Resentments from old partners? Musk publicly blasts Altman with cryptic letter from «OpenAI employees»
November 24, 14:05 Share:
A mysterious letter from OpenAI employees accusing Altman has gone viral (Photo: Patrick Pleul / Reuters)
After Sam Altman returned to OpenAI, a strange letter from supposedly former employees of the company circulated online, accusing him of numerous abuses related to “resentment against Elon Musk.”.
Musk himself shared a link to the letter in X. He noted that the letter was sent to him personally and emphasized that the issues it raised “seem worth investigating.”
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1727096607752282485
The letter's authors, who identify themselves as former OpenAI employees, accuse CEO Sam Altman and company president Greg Brockman of abuse, deception and manipulation.
In particular, we are talking about abuses motivated « an insatiable desire to create universal artificial intelligence ( AGI)»: hiding progress in supposedly secret research initiatives, firing employees who questioned the purpose of research, etc.. Also mentioned is the use by company managers “ discriminatory speech” against a gender transition employee and his subsequent dismissal, which was explained « low productivity». The authors claim the company ignored employee complaints to protect Altman and Brockman.
Also in the letter, company employees allegedly state that Altman was focused on turning OpenAI into a profit-generating enterprise and was not really interested in concerns about potential security issues due to the use of company-developed technologies.
Elon Musk is also mentioned in the letter.. The billionaire founded OpenAI with Altman in 2015. He left the company in 2018, saying that OpenAI was not focusing enough on safe AI development.. At the same time, he remained a donor to the company and, according to him, invested about $50 million in it.
“Sam discreetly but regularly used OpenAI's non-commercial resources to further his personal goals, especially motivated by his resentment of Elon after their falling out,” the letter said.
According to Gizmodo, it was not possible to determine whether the authors of the letter are former OpenAI employees.. The email was first published on Hacker News and then reposted on GitHub by individuals who said they wanted to archive it.
Over the past week, the situation with OpenAI's management has been constantly changing. The company's board of directors fired Sam Altman from his position, and its president, Greg Brockman, also left the company, who they wanted to exclude from the board of directors.
It was announced that Brockman and Altman would join Microsoft's new AI team, which sponsors OpenAI.. Hundreds of company employees demanded the return of Brockman and Altman and threatened to quit along with them.
Later today it became known that Brockman and Altman are returning to their positions at OpenAI. Despite the chaos at the company, OpenAI this week released a significant update to its wildly popular product, the AI chatbot ChatGPT, making its voice version available to everyone.
NV Digest Premium Free email newsletter of only the best materials from NV editors Subscribe The newsletter is sent from Monday to Friday Read also: Prone to trolling. Musk introduced sarcastic AI chatbot Grok “The risks of AI are too great”. Musk demands disclosure of the reasons for Altman's dismissal from OpenAI
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