Everyday AI Podcast – An AI and ChatGPT Podcast - EP 149: Sam Altman leaving and the future of OpenAI – 7 things you need to know

Episode Date: November 21, 2023

The last 72 hours for OpenAI and ChatGPT has been insane! So with Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, apparently leaving for Microsoft, what does it mean for the future of ChatGPT and OpenAI? We're breaking down this crazy saga and going over 7 things you need to know about OpenAI.Newsletter: Sign up for our free daily newsletterMore on this Episode: Episode PageJoin the discussion: Ask Jordan questions about AI and OpenAIUpcoming Episodes: Check out the upcoming Everyday AI Livestream lineupWebsite: YourEverydayAI.comEmail The Show: [e-mail] with Jordan on LinkedInTimestamps:[00:02:14] Daily AI news[00:06:00] Recap of OpenAI drama[00:10:55] #1 - The Ink Hasn't Dried[00:14:55] #2 - There are More Unknowns Than Knowns[00:21:40] #3 - This Impacts The US Economy[00:27:35] #4 - OpenAI is at Great Risk[00:33:15] #5 - The OpenAI Board is Inept[00:42:00] #6 - Satya Nadella is the GOAT[00:45:35] #7 - OpenAI Downfall Could Be Catastrophic[00:51:35] Winners and Losers of the OpenAI situationTopics Covered in This Episode:1. Sam Altman leaving OpenAI and the Future of the Organization2. Speculation on the Possible Role of Adam D'Angelo in Sam Altman's Firing3. Satya Nadella's Influence and Microsoft's Potential Role4. Potential Consequences for OpenAI5. Growing Discontent of OpenAI EmployeesKeywords:Adam D'Angelo, Quora, OpenAI, Poe.com, chatbots, monetization, GPTs, GPT store, competitors, speculation, board, Sam Altman, firing, Satya Nadella, Microsoft, GOAT, mediation, conversations, investors, market cap, employees, stock options, equity, instability, talent, institutional knowledge, succession plan, crisis communication, Amazon, Anthropic, Google, AI, ChatGPTSend Everyday AI and Jordan a text message. (We can't reply back unless you leave contact info) Start Here ▶️Not sure where to start when it comes to AI? Start with our Start Here Series. You can listen to the first drop -- Episode 691 -- or get free access to our Inner Cricle community and all episodes: StartHereSeries.com Also, here's a link to the entire series on a Spotify playlist. 

This is the Everyday AI Show, the Everyday Podcast where we simplify AI and bring its power to your fingertips. Listen daily for practical advice to boost your career, business, and everyday life. Meet Firefly AI Assistant, now live in Adobe Firefly, the All In One Creative AI Studio. Just describe what you want to create and the assistant handles the rest, orchestrating multi-step workflows across Photoshop, Premiere Express, and more in one conversational interface. You direct the outcome. The assistant accelerates execution. If you follow tech news, the last 72 hours plus has been absolutely insane.

Chat, GPT, and OpenAI have had more twist and turns than your favorite roller coaster at Cedar Point. We're going to talk about that and really how Sam Altman potentially leaving, maybe leaving, maybe not leaving. I'm believing open AI affects the future of not just open AI and Microsoft, but the generative AI space at large. So we're going to be talking about all of the latest updates in this ongoing saga that is changing minute by minute. I can't wait to jump into today's show. So welcome.

My name's Jordan Wilson. This is Everyday AI. Everyday AI is your daily live stream podcast, free. daily newsletter helping everyday people like you and me learn what's going on in the world of Gen A.I and how we can all leverage it, right? It's one thing to keep up and know what's going on. It's another thing to be able to use that to grow your company and to grow your career. That's what we're all about here at Everyday AI. So this is a different type of show. So if you're new here, thank you. And also, if you're joining on the podcast, check the show notes. As always,

you can contact us. I love hearing from people, you know, saying, hey, I listen to the show while I lock my dog or while I'm on the treadmill. Reach out. I'd love to hear. Where do you, where do you listen to the show? But it's always fun, I think, too, to come participate in the live stream. So if you are listening on the podcast, make sure to check out the show notes. You can always come and participate. And today's show is going to be a little different. It's just me, right? More on that in a second, but let's at least take a very, very high level overview of what's going on in the world of AI news, a little shorter today. But two quick little previews. Yeah, AI controlled killer drones are definitely a thing. And nations around the globe are extremely worried about it.

So great in-depth article from the New York Times going over just some really troublesome things to keep in mind when it comes to AI-killer. AI-controlled killer drones. Yes, that is literally what they're being called. On lighter news, Amazon is launching new AI-ready courses to push Gen AI education, specifically geared toward getting kind of new users onto AWS and just new people into the AWS,

the Amazon Web Service platform. So pretty cool. I love that all the big tech companies right now are putting out great, high-quality, free courses to learn their platform, of course. But that one is definitely worth checking out as well, called AI Ready. All right. So for those news stories and more, make sure you go to Your EverydayAI.com,

sign up for the free daily newsletter and check out. So every single day, I don't know about y'all if anyone's listening. If you read the newsletter, if you like it, let me know. We put a lot of work into it. You know, it's not just like the other, you know, 5,000 AI newsletters out there that just use AI to tell you what's going on. AI. I'm an actual human. I write this stuff, right? But we break down the conversation every day that we have on the podcast into pretty detailed, in a very detailed way on how you can take

what we learn from the podcast episode and apply it to your company, to your career. All right. So with that, thank you, everyone, for joining live. I'm excited. Sarah saying so keen to understand the dynamics of of this situation a little bit more. Can't wait to hear your thoughts and opinions, Jordan. Thank you, Sarah. I'm excited as well. And if you are joining me live, thank you. But also, let me know because it's been a couple of weeks since I had a kind of a solo show.

Because normally on the everyday AI show, we bring guests in and we've had nonstop guests. Fantastic. I mean, I'm talking, you know, director of marketing at Nvidia, you know, some high level government employees, you know, running credit unions here in the U.S. Just some fantastic guess we've had over the last couple of weeks, but I haven't had the opportunity to go on one of those rants. So maybe if you are listening right now live, do me a favor. How hot should I make my hot takes today?

Should it be like one flame emoji, two flame emoji, three flame emoji? I don't know. I've got a lot of a lot of pent up hot takes. So let me know. But yes, thank you for joining live. Michael saying, yes, this is going to be a good one. I hope it is. Jay, thanks for joining, saying as the kids say, this ought to be an icy one today.

It's so hard to keep up with what the kids say, Jay. I haven't heard icy. So I guess the kids that I know that I usually try to say, oh, the kids say this. Apparently the kids are not cool anymore that I'm following and listening to. All right. Well, hey, thank you, everyone for joining. Whoever this LinkedIn user is, thank you. They said like seven flame emojis.

Brian, thanks for joining. He said one. So maybe we'll go in the middle. Maybe we'll go in the middle. Thanks. Thanks for joining everyone. It's so good to see some of you people here. Val, thanks for joining us.

Pierre Paul. Thank you for joining us. All right. No more. No more. We're going to get straight into it. All right. Let's just get straight into it.

And again, if you have questions, comments, make sure to get them in. this is going to be an interactive show, I hope. So if you've been sleeping over the last four days, this is the highest level recap possible. And it's funny, even at this high level recap I'm going to go over right now, we're not even going to mention one of the CEOs because it's been that crazy. All right. So here's what happens or here's what is currently happening because it's literally changing

by the minute. So Friday, OpenAI, the parent company of ChatGPT fires Sam Altman, one of the co-founders and the CEO. Also, in protests, Greg Brockman quits as president and they appoint an interim CEO. Who holds that position for, I think, just over 24 hours? All right, next day, Saturday. Everyone panics. Literally everyone panics Saturday.

Investors are working furiously behind the scenes to bring Sam Altman back. I'm going to talk about why, because I do have some hot takes here. I have some opinions, some hot takes, some, you know, some guesses on what might be going on behind the scenes. But then Sunday, all right, Sunday, Altman, so Sam Altman is meeting with Open AI with Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella, reportedly mediating the meetings, trying to bring all sides together. And it seems like people are working toward bringing Sam Altman back. And again, we'll get into this, but there was no real, quote unquote, official reason why they said Sam Altman was fire.

More or less, they said that he was consistently not candid enough in his communications with the board. And that was the only, the only kind of reasoning that they gave at the time. So there's obviously a lot more going on here. So that's what happened Sunday. And then Monday, I met Scheer, the Twitch CEO, former Twitch CEO, was named CEO of OpenAI. And then Altman and Brockman and others, this is kind of. of overnight Sunday, early morning Monday.

So at that point, Sam Altman was hired at Microsoft to lead their new kind of AI research arm. And what's extremely spicy, 700 plus staff have essentially threatened to quit out of, you know, 770. I've seen different numbers floating around as of this morning, but it seems like safely. about 90% of their staff have threatened to quit or have threatened to leave and follow Sam Altman to Microsoft or whatever may happen. So how crazy is that? Right.

You have Open AI, which is the bell of the ball, you know, the shiniest object that we've seen probably in the U.S. tech space since, you know, Zuckerberg and Facebook of the, you know, early. or mid-2000s, right? So Open AI has gone from relatively, you know, relative obscurity until maybe 2019, 2020 into a household name, into a tech rocket ship over the course of 18 months. And I can't recall a time when a company has gone from essentially zero to a hundred billion dollar company, essentially overnight, right? Over the course of essentially, you know, 18 to 24 months, but for the most part, over 12 months, actually probably just since they, you know, started selling their, you know, commercial product in March. So really a big chunk of that $100 billion, a kind of revenue that they're tracking toward has just come in the last six months. When was the last

time we've seen a company go from zero to essentially a hundred billion? in a matter of months. It doesn't happen. It literally doesn't happen. Okay. So that's hopefully to put it into perspective. How wild the last, you know, four days have been in the AI world, in the tech scene. Yeah, kind of, Brian, kind of reminiscent of Apple and Jobs. I was going to say this is the biggest, I'd say, the biggest firing, you know, since Steve Jobs was famously or infamously, you know, fired from Apple way back in the day. He obviously came back. But yeah, I'd say for sure, this is the, at least I'd say this is the highest profile kind of firing that I've seen probably since then, right? Again, there's people out there who have a little more

historical memory than me. But I've been following the tech scene pretty closely for a couple of decades. And yeah, there hasn't been anything like this, I would say. So let's get into it. Let's get into the seven things that you need to know. So, whether you're like the rest of us and following this along and just refreshing Twitter, which I kind of refuse to call X. It just sounds weird. So if you've been breaking your Twitter, trying to see what's going on, it's confusing. We're going to break it down and hopefully maybe offer some insights into what's going on here.

All right. Let's get started. Number one, the number one thing that you need to know right now about this whole Sam Altman, OpenAI, drama. the ink has not dried. Okay? What's that mean? It means literally things are changing by the second. There's a good chance, right?

So we're live here. I'm in Chicago at 7.42 a.m. my time. There's a good chance if you're listening to this on the podcast later today in three, four, five hours, that a good chunk of this has changed, if I'm being honest. This is one of the most for a company of this size, for a company of this size. This is one of the most fluid and shifting situations one can imagine. That's why I think it's been entertaining and in grabbing the headlines literally worldwide is because this doesn't happen, but the ink has not dried.

Nothing is finalized, you know. And so what does that mean? Well, as an example, this story from a couple of hours ago. And I am sharing some things on the screen if you're listening on the podcast. Don't worry. I'm going to describe this. But an article from CNN business just from a couple hours ago says, you know, Microsoft CEO doesn't dismiss the possibility of Sam Altman returning to OpenAI, right? It's a very real possibility.

That's what it seems like the overwhelming majority of OpenAI's investors, the general public, and those 700 plus Open AI employees, people are trying to get Sam Altman back to Open AI. More on why I think that's happening here in a minute. But could Sam Altman at the end of the day be at Open AI? Yes. Could Sam Altman be at Microsoft and leading this new AI research arm? Absolutely. Could Sam Altman, by the end of today, be leading a completely different company? Yes, he could.

Nothing is finalized. The ink is not dry. What that means is, you know, generally, you know, generally these type of agreements you know, when you have one employee being fired, kind of out of nowhere and, you know, maybe joining another company usually takes time, right? As far as I know, it hasn't been reported. There's no contract signed. So nothing is final.

And I'm curious for our live audience. Thanks for joining. What are your biggest questions on this? Or maybe I'm going to say this. How do you think this is going to end? What's going to happen by the end of today, right? Is the ink going to start to dry? I don't think so.

I don't think so. You would think that there would be some things kind of starting to finalize. I don't think so. So let's see. Yes, Tanya, Tanya, thank you for the comment. Tanya is saying, doesn't this give Sam Altman the chance to bring on new ideas, whether he stays or uses this as a bargaining chip to get what he wants? Absolutely.

We're going to get into at the very end who I think the winners and the losers are. And I think y'all are going to be surprised on who I say, who the winners are and who the losers are. Yeah, great question, Pierre Paul. So what happened to Mira Muradi? Hopefully I've pronounced that right. So I believe she was the interim CEO for about 24 hours. As far as I know, she is now one of those 700 plus Open AI employees saying, hey, we're going to leave. We're going to leave.

If you don't bring, you know, if the board doesn't resign the current board and bring Sam Altman back. Yeah. So it's, it's wild times right now. All right. Let's jump into number two. And yes, this show, just like the Open AI situation, is going to be a little bit all over the place, FYI.

All right. Number two, there are more unknowns than knowns, right? That's for sure. All of the reporting is conjecture. People are just guessing. Reporters are working with anonymous sources. There hasn't really been anything officially said, right? Like, number one, why was Sam Holtman fired?

Right? The statement that Open AI's board put out essentially just said that he wasn't consistently candid in his communications with the board, which caused them to lose trust in his leadership. But, like, y'all, like, what does that mean? What does that mean? All right? with a company as important and fast-moving and innovative as OpenAI. Let's be honest, how much communication can a CEO have with its board?

Do you want four hours of daily updates? You know, Sam Altman was just about a week, a week or two out from the big Dev Day announcements that happened. things are happening quickly. So I was very curious about how that was worded, consistently candid. Okay. And also, I'm sure that there's things, I don't know this, but I'm sure there's things that's a tech CEO that you probably don't tell the board until something is finalized, right? I'm sure there's probably dozens of things that are up in the air that the Open AI and its

very talented staff are working on that. You probably don't tell your board every single one of those because you know from experience. that 80% of them, 90% of them may not come to fruition. So in my opinion, the board's reasoning or that statement that says, you know, that Altman was not consistently candid. To me, that was the worst. That was the worst type of reasoning you can say. Because I don't believe at a company that large, at a company that innovated, there is no

way a CEO can be, quote unquote, consistently candid because that would require more hours than there are in the day. That would require the CEO talking for many hours a day to the board to be quote unquote consistently candid. But being honest, that's some hot garbage. All right. So what else is unknown? Well, I don't know.

Did, you know, there's plenty of rumors out there, right? I'm not going to get into all of them. But people are saying, oh, you know, GPT5 is out and ready and maybe Sam Altman didn't tell the board or, oh, artificial general intelligence, AGI has been a, achieved internally. And maybe the board doesn't like that. And maybe, you know, because technically Open AI is set up as a nonprofit, right? So they have a quote unquote nonprofit mission. So maybe the board is saying, oh, well, the commercial side, the profit side has been far too successful, has taken up far too much of the company's time. Maybe that's what they're worried about. I don't know.

there are literally too many unknowns, you know, was some of their recent breakthroughs seemingly too dangerous, right? And it's kind of within their mission to, you know, keep AGI or AI in check and for the batter of humanity, right? So was some recent developments too off brand for Open AI, you know? Did they internally have the AGI working? And, you know, if you're not a dork, AGI, GI, is essentially when the artificial intelligence is better than humans. It doesn't really need us, right? It's kind of the next level of development

and something that Open AI has been openly working toward for years. They've been working toward AGI artificial general intelligence. Maybe they're getting there closer than everyone realized. Maybe it's not going to take three, five, ten years. Maybe it's happening. We don't know. There's unknowns. Too many unknowns.

So even, even the CEO who just took over, I think I'm losing track of days here in the last 24 hours. Emmett Shear, he posted this on Twitter. Kind of his plan for the next 30 days at the top of his plan was to hire an independent investigator to dig into the process leading up to this point and generate a full report. Also, y'all, if the board did not fully disclose its reasoning for firing Sam Altman, I don't know. If I'm the CEO, I don't care how much money you throw at me.

I'm saying, I'm not taking this job until you tell me everything. Why did you fire him? You got to tell me, right? We shouldn't have to hire a third party investigator to find out what's happening under your roof. CEO should know, right? Also important to know because we say, oh, you know, people are speculating, oh, maybe something, you know, some recent developments at Open AI make the generative AI. dangerous, right? Maybe chat GPT is dangerous now. One thing Emmett Shear did say in this tweet,

he said at the end of it, it's a very long tweet. He said, PPS, before I took the job, I checked on the reasoning behind the change. And he says, the board did not remove Sam over any specific disagreement on safety. Their reasoning was completely different than that. I'm not crazy enough to take this job without board support for commercializing our awesome models. Okay, so It wasn't a safety thing. All right. So what the heck? What the heck is going on?

So many unknowns. So, so many unknowns. Adobe just introduced an entirely new way to create, bringing the power and precision of its creative suite into one conversational experience. Meet Firefly AI Assistant, now live in the Adobe Firefly app, the all-in-one creative AI studio. Powered by Adobe's creative agent, Firefly AI Assistant, lets you start with your vision, just describe what you want, and shape the outcome as it takes

form with the assistant. The assistant orchestrates multi-step workflows, drawing on 60-plus pro-grade tools across Adobe Creative Cloud apps, including Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere, Lightroom Express, and more to help bring your ideas to life. You can also get started with creative skills, a growing library of pre-built workflows for common creative tasks, like batch editing photos, creating mood boards, portrait retouching, and creating social variations. Every step the assistant takes is visible so you can refine, redirect, or take over at any time. You stay in the driver's seat as the creative director. Adobe Firefly AI assistant now in public beta.

See it today at firefly.adopi.com. Maybe like Brian's saying here, maybe some secrets got leaked. I don't know. Yeah. Like what Tanya said, maybe. Boltman was trying to rain in chat GBT. We have no clue. We have no clue.

There are so many unknowns, right? And normally, y'all, like I have a journalism background. I used to report on big breaking news stories. Normally you would have some finite details by now because every major news outlet in the entire world is working on this. And there has been nothing definitive in terms of the reasons, in terms of the unknowns, which leads me to believe the. the actual reasoning for the firing, the actual reason for what's happening now might be rubbish. That's for my international audience.

Might be rubbish. We don't say rubbish here in the U.S., but, hey, we got people listening all over. All right, let's get into it. Let's get into number three. Let's get into number three on seven things you need to know. This is going to potentially have an adverse impact on the entire U.S. economy. All right. What do you mean, Jordan?

Open AI isn't even a public company. How could this impact the economy? Oh, I don't know. Maybe due to the fact over the last two years, if you take out companies that are working in or around AI, if you take that out, our stock market here in the U.S. is down. Right?

But right now it's not. Right? Right now, it's, it's not. The stock market, even though it might not feel like it, even though it might not feel like it, the stock market has been relatively strong over the last two years, right? I'm bringing up, I'm bringing up the latest here so we can take a look. So over the last two years, right? So, you know, pandemic was crazy.

But heck, even over the last year, if we're looking at the essence, The S&P, one of the major indexes here in the U.S. went from about 35, 3,600 last October to now 4,500. All right. I'm not great at math, but that's about a 25% increase in a year, which is huge. And guess what? Who's leading these major indexes? Companies working in and around AI.

specifically generative AI. And who's leading that charge? Open AI. Right? Right? You can say, oh, there's other big companies. There are. There's other big companies doing great things that are really pushing the U.S.

economy forward. But I would say the number one is the company that's not even public. It's Open AI. This GPT technology, you know, that was first, you know, kind of commercially released. in, I think, 2020, that was the first ripple that is now the generative AI, this artificial intelligence wave that is really propelling the U.S. economy. Don't believe me? I come with facts.

I always come with facts. That's the difference between everyday AI and every other, you know, random person talking about AI on LinkedIn or, you know, these copy and pace AI written newsletters. They don't care about double checking the facts. I dig in deep. I dig in deep. I barely slept last night because I was researching this episode so much. Let's take a look.

These are the top five companies in the world, or in the U.S., sorry. Top five companies in the U.S. according to market cap. Okay, so that's essentially what they are worth. It's a very overgeneralized way to say this. Okay. Two of the five here. So we have Apple, okay, with a niche.

nearly a $3 trillion market cap, which is insane. You have Microsoft with a $2.8 trillion market cap. You have Alphabet, which is Google's parent company with a $1.7 trillion, Amazon, $1.5 trillion, and Nvidia, $1.2 trillion. Guess what? Two of those five companies get a good deal of business because of, either from or because of OpenAI. So we're talking about Microsoft.

which has built its new co-pilot 365 platform. It's built its really future of the Windows operating system off of GPT from OpenAI, right? More on that in a minute. And Invidia, right? Nvidia has been an indirect beneficiary of everything. Open AI has kind of started to set off this wave, right? Because guess what? All of these companies now trying to build and compete with Open AI and to build,

the next Open AI of blank. They're all using Nvidia's chips. Right? So right there in the top five companies, you either have, you have two of them whose profit is closely tied to, you know, it's not dependent on, but closely tied to Open AI. And then you have the three other companies, Apple, Google, and Amazon, who are literally making multi-billion-dollar investments to catch open AI. All right.

Now can you see how crazy this is? Because this doesn't happen. This level of instability doesn't happen in a company this important. Someone tell me, hey, I'm not the oldest person in the room. I'm 30. How old am I? Oh, I'm 38. I just turned 38 a day or two ago, right?

Thank you for the happy birthday wishes, by the way, everyone. I appreciate that. If you want to give me a birthday present, go give us a review on Spotify and Apple. That would be great. We had a rash of 50 one-star reviews. People didn't like that we were a top seven podcast. Apparently, anyways, all of these companies, whether directly or indirectly, are benefiting from OpenAI. and the fact that this is going on right now,

it does mean a lot of instability for the future of generative AI, but also kind of for the economy. All right? Let's keep it going. Let's keep it going. And thank you. Thank you, everyone, for joining live.

What is your hot take? What do you think? What am I missing off my list so far of seven things that you need to know about the Sam Alton and Open AI drama? All right. So number four, Open AI drama. AI is at great risk. My gosh. Right. So reportedly, and there's been many different, you know,

reports on this and so many of the employees are actually just open. It's kind of like these code words, right? On Twitter, they're all saying the same statement or replying or, you know, quote, tweeting something with a heart and that is supposed to be a symbol of, yes, I'm following, you know, Sam Altman, wherever he goes, or, hey, I'm going to leave, you know, many of them signed an actual letter. But still, reportedly more than 700 of Open AI's 770 employees. I'm sure it's more by now in the last 40 minutes because I'm sure there's new reports that have come out. But 700 of them have threatened to leave Open AI unless Sam Altman comes back. And guess what else? If Sam Altman and Greg Brockman do end up going to Microsoft to lead this new

AI research arm, which I think could in a way be kind of what deep mind is to Google, if this does kind of pan out. But there is an open invitation. I listened to Sadia Nadella's interviews that he gave yesterday. I think it was to see NBC, maybe Bloomberg, but he essentially said, open invitation to anyone from open AI to come work at Microsoft. More on that. More on that in a second.

All right. So, so why? Why is Open AI actually at great risk? Aside from 95% of its employees threatening to follow Sam Altman out of the door. Why? Money. Right. And yet to say, well, why would these employees leave?

You know, I'm guessing most of them or many of them have stock options. They have equity in the company. And that's why. That's why they're threatening to leave, right? Yes. You know, from most of the reporting, San Malton was an inspiring leader who cared about the people. He cared about the mission.

Guess what else? Money. Y'all, if I'm an open AI employee and I have stock options, you know, small sliver of equity, which is very, very normal in the startup world. and Sam Altman gets fired, I'm doing the same exact thing. I'm signing that pledge because guess what? That big, juicy, you know, those stock options, that equity in the company,

I don't know, but that thing goes from dollars to dimes overnight when Sam Altman walks out the door. When there's this level of instability at a company, those stock options, which, hey, for a lot of, you know, those people working 70, 80, 90 hours that are in their 20s and 30s, they're grinding because that is their, that is their egg, that is their retirement, that is their fortune. Right. And when Sam Altman walks out the door and there is that level of instability, the value of that

goes down. Like I said, dollars to dimes overnight. That is why investors are working nonstop behind the. the scenes to get Sam Altman back. Because like I said, I do think he is. Sure, there's plenty of people that have other opinions and I'm just going off of what I've read. He seems to be a generational leader, a generational talent. Yes, we can nitpick, you know, certain things, certain viewpoints he has. But regardless, anyone that has led a company from relative obscurity to one of arguably, one of the most powerful companies on the,

the planet in a matter of a couple of years, generally generational leader, right? Putting putting him in the same conversation as the, you know, the Bill Gates, the Steve Jobs, the Mark Zuckerberg, regardless of your opinion on them, he has automatically assumed, right, assumed the Mount Rushmore of, you know, great tech leaders over the past many decades, just like that. So when he walks out the door, not just the company's valuation, it's customer base, right? Everything is shook.

Everything is shook. Yeah. What do you guys think? I like what Nadia says here. Talent is key for advanced tech more important than money. Absolutely. Guess who built this tech that is now shaping our, you know, day-to-day lives, those 770 employees.

Yes, Open AI still controls the IP and the weights and all of those things, but it's the people. It's the institutional knowledge. It's the know-how that is potentially walking up the door. All right. Number five. Oh, we're getting spicier. Should I crank this up? Are we still on one to two flame emojis?

Or should I really lay into it? I got one coming up here. This one. I don't know how hard I should go on the Open AI board, but number five, the Open AI board is inept. Yes, I chose my words widely or wisely there. Climsy. You know, clumsy is a synonym for inept.

I'm trying to be nice here, right? Because I don't know. I started to show off with there's so many unknowns. Who knows? Who knows? Maybe the board was very justified. and firing Sam Altman on Friday out of nowhere right after Microsoft launches, you know, its Ignite conference and they talk about all these new integrations with GPT and co-pilot studio

and you can build all these great things on top of GPT. Microsoft is building a big part of their future with GPT as part of the process. I would have liked, I would have loved to be in the room where it happened, the room where it happened, but I wasn't. right very few people were but i think it's there's very few people that will argue otherwise maybe you know people who are actually on the board and their family members that the that the board did a good job again maybe we'll know more when it all comes out but i will say right now ineptitude is a very nice word is a very nice word to say yes like what val is saying here in the live stream.

Thanks, Val. He's saying, sad to hear this, but a wake-up call to the end user is to always have a plan B. Yes. What was, y'all, this is the board overseeing the company openly working toward artificial general intelligence when the AI is smarter than us and the AI doesn't need us, but the company working on AGI couldn't see 24 hours into the future. Like, come on.

When I saw the notification that Sam Altman was fired, I'm like, does the board not understand how this works? I knew right away. There's going to be a large, you know, mutiny, so to speak. You know? I'm like, there is no way that this ends well without having a steady succession plan in place. when I saw this statement that they put out, if all you have in quote unquote firing or all you can publicly disclose, right, again, who knows what's actually happening. If all you can say is that Sam Haltman was not consistently candid enough in his conversation, and that is your official,

quote unquote, your official rationale for firing one of the most prominent and, you know, biggest rising stars in the U.S. economy, arguably in decades. If that's what you go with, Oh, and that is a very nice word. A very nice word. Again, I don't know everything. Obviously, the board knows more than the rest of us, but very smart people have had way harsher words. So I'm trying to be nice. I didn't see many three flame emojis.

I saw a couple ones. Jay said five. That's off my scale, Jay. Yeah, I don't know. It could be an emotional firing. It could be. Time will tell. But why is the Open AI board inept?

Or why do I feel that way? This is my personal opinions, right? This is not, quote, unquote, everyday AI official stance. This is my personal opinion. There's a lot of reasons. You had to see this coming. You had to see that this could potentially be catastrophic. You could have to see.

that this could potentially have longstanding economic impact on the economy. How could you not? How can you be working on open AGI and not be able to see two hours into the future? There is no other way. There is no other way with this kind of rationale, with how this went down Friday, there is zero other way that this could have played out. Right? If like if any of you are Marvel fans, right, there's the scene in end game or, you know,

Dr. Strange goes through the, you know, I don't know, the billion scenarios in his head and he says, this is the only way we win or whatever, right? You can go through a billion scenarios. This is the only way it plays out. Like, are you serious to fire Sam Altman out of nowhere and give absolutely zero concrete insights and to not even have a succession plan, not to have a backup plan, not to have, you know, essentially PR, public relations, crisis, crisis, communication. in line? No. Luckily. Luckily for, luckily for Open AI, Sadia Nadella came through. More on that in a second. All right. Also,

something to think about. Weird. Weird. One of the board members. Right. Which I've always thought it was weird that Adam DeAngelo was on the board after they launched Po. Let me get into that. So Adam DeAngelo, I believe goes way back with Sam Altman back to their Y Combinator days. But he's the co-founder of Quora, which launched Po.com. So Poe.com essentially is a way to kind of build chatbots on top of existing models. So you can use GPT and build a chatbot inside of this platform, Po.com. If you haven't used it, it's actually a pretty nice platform.

However, however, I'm just wondering out loud here, why? Why was Adam still on the board? Especially when in late October here, so I'm sharing a screenshot that Adam announced on Twitter where he said, today we are launching creator monetization for Po. This program lets any bot creator on Poe generate revenue. This is the first major step forward for the platform and is the first program of its kind. So we are excited to see what it lets everyone create. When I saw that announcement from Poe about a month ago, I was like, oh, that's interesting.

So is he going to step down from the board? Isn't that in theory now a direct competitor to open AI? Yes, they're technically a customer, right? because they're tapping into their API, so they, they're paying. But it's also a direct competitor because you can use other models, right? And then, obviously, we saw in OpenAI's dev day about two weeks ago, OpenAI and Sam Altman introduced GPTs, which are kind of a version of what's on the screen here, this creator monetization for Poe because they, you know, a big step forward and something

that I was, you know, personally pretty excited about was this GPT store. So, you know, if you don't know what custom GPTs or GPTs are, you can go in right now if you have a chat GPT plus account and build no code, a chatbot built on your knowledge base. You can do some basic training on it. So kind of exactly what Poe is doing. So, huh, I'm not great at math, but I can put two and two together. Did this have something to do with Sam Altman's firing? I don't know. People smarter than me are saying absolutely.

But it begs the question, how was he still on the board? I'm sorry. Technically, at that point, October 25th or November 7th, when Sam Altman unveiled GPs and talked about the GPT store, at that point, those are competing products. I don't know. I'm thinking out loud here. Seems like a direct conflict to me.

But who am I? Who am I? I'm just a guy. All right. Number six, I know this has been a longer show. I'm going to go a little quick here to wrap this up. Number six, Sadia Nadella is the goat, the greatest of all time. My gosh, what would have happened without Sadia and Nadella?

being in there to mediate these conversations, right? Presumably, we don't know. He talked a little bit about it. But presumably he's mediating this meeting between Sam Altman, between the current board, interim CEOs, probably investors. The fact that, right? Because I can see you making the other point. Oh, Jordan, it's a disaster.

Yes. But look what happened to Microsoft. He's a, genius. Saudi Nadella is a genius, right? A couple of reasons. One on Monday, Microsoft's stock jumped about 70 or their market cap jumped like $70 billion, right? Yesterday alone. Pretty nice day. But here's why I think he's the goat. He's kind of a magician when he essentially said, hey, 700 plus open AI employees. Doors always open. open for you.

Doors always open for you. I don't know all the legalities, but I do know. Open AI, I believe based in California, I think there's no such thing as non-competees in California. So presumably, in theory, if Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, the president of Open AI, if they do go through and, you know, sign on with Microsoft and create this new kind of sector, there's a good, good chance that. hundreds of open AI employees could follow suit, right? The fact that you could, you know, I think, I think they call that, what do they call it? Aqua hire, right?

Like an acquisition through hiring. The fact of if you could, if you could hire hundreds of open AI employees and not have to, quote unquote, acquire the company for, I don't know what they would be acquired for, hundreds of billions, trillions, who knows. That's smart. My gosh, Microsoft and Sadi Nadella came out of this mess as the big winners. Big, big winners. So he's the goat.

He's the goat, right? I like this Forbes article that said Sadi Nadella and Microsoft are the biggest winners of the Open AI meltdown for now. Yes, for now. Everything's for now because like we talked about, Number one, the ink has not dried. The ink has dropped has not dried. And y'all, there's so much we didn't even get to, right?

Like, hey, going back to the Open AI board, reportedly they were trying to hire people as CEO that weren't maybe qualified. They reportedly tried a merger or offered a merger option with Anthropic. Right? A direct competitor? Again, I don't know who was pushing that. Maybe it wasn't the board. Maybe it was someone else. But come on. Come on.

Regardless, Saudi Nantella gets greatest of all time goat status after this. And last but not least, the seven things you need to know. The open AI downfall could be catastrophic. It could be catastrophic. It could all be over today. It could all be over. Actually, who knows? It could be over by now.

I've been on this live stream now for 45 minutes. It could already be over. Who knows? Sam Altman could already be signed back. Things happened quickly. This has been, like I said, literally pinballing. It's been hard. Get whiplash in your neck if you follow.

If you follow all these moves, it's over here, it's over there. It's over here. It's over there. Right? But Open AI, regardless, could be at great risk. If this thing doesn't get settled soon, if Sam Altman is not ultimately, whether it's today, tomorrow, next week, next month, if Sam Altman is not reinstated as CEO and one of the big holdups reportedly is they want the current board to all resign. Would the current board do that? I don't know.

Is that the holdup? It could be. Maybe Sam Altman doesn't truly want to go back. Maybe he does. I don't know. But open AI regardless is at great risk for a couple of reasons. Number one, their biggest competitors are having a field day. Imagine being in sales right now for, you know, anthropic, you know, their large language

model or Google, right? Imagine being in sales right now for one of these enterprise gen AI systems that has a large language model that is not relying on GPT. You're making, you're making your yearly quota this morning in the first. Our enterprise companies are looking to jump ship fast. Right. Again, man, imagine if Saudi Nandela wasn't in this.

I'm sure customers are dropping like flies. That's, that's not me. I always bring the receipts. So article from the information here that I'm showing on screen already saying, Open AI's customers consider defacting to Anthropic Microsoft Google, right? Field day. A field day for those companies, right? That's number one.

Open AI, potentially losing enterprise clients in mass. What's more important than that, though? The people, y'all. The people. Will all 700 plus of those employees leave Open AI? I don't know. Do they just want to follow Sam Altman wherever he goes because they believe in his vision?

They believe in his leadership. will they go to Microsoft? Maybe. Is this tied more to, you know, if, when and if, it's time to cash in, you know, their equity or their shares that they get as early employees of Open AI? That's my gut. I always say follow the money. But who knows?

I could be dead wrong. I can be dead wrong. But regardless, it is not a good day. It is not a good week for Open AI. when you are potentially facing losing enterprise customers in mass, when you are potentially losing 700 plus of your 770 employees, 90, 95%, right? They have an open invitation for Microsoft. Salesforce CEO openly recruiting them saying, hey, come work on our AI product Einstein.

Right? They're getting poached. and they are getting offers that are going to be hard to refuse matching equity, matching salaries, insane professional athlete sign on bonuses. I don't know. It seems like to me unless Sam Altman is reinstated pretty soon and unless the board resigns pretty soon, seems like there's a good chance. This maybe it's not a catastrophic ending for Open AI. but it's it's at risk and yes this is one of the biggest blunders i'd say of a company this size it's got to be up there this has to be up there in the top five and recent memory

biggest blunders a company has ever made right like willingly or seemingly willingly right All right. Let's recap it. And then I'm going to tell you the biggest winners and losers. Here we go. The seven things you need to know about Sam Altman leaving and the future of Open AI. Here we go. Number one, the ink has not dried.

Nothing is finalized, at least as of this morning when I started the show. Number two, there are more unknowns than knowns. Why was Sam Altman actually fired? Who actually knows? There's so many question marks. Number three, this impacts the entire economy. This is about way more than chat. way more than Open AI.

It is about all the hundreds of companies that are even using the GPT technology. What happens to them? Number four. Yeah, Open AI is at great risk. Great risk. 700 plus. 700 plus of Open AI employees have threatened to quit. Five, the Open AI board.

Yeah, they're inept. Sorry. No succession plan. You're working on AGI and you can't even see 12 hours in the future. And then Sadie Nadella is the goat. He's the goat. If he could actually bring over even a fraction of those 700 employees, that is an insane win for Microsoft.

All right. Let's get to the big winners and losers. Let's get to the big winners and losers. Here we go. We're wrapping it up. Big winner, Microsoft. My gosh. Guess who else is the big winner?

You wouldn't think this. Sam Altman. Sam Altman is a big winner after getting fired from the company that he co-founded. Absolutely. Guess who has an insane amount of leverage right now, Sam Altman. He can go work wherever he wants. He can create the world's largest AI research team at Microsoft. Yeah.

Like Microsoft, I believe, has like 300,000 employees. They have way more resources right now than Open AI does. he can do whatever he wants. He has all the leverage. Everyone's wanting to follow him. Someone remind me of the last time someone got unceremoniously fired without real concrete reasons,

at least given publicly, and had this much leverage. My gosh, you wouldn't think he was a big winner. But I'd say he is. Small winners. Amazon and Anthropic. Yeah.

Huge winners. Huge winners. They're going to be scooping up enterprise customers. If this doesn't get wrapped up, who. Big day for those salespeople. Big day. Loser. They could go back and forth on this.

Google, because in some ways, Google won. They can maybe bring on some new enterprise customers. But at the same time, Google's number one kind of competitor is Microsoft. They compete with them across the board. in Microsoft was the huge winner. So Google took some, took some dubs, took some L's, but I'm going to say they kind of lost.

Also, losers. Open AI. Sorry, these aren't actual losers. I'm just saying losers in the battle. Just got to clear that up, all right? So someone else who also lost. Open AI investors who are not named Microsoft. And that's why they're working furiously behind the scenes

to get Sam Altman reinstated. Their investment is not going to be looking too good. if this doesn't clear up for the better. Big loser, open AI. Not good. Not good. Hardly. As far as we know,

at least what is publicly known, yes, there's more unknown than knowns, but at least what we know right now, looking really bad. Looking really bad. For open AI, it's looking bad.

Hey, another big loser, I guess, is technically maybe us, right? Hopefully this is all, salvaged. But I don't know about y'all.

Chat JPT is an integral part of my workflow, even for me personally. So hey, I'm a big loser in this if this doesn't get sorted out. And maybe the biggest loser in all of this is the Open AI board. I've yet to see anyone or very few people I should say. And I've read probably over the course of four to five days like the rest of you, probably more than a thousand different tweets, you know, from very well-known people, right? These aren't just randos on the internet. And I would say very easily, nine out of ten are just crushing the opening eye board, right?

Crushing them. I'm trying to be nice. I'm trying to be nice and civil by saying they've been inept. That's it, y'all. That's it. Those are the seven things that you need to know about Sam Altman getting fired from Open AI. And what it means, what it means for the future of the GPD technology, what it means for the future of generative AI, what it even means for the immediate future of the U.S. economy.

They got to get this sorted out. They got to get it sorted out. All right. I hope you all had fun today. As always, make sure to go to your everyday AI.com. Sign it for the free daily newsletter. There might be one or two other hot takes in there that I sneak in that I didn't get to on today's show. So please, thank you for joining us.

Make sure to go to your everyday AI.com. Sign it for the free daily newsletter. And we hope to see you back tomorrow and every day for more. Every Day. Thank you. Meet Firefly AI Assistant. Now live in Adobe Firefly, the Allman One Creative AI Studio. Just describe what you want to create in your own words and the assistant handles the rest,

orchestrating multi-step workflows across Adobe Creative Cloud apps, including Photoshop, Premiere Express, and more in one conversational interface. You direct the outcome while the assistant accelerates execution. Stand control with the ability to step in and refine at any time. See it today at firefly.adobie.com. And that's a wrap for today's edition of Everyday AI. Thanks for joining us. If you enjoyed this episode,

Please subscribe and leave us a rating. It helps keep us going. For a little more AI magic, visit Your EverydayAI.com and sign up to our daily newsletter so you don't get left behind. Go break some barriers and we'll see you next time.