for 27 November, 2023 in 2 minutes and 36 seconds.
In this edition, we'll cover:
We have decided to dedicate this edition to the sack and re-hire of Sam Altman - giving you a timeline of what actually happened. And we will end with a summary of our trip to Greenland 😍
Can we expect a Netflix series about this some day? 🤔
Ever since OpenAI created ChatGPT, that's pretty much all everyone has been talking about - and for good reason! A few days ago, their CEO Sam Altman was fired by the board. The news was very unexpected and so much has happened in the following hours and days, that it has been hard to keep track. TechCrunch has made a timeline of the events, which I have tried to distill for you here:
November 16: Ilya Sutskever, OpenAI's chief scientist, schedules a call with Sam Altman for the following day. Mira Murati, OpenAI’s CTO, is informed of Altman's impending firing.
November 17: Greg Brockman is demoted from the board but remains as president. Altman's firing is publicly announced, and an all-hands meeting is held where Sutskever defends the decision. Mira Murati appointed as interim CEO.
November 18: Microsoft releases a statement about the firing. Brockman resigns from OpenAI, followed by the resignation of three senior OpenAI researchers.
November 19: Meetings are held to potentially reinstate Altman as CEO. Altman and Brockman are still open to returning to OpenAI. That is, if the remaining board members who initially fired him step aside. The board will not step down, and Emmett Shear is appointed as interim CEO.
November 20: Altman, along with Greg Brockman, announces joining Microsoft to lead a new AI research team. Sutskever expresses regret over his decision to remove Altman, and 650 employees (out of OpenAI's total 770 employees) threaten to resign. OpenAI’s board of directors approached Dario Amodei, the co-founder and CEO of rival large-language model developer Anthropic, about a potential merger of the two companies, but was quickly turned down.
November 21: OpenAI's board is reportedly in talks with Altman about returning as CEO. Tensions on the board surface, with disagreements over Altman's earlier attempts to remove a board member and issues concerning communication with the board.
November 22: OpenAI released a post on X: "We have reached an agreement in principle for Sam Altman to return to OpenAI as CEO with a new initial board of Bret Taylor (Chair), Larry Summers, and Adam D'Angelo. We are collaborating to figure out the details. Thank you so much for your patience through this."
It's unbelievable that the board of such an influential company could make that big of a mistake, but perhaps OpenAI had simply outgrown their board? Either way, it's probably for the best with a new more experienced board to lead them in this next phase of the company’s life.
Keep reading
This week our update is written by our co-founder Victor Skytte:
Together with INUVA, we at Applai have conducted courses on AI and the practical application of ChatGPT for businesses and public authorities. It has just been super exciting to meet new companies that can also gain a lot from artificial intelligence in their work.
Some of the content in the courses has been:
- Defintions of AI, GenAI, GPT & ChatGPT
- Examples of use-case for ChatGPT for work
- Understanding of the meanings of GPT as a linguistic probability estimator
- Barriers and data security with AI
- Practical case work with the participants own daily tasks using ChatGPT
The courses has been a mix of 1 or 2-day open courses with participants for different organisations as well as 1-day courses for specific companies in Greenland.
And it has been really interesting for me to visit Greenland for the first time. We will definitely be back! 🇬🇱 Thanks to INUVA for organizing the courses and being a great sparring partner!
That was all from this edition of AI unhyped. How did I do? Reach out to me at mathias@applai.io if you have any feedback. And if there's any news you believe deserved a spot in this newsletter but didn't get one, I'd love to hear about it!
Please share AI unhyped with your colleagues and friends. Share this sign up link with them 💌
Stay unhyped,
Mathias Villads ✌️