A little bit of information has emerged about the chaos at OpenAI last November when Sam Altman was fired as CEO, then reinstated 4 days later. Helen Toner, one of the board members when all that happened surfaced on a podcast called the TED AI Show. At the time all anybody said was the board found Sam Altman was "not consistently candid in his communications" with the board of directors. "The board no longer has confidence in his ability to continue leading OpenAI."
Helen Toner said the board learned about ChatGPT only after it was launched -- on Twitter. The board was not informed ahead of time. :O Wow. She said Sam Altman owned OpenAI's Startup Fund, but he constantly claimed he had no financial interest in the company and was financially independent. She said he provided inaccurate information about the very little formal safety processes the company had in place. She said Sam Altman told many more lies but she can only mention these, because they are already known to the public. (Not to me but I guess people who are really paying attention.)
After that the conversation continues to discuss various AI safety issues. The potential for AI to be misused for mass surveillance, deepfake scams, automated systems that make decisions badly and people can't do anything about it (e.g. people lose access to financial systems, medical systems, because of some automated system making a decision that affects them), what she calls "the Wall-E future" where AI gives us what we want but not what is actually best for us.
There seems to be no way to link to the episode on the website, so the link just goes to the TED AI Show website. If you're clicking on this right away, it should be the newest episode, but if you're reading this some time later, you may need to search down for "What really went down at OpenAI and the future of regulation w/ Helen Toner".
What really went down at OpenAI and the future of regulation w/ Helen Toner
