Everyday AI Podcast – An AI and ChatGPT Podcast - EP 330: OpenAI Drama: Co-Founder Leaves and President Takes Leave

Episode Date: August 6, 2024

Win a free year of ChatGPT or other prizes! Find out how.What the heck is happening at OpenAI? In a somewhat shocking development, an OpenAI co-founder has left OpenAI for rival Anthropic. And President Greg Brockman is taking an 'extended leave of absence.' What's it all mean? Newsletter: Sign up for our free daily newsletterMore on this Episode: Episode PageJoin the discussion: Ask Jordan questions on OpenAIRelated Episodes: Ep 318: GPT-4o Mini: What you need to know and what no one’s talking aboutEp 149: Sam Altman leaving and the future of OpenAI – 7 things you need to knowUpcoming Episodes: Check out the upcoming Everyday AI Livestream lineupWebsite: YourEverydayAI.comEmail The Show: [e-mail] with Jordan on LinkedInTopics Covered in This Episode:1. Major Changes at OpenAI2. Legal Trouble for OpenAI3. OpenAI's Technology and Impact4. Future of OpenAITimestamps:02:00 Daily AI news06:15 Multiple high-level departures at OpenAI, significant impact.12:47 GPT technology widely used by large companies.16:08 Employees threatened to leave if demands not met.18:22 Key OpenAI figures change, raising concerns.21:05 Economic chaos and political instability in 72 hours.25:22 Apple rebranding AI as 'Apple Intelligence.' GPT technology used.27:16 Microsoft's early commitment to AI pays off.30:32 NVIDIA is least reliant on OpenAI.35:08 AI advancements raise immense safety concerns and risks.40:16 Ilya Sutskever left OpenAI to start SSI.41:16 OpenAI's new model amidst reporting and rumors.44:20 OpenAI's incredible capabilities are beyond imagination.Keywords:OpenAI, Jordan Wilson, Everyday AI, OpenAI drama, co-founder departure, OpenAI president, extended leave, AI news, Figure humanoid AI robot, NVIDIA, copyright violations, Elon Musk, Sam Altman, lawsuit, Peter Dang, John Shulman, Greg Brockman, OpenAI leadership changes, Andrei Karpathy, Ilya Sutskever, Microsoft, artificial intelligence, AGI, Jan Leakey, Anthropic, GPT 5, GPT NEXT, Apple Intelligence, US economy, global economiSend 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. 

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Breaking news less than, I don't know, 12 hours ago now have shown that a co-founder of Open AI has left the company. And the president, a very prominent name at OpenAI, has taken an extended leave of absence. So we're going to talk about what it all means and also lay out a timeline because this is probably a lot more than just some startup drama. It's going to actually potentially impact many of us depending on how this shakes out. All right, what's going on, y'all? My name is Jordan Wilson, and this is Everyday AI. This is for you. It's your daily live stream podcast and free daily newsletter, helping us all learn generative AI to

together and how we can all leverage it to grow our companies and to grow our career. So we do this every single weekday. It's unscripted, unedited, the realest thing in artificial intelligence, bringing you what you need to know. So today I'm excited to talk about this with you all. And, you know, I'd love to hear from our live stream audience what you think is what's actually going on here with Open AI and some of this recent news. So before we get started, as a reminder, if you're joining us on the podcast, please check

your show notes and go to your everyday AI.com. Sign up for the free daily newsletter. Every single day, we recap our conversation in the newsletter, as well as make sure to check out our thanks a million giveaway. We'll be giving away a year subscription to chat, GVT, or your favorite large language model. So make sure to check out the newsletter for that. All right, before we get into all of this drama at Open AI, and we did some legwork on today's episode, y'all. But let's first go over the AI news. So the robotics company figure literally minutes ago has just announced their newest humanoid AI-powered robot figure O2. It is touted as the world's most advanced AI hardware for robotics. So the figure O2 represents a complete redesigned aimed at significantly enhancing performance and capabilities.

So some of the new features in figure O2, six integrated cameras for employees. improved visual processing, battery life boost, on board visual language model. They're calling that VLM for advanced image and video understanding, triple the CPU and GPU power. Fourth generation hands, yeah, can like make a sandwich. It's wild. Design for more precise and versatile manipulation. Integrated wiring for streamline in robust build and exoskeleton structure and advanced

speech-to-speech reasoning capabilities, allowing for. human to robot conversation. So obviously the speech to speech feature is powered by onboard microphones and speakers connected to a custom AI model in collaboration with Open AI. All right, speaking of Open AI, yeah, it's a lot of Open AI today. Elon Musk has revived his lawsuit against Open AI and Sam Altman over alleged fraud. So Elon Musk has reignited his legal battle against Open AI after withdrawing his previous lawsuit. So here's what in his newest lawsuit, what he's alleging. So Musk was obviously an original on the co-founding team at OpenAI back in 2015. So he's reopened the lawsuit because he said they deceived him that Open AI and CEO Sam Altman deceived him into contributing

$44 million by promising OpenAI would remain a nonprofit and open source its technology. So yeah, like I said, this is my second lawsuit against Open AI after withdrawing the first one in June for unknown reasons. I think the unknown reason was the lawsuit was without merit. You know, I'm no legal scholar or lawyer, but I read it and I'm like, there's nothing here. So make sure to check out the newsletter today for more on that second lawsuit. We'll see if this one actually has teeth or not. And then last but not least in AI news, Nvidia is facing some renowned scrutiny over alleged copyright violations in its AI training.

So, InVedia, one of the most valuable companies in the world, you know, just under $2.5 trillion market cap is under fire for allegedly scraping copyrighted content from YouTube, Netflix, and other sources to train its AI models, according to a report from 404 Media. This practice is part of Nvidia's efforts to develop products like its Omniverse 3D World Generator, self-driving car systems, and digital human products. The company claims its methods comply with copyright laws, arguing that IP laws protect specific expressions, but not facts, ideas, data, or information, according to the reports. YouTube obviously disagrees with spokesman Jack Malin, reiterating that CEO Neil Mohan's stance on using AI or sorry, using YouTube content for AI training without permission is a clear violation of YouTube's terms. So similar accusations have been made against other companies.

such as Open AI and Runway or training their models on YouTube videos without authorization. So yeah, this is not a new practice, but Nvidia kind of right here in the crosshairs. All right, there's going to be a lot more on these stories. So make sure to go to Your EverydayAI.com for more on that. All right, so live stream audience,

thank you for joining us. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this Open AI story. Yeah, a lot of drama here. So thanks for everyone for joining Cecilia and Tara. Michael, Liz, Woozy, J. Christopher, everyone. So let's just get straight into it. I know that was a lot of news, a lot of news to go over, but some pretty big things. So what's actually happening at Open AI?

This is, you know, late breaking news, you know, not even 12 hours old now at this point. So let's talk about what's actually happening. All right. So first, this was a report from the information, a leading kind of tech. journalism company. So here's what their initial report said. It said that three key players at Open AI are no longer with the company. So they did say that they were gone.

They updated their reporting because they might have gotten a thing or two wrong. But here is who has either left the company or at least who is no longer at the company as up to date. All right. So Peter Dang, who was the vice president of consumer product, has left Open AI. no details on his next moves. John Shulman, big name there. So he is co-founder, actually, of OpenAI.

There was 11 co-founders, but, and I think there's only three left. So John Shulman, co-founder and lead of post-training team. So, yeah, he leads the team that fine-tunes open AI's models that hundreds of millions of people use. So he's left and is going to go to Anthropic, rival Anthropics. So pretty big news there. And then last but not least. So originally it was reported that Greg Brockman was leaving the company.

So the president of the company, probably the most prominent figure aside from CEO, Sam Altman and Greg Brotman. So originally it reported that Brockman was leading, leaving the company. However, it has come out since that he is taking an extended leave of absence to, quote, relax and recharge. after nine years. So yeah, that's a lot of high level of people leaving, right? So at least, yes, Greg Brockman will presumably be coming back, but you have two co-founders that were there yesterday that are not there today and also a VP of Consumer Product and Peter Dang. So a lot of institutional knowledge just left the door. So Greg Brockman, again, after some initial reporting, you know, because this is almost, right?

This is almost as big as the original kind of news back in November of 2023 when CEO, Sam Altman was unceremoniously fired and then rehired four days later. But I would say this is almost as big of news when you have two co-founders and a VP leaving at the same time, or at least it is reported that they're leaving at the same time. But then obviously Greg Brockman did post on Twitter and says, I'm taking a sabbatical through the end of the year. First time to relax since co-founding Open AI nine years ago. The mission is far from complete.

We still have a safe AGI to build. So they're talking about the future and seemingly signaling that he will be back at the company potentially early in 2025. So that's a lot. That's a lot. Yes. What Penelope said, oh, interesting. Yeah, we have our AI drama here at Open AI.

So let's go ahead and unpack this just a little bit. So we don't have answers. And I'm sure that this is going to be an evolving story. But I want to take you all, the everyday AI audience, through a little bit of a journey here because I think that there's a lot more going on than meets the eye. And there's a lot more going on than what is right now. now being reported. So I do believe that there's going to be some follow-up news regarding this trio in the coming days and weeks. And I don't think it'll necessarily be good news coming out

of that for Open AI. Yeah. Should we, hey, shoot, should we make this a hot, like a super hot take on Hot Take Tuesday? I have thoughts. With these things, I'd like to try to keep it kind of, you know, buttoned up and more factual. But I got takes. Let me know if y'all want to hear some of the hot takes for our live stream audience. But first, let's go over. Why does this matter? It's like, all right, Jordan, you told me a bunch of people are leaving a company that

maybe I don't use a lot. Well, this really matters. All right. Let's go over. Well, there's a good chance that you are using OpenAI's GPT technology, whether you know it or not, right? So obviously if you're using chat GPT, you know that you're using open AIs technology. But hey, Microsoft copilot, right, which is a system that hundreds of millions of people across the globe are using.

It is built on GPT4. It is built on Open AIs technology. So again, between chat GPT, between Microsoft CO2, co-pilot, and then the thousands of other GPT-enabled products, right? That's the other thing. So many in we've been talking about it in the recent weeks here on the everyday AI show. I mean, you now have all these banks, all these large wealth management institutions, enterprise companies building their own AI systems on top of the GPT technology.

So that's why it matters to you because there's a good chance whether you know it or not. you are using and benefiting from Open AI's technology multiple times a day, right? There's a good chance, maybe a good chunk of your work, unbeknownst to you, is happening behind the scenes because of or due to the GPT technology. It is everywhere, right? So many large companies are building on top of GPT. So obviously, Open AI was kind of the first big name to, the game when it comes to large language models when they released the chat chat gbt in November of

2022. They had obviously released their GPT technology years before that and a lot of earlier products and services we're building on top of it. But you can make the argument that Open AI technically started this generative AI wave that businesses and individuals and companies are all riding now almost two full years later. So this is extremely important to know that you're probably already benefiting from GPT. So when a trio of highly visible users or sorry, a trio of highly visible people at OpenAI all leave the company or it's reported that they leave the company on this same day,

Yes, President Greg Brockman will presumably be back in early 2025. There's no guarantee on that. We're going to get to that here in a little bit. But that's noteworthy, right? I'm not saying that businesses need to rethink their business strategy, right? All huge companies always have a lot of this uncertainty unfolding, right? The generative AI landscape right now is extremely competitive. So, yeah, like we talked about as an example, Peter Dang, leaving for rival.

anthropic. There's a lot of that, right? There's a lot of people at, you know, big tech company A, right? So, oh, meta, leaving for Google DeepMind, someone on the Google Gemini team, leaving for, you know, Amazon, someone at Amazon leaving for Open AI. So that's normal. But I do not think this is normal when you have three high-ranking officials reportedly leaving at the exact same time. That's not good. It's not good, right? Could it be a coincidence? Sure. I don't think this is. is a coincidence. All right. So first, this is why it matters to you because there's a chance that this is going to impact your work. All right. I mean, we also have to talk about the timing, the timing of everything, right? Obviously, there was this brand new lawsuit from Elon Musk. I don't

think that has anything to do with the timing. But I mean, even eight months ago, right, in November 2023, Sam Altman was fired and then rehired when essentially there was an internal mutiny of sorts, right? The Open AI board, fired CEO and founder Sam Altman, essentially, I think it was like 98 or 99% of employees publicly came out and said, yo, we're going to leave the company. If you don't reinstate Sam Altman within about four to five days with some help from Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella, the company did reinstate Sam Altman as well as reinstate new members, or sorry, you know, put in new members of their operating board as, well as take some other members out. So that's not too far off, right? Eight months.

These things take a long time to recover from. And I'm sure there were some underlying issues that maybe led to that instance in November 2023 that are still unresolved. All right. So what does it all actually mean? All right, you get it. Okay. So yeah, there's a good chance our company is using some GPT technology. There's some turmoil at the company, well, I would say it is severe instability right now. And this is at one of the most important companies in the world. Okay. So we also have to talk about some other big names at OpenAI, right? Because I'll say this, you know, take away Elon Musk's involvement. I would say that there's four kind of big names at Open AI over the last couple of years that, you know, you could

make the argument that so much of their success was because of four or due in large part to four very highly prolific people on their team. So CEO, Sam Altman, still there, right, but was fired and rehired. Number two, President Greg Brockman, who is now on an extended leave, right, at least for seemingly five to six months. So will he come back? He says he is. So we'll then Andre Carpathie, right, and Ilya Satskiever, all right? And Andre Carpathie and Ilya Satskiver are gone, right? So at least you could say over the last five years, those are probably the, whether you want to say the four most important or the four most visible people at OpenAI, as of this

morning, only one of them is currently working at OpenAI in CEO, Sam Allman. Yeah, I'm sure there's a lot of things going on behind the scenes. I'm not saying that there's no one else that's important, but I will say as an outsider that observes things very closely over the last, you know, four to five years, those have been kind of the four highly visible people that you could make the argument were maybe four of the most important people at OpenAI. Obviously, that's going to change now since only one of them is working. You know, others are going to have to rise up through the ranks. But that is concerning.

That is concerning. That creates instability at one of the most important companies in the world. Yes, I'm saying that. Open AI is one of the most important companies in the world because they are in the driver seat of the generative AI in large language model race. I don't care what you say about Anthropic, about Google Gemini. No, Open AI is still leading, is still leading this race, right? For models that are publicly available right now for consumers, right? So you go on the front end of any of these, you know, large language models. GPT4O technology is still the best,

according to benchmarks. So we've seen Anthropics Clawed 3.5s on it, get very close. Google just released a new version of their Gemini Pro 1.5, but it's only available for developers and in their AI studio. So at least for front-end models that everyday people, right, you and me can go use. Open AI is still the leader. And I think that their next model,

whenever they do release it, we'll likely wipe everyone else off and make them, I'm all irrelevant for a short time. So that's why it's important. But you also have to think of the huge potential impact that moves like this could have on the U.S. economy. So we do not fully understand the reasoning behind all of this. I have some guesses and assumptions.

And I'd love to hear from our live stream audience. What do you think is actually going on here? I'm going to get to what I think is going on here at the end. But we have to look at the potential impacts on the U.S. economy. All right. So throw out the last 72 hours, right? So if you're paying attention to what's going on right now in the U.S. economy, and even the world economies, it's a little bit of chaos, right?

There's a lot of political instability, a lot of, you know, international, relations going awry, right? There's a lot of economic instability right now throughout the entire world. So, you know, take away the last, you know, 72 or, you know, four to five days in time when, you know, the U.S. stock market has kind of taken a slight nosedive. All right. So take away that. An open AI.

Ready for this, y'all? This is when we talk about bringing you the news that matters. And it's like, oh, no, open AI is just a little startup. What does it, what does it matter? No one's talking about this. How about the three largest companies in the world? Adobe just introduced an entirely new way to create, bringing the power and precision of its creative suite into one conversational experience.

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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.adobie.com. Are overly, I wouldn't say overly reliant, but they are heavily reliant on open AI. Apple, the number one company in the world when it comes to market capitalization. So that's what we're talking about, essentially.

The three companies in the world, world that are worth the most. Number one, Apple. Number two, Microsoft. Number three, invidia. And for the last, you know, three months, those three companies have all kind of jostled back and forth. And they've all held the number one position multiple times. So they've all kind of gone between, you know, silver, bronze, and gold there for, for the top three in the world. All three of these companies are heavily reliant, at least right now, on Open AI. And look at all of the instability. Just, I mean, obviously over the past 12 hours, but even over the last couple of months,

when you've had not only three big name people leave at once, you know, one of them is coming back. But we also said, hey, out of the kind of quote unquote Mount Rushmore of Open AI, Sam Altman is the only one showing up today and presumably for the next five months until and if Greg Brockman comes back. that creates a lot of instability for the biggest companies in the world as well. If I'm Apple seeing this news, I'm not happy. If I'm Microsoft seeing this news, I'm not happy. If I'm in a video seeing this news, I'm not happy. Y'all, those are the three largest companies in the world.

All right, let's talk about some of their, you know, reliance or about how some of their success is definitely due to this. path that open AI has been blazing. They've been the one chopping down the weeds and paving the roads and making way for everyone else to follow. Apple, yeah, you've seen that. All right. So Apple is releasing its new Apple intelligence. You know, at first they said it was going to be here in September or in about a month

or so. Now it's being pushed back to October. It might be pushed back even more with this recent. Open AI news? I don't know, but it's plausible. Right. So essentially, here's how it works. This Apple intelligence, which come on Apple, just call it AI, right? They're trying to rebrand artificial intelligence and call it Apple intelligence. Can you really do that when the bulk of your quote unquote Apple intelligence is just the GPT technology from Open AI? Yes. So people aren't talking about this, but Apple actually has two different models that are executing its Apple intelligence.

So first, they have their own internal Jacks model that runs locally on upcoming iPhones. So the iPhone 15 and above, which is essentially the iPhone 15 or the one that's coming out, the iPhone 16. So they have their own small language model that runs a lot of things locally. But according to early reports, the majority of all Apple intelligence is essentially just being passed off to the GPT technology, to open AI, where essentially you get a prompt and it says, hey, do you want to go ahead and launch this in GPT? And then you click yes, right?

So so much of the companies, of the number one companies in the world, or the number one company in Apple, their big marquee feature for the most part, it's just sending people to open AI. A lot of instability there, right? Yes, Cecilia. It says Apple can rebrand anything and people will buy it. Yeah, that's true. That's true sometimes.

Hey, what Tanya says, one of my favorite things here at everyday AI. You got to follow the money. So we just follow the money for Apple. Let's follow the money for Microsoft. All right. Number two, biggest company in the world. I mean, you cannot deny how important open AI is to Microsoft. All right.

Microsoft's value has skyrocketed. over the last two years for a couple of reasons. But I'll make the argument, it's largely just because of its development and early commitment to artificial intelligence. That's why, you know, I think over the last decade or so, at times Microsoft has struggled to keep up with Apple. Microsoft was a year and a half ahead of Apple in terms, well, I mean, I guess Apple hasn't even give in its users artificial intelligence, but Microsoft was early to the game, right?

They were early to the game with co-pilot compared to Apple. And I think that's one of the reasons Wall Street and the rest of the world has responded favorably in how now Microsoft is essentially always the number one or two or sometimes three, but essentially they're the number one or number two company in the world, which they haven't always historically been over the last 10 years. and I think that's because of their commitment to artificial intelligence, and that is made possible by the GPT technology. So Microsoft also reportedly has a 49% equity stake in OpenAI as its largest investor,

reportedly investing $13 billion into the startup company a few years ago. All right. So you can't deny the ties there are very close. Yes, Microsoft has started to distance itself from, open AI. I think there's a lot of reasons, both topically and under the surface on why they're doing that. Number one is it's probably not too good for a company with a $3 trillion market cap to be too reliant on technically a startup and open AI with 600 some employees. Probably not good. So Microsoft has started its own AI division, Microsoft AI, by hiring an aqua hire essentially.

and they are developing their own internal models as well, because they do not want to be too reliant on OpenAI. And then earlier this week, or sorry, earlier last week, which we reported, for the first time, Microsoft is listing OpenAI as a competitor. Right. So as Open AI starts to come out with new products such as Search GPT, it is kind of a competitor to Microsoft's Bing search engine,

even though the search GPT uses the Bing technology. I know it's confusing, right? But Microsoft is both essentially calling OpenAI one of its biggest partners, but also one of its biggest competitors. So again, if I'm Microsoft seeing this news that a trio of highly visible leaders are no longer there, I'm not feeling good about this. Presumably Microsoft knew about this before the report from the information. but regardless, it's not good.

Then last but not least, InVIDIA. So I'd say out of these three, Nvidia has the least to lose when it comes to Open AI. But again, Open AI has been one of Nvidia's, I won't say larger customers, but one of its more prominent customers, right? So the GPT technology was built and trained on Nvidia's GPU chips. Right.

So again, I think out of the three, Nvidia is probably least reliant on open AI, right? And the reason why I'm going over this is, well, what happens? It's something crazy. Crazier is happening at OpenAI. And what does it mean for the U.S. economy? Well, like we just said right there, number one and number two, right? Let's just say for whatever reason over in the coming quarters, open AI loses its grip on the large language model race, right?

Which could be possible, right? If you lose, like I said, if you lose your Mount Rushmore, if you lose three of the four more prominent people on your team, if then you keep losing, you know, key, key leaders, people who are co-founders, VP levels. If you keep shedding people at the rate that Open AI is shedding them right now, I don't think it's going to turn out well. I don't think it's going to turn out well. All right, let's keep this going. Just a couple more points to make here. So let's talk about the elephant in the room here. What is actually going on, right?

What's actually going on? Why was Sam Malton and fired back in November? I mean, there was a lot of reports. A. A former Open AI board member at the time came on and, you know, went through all the dirty laundry. That's not what this is about. So, you know, like I said, any time at a fast growing startup like Open AI, there's

always going to be internal conflicts. There's always going to be, you know, wrestling for power internally. But I think something else is going on here, and it's pretty obvious. I think there's safety concerns. I think there's safety concerns. All right. So Open AI has been very open about one thing. They've been open in their pursuit of AGI or artificial general intelligence.

All right. And if you are new here, and if you're not really sure what that means, it's kind of like Terminator, right? It's kind of like that. That might technically be super intelligence, but AGI, artificial general intelligence, is essentially when the AI systems that we all use become smarter than any human at almost all tasks, right? And if you ask the smartest people in the world, there's actually a graph. I'll try to find it and share it and share it in today's newsletter. But essentially, there's a graph that shows over time, right? They've always asked the top researchers in artificial intelligence because AI is not new.

It's been around since the 50s, right? Businesses have been using artificial intelligence, deep learning, machine learning for many decades. So they've always surveyed the smartest people in artificial intelligence about AGI. Because when AGI happens, when artificial general intelligence happens, things get weird. Things get weird, right? when all of a sudden you can talk and ask an AI system anything and it's going to get it consistently right every single time. I mean, I don't think I'm here to get philosophical, but it really changes humanity, right? It changes more than work.

I think right now artificial intelligence, generative AI, large language models are drastically and radically changing what it means to work. and what it means for businesses to use technology. But I think when you start having the artificial general intelligence question, and then after that comes super intelligence, that's when I think it starts to say, okay, this really changes humanity. This changes what it, I know that sounds weird.

It changes what it means. It changes the role of humans, right? Anyways, this survey over the years has said, how far off is artificial general intelligence? And, you know, 10 or 20 years ago, it seemed like most people were like, oh, it's 30 years away. And then seven years ago, people were like, oh, it's, it's, you know, maybe 15 years away,

right? But it keeps getting every couple years when they ask the smartest people in the world about artificial general intelligence, it is seemingly getting closer and closer, right? And now some of the smartest people in the world say, oh, we're maybe a year or two away, right? I was lucky enough to be in a closed-door session with NVIDIA CEO Jensen Wong at the Nvidia GTC conference. And he was asked about this multiple times. And he essentially said less than five years, right? That changes things. And there are so many safety concerns. Because at that point, also when you talk about AGI, right, so when you talk about artificial general intelligence,

you have to think about AI agents. So essentially think, there, there, There could, in theory, be more AGI-inabled agents than humans, right? There could be billions of AI agents that have more reasoning capabilities, more strategic thinking abilities, and more knowledge than the smartest humans in the world. And there could be billions of them working autonomously, completing tasks, building companies even themselves building new AI systems on autopilot, right? That's what you have to think about when you think about this transition from artificial intelligence AI to artificial general intelligence, AGI, to ultimately superintelligence,

right? So is that what, is that what's going on here? Right. Reports have said that Open AI has been done training their GPT4 model for. almost two years, right? And there's been a lot of very other visible people at OpenAI leaving and citing some safety concerns. So let's talk about that one here. All right, so Jan Leakey, all right, so we cover this on the show when this happened. So we have to, I mean, we have to talk about this one. So he came out and said, so he is the former head.

of alignment at OpenAI and the super alignment lead as well. All right. So he left for Anthropic back in May. And he was one of the first prominent former Open AI employees who said what everyone else is thinking. All right. So among other things, I'm reading his tweets here on the screen if you're on the live stream here. He said, building smarter than human machines is an inherently dangerous endeavor. Open AI is shouldering an enormous responsibility on behalf of all of humanity. But over the past years, safety culture and processes have taken a backseat to shiny products. We are long overdue in getting incredibly serious about the implications of AGI. All right, end quote.

All right. So Jan Liki, again, was one of the more prominent people in the whole world when it comes to alignment, when it comes to model alignment and model safety. And he came out and said it. He said, open AI is not taking the safety of AGI seriously enough, right? And then he essentially just said, oh, no, we're going to, I'm going to Anthropics. and we're going to devote the resources actually needed to make AGI safe. All right. So what else is going on here?

Well, it seems like there's also a little bit of an anthropic exodus or people leaving open AI to go to Anthropic. All right. So like we talked about, one of the three original names here in this original report. So again, if you're just maybe tuning in late or if you need a reminder, the trio of leaders who are no longer at Open AI, Peter Dang, the vice president of consumer product has left Open AI. No updates on his plans. John Shulman, a co-founder of OpenAI, who was the lead of the post-training team that finds tuned models. He's gone and has left for Anthropic. And then the president of Open AI, Greg Brockman, originally was reported that he was leaving the company, but he's not.

He said that he is his taking an extended leave. So John Shulman leaving to Anthropic. And then you also have Jan Liki and others that have left Open AI for Anthropic and even Anthropic itself, right? We don't talk about this enough, maybe. but Anthropic was started by two former Open AI people who worked in safety. Actually, a brother-sister duo. Hopefully I get the names right here. It's Dario Amodi and Daniela Amodi.

So Dario was the vice president of research at OpenAI. And Daniela was the vice president of safety and policy. And they left Open AI, I believe, in 2021, start anthropic. So there's there's a trend here. There's a trend here, right? And you also, I mean, you also have to look at Ilya Satskiver. He didn't leave for Anthropic, but, you know, Ilya essentially, you know, he was missing

for a while, right? Essentially, it was kind of underreported. Oh, he's taking a leave of absence and no one heard from him for many, many months. and then it was just announced in May that he was officially leaving Open AI and starting Safe Super Intelligence, Inc. or SSI. And what's curious to me is when you go to Now Their website, which is just a blank white page with some black text, it starts with the phrase super intelligence is within reach. Okay. I don't think Ilya would have put that on SSI's website. if he didn't understand that, hey, open AI has to be already close to having artificial general

intelligence. So there's been a lot of reporting. And this is where we tipto the line between reporting and rumors, right? But there's been reporting and rumors that Open AI's next model, whether that's called GPT5, I believe it might be called GPT next, you know, we're not sure. But there's been plenty of reporting that it's been done. And it's been ready to go for a while. And that Open AI, and I believe this,

and Open AI is waiting until after the U.S. election to release their new model. Because presumably it will be maybe a little too much for the world to comprehend all at once. And the opportunities for misinformation and disinformation, I mean, especially when you talk about things like SORA, right? if SORA, you know, Open AI's extremely impressive AI video tool will be incorporated into the next version of GPT5 or GPTNX. There's a lot of misinformation and disinformation implications that come along with this next model from OpenAI. And presumably it will be off the charts in terms of benchmarking in everyone else. Open AI, for the most part, I mean, they've updated their GPT4 technology in their GPT40. But it's impressive, yes, but it's still working off the backbone of technology that was reportedly, it's been done training for two years.

So you have to assume that Open AI either has a model that is bordering on artificial general intelligence or that is maybe too powerful and too capable for the rest of the world to handle. I mean, it sounds weird saying that out loud. But I mean, when you see some of the highest ranking members of Open AI leave and they go to, they go to Anthropic, right? And I don't think this is a money thing either, right? People are getting paid NBA salaries at OpenAI or Anthropic. It doesn't matter which one. So I don't think it's a money thing. I think it is ultimately a safety thing.

I think there's been high ranking officials at OpenAI that, you know, we set it in Yan Lee. Miki's own words, that open AI has maybe focused a little bit too much on the next shiny products and not enough about the safety of artificial general intelligence. So there's a lot going on under the covers here. So we have to think of what's next for Open AI. Well, I'm not sure. All I know is the coming weeks and the coming months are going to be incredibly fun. to watch, right? I'm glad I'm not an executive right now at, you know, those three big companies,

right, Apple and Microsoft and Nvidia, because from their point of view, I can see how this is a lot of uncertainty and instability in one of the more important companies in the world. But here's the other thing. As a startup with still some of the brightest minds in the world, Open AI is capable, I think of so much more than all of us can even comprehend, right? We haven't even fully talked about even the new vision in voice capabilities that are coming in the new update, which should be in theory coming out any day soon, right? Open AI is a little late on that, but essentially in a desktop mode on Mac where you can click a button, chat, GPT can see whatever you're working on.

you can talk to it like a real human. I mean, if that's not a huge step toward AGI, I don't know what is. Right? When you're on your smartphone, you can say like, hey, what's this? And it can see in real time with low latency and it's smarter than any human, right? When that comes to your phone, when that comes to your desktop, I mean, I don't know. Is that AGI? I don't know.

All I know is it's going to be extremely exciting because I am in the camp of saying that, hey, probably in the months after the U.S. election in November 2024, we're probably going to see a new model that I don't know if the business world will know how to handle it. And it might really change what it means to be a human worker in today's society. I truly believe that. All right. That was a lot today, y'all, unfolding the drama, giving you all what you need to know. So now you are officially, if you're listening to this, you are official. probably the smartest person in your company when it comes to AI.

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