Source: https://openai.com/blog/openai-announces-leadership-transition
Today, it was announced that Sam Altman will no longer be CEO or affiliated with OpenAI due to a lack of “candidness” with the board. This is extremely unexpected as Sam Altman is arguably the most recognizable face of state of the art AI (of course, wouldn’t be possible without great team at OpenAI). Lots of speculation is in the air, but there clearly must have been some good reason to make such a drastic decision.
This may or may not materially affect ML research, but it is plausible that the lack of “candidness” is related to copyright data, or usage of data sources that could land OpenAI in hot water with regulatory scrutiny. Recent lawsuits (https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/writers-suing-openai-fire-back-companys-copyright-defense-2023-09-28/) have raised questions about both the morality and legality of how OpenAI and other research groups train LLMs.
Of course we may never know the true reasons behind this action, but what does this mean for the future of AI?
It all seems vague as hell until some NYTimes/Wapo/WSJ journalist helps parse it all out and writes a clear coherent article about that, also the editor at those papers may not think such a story is newsworthy enough to put resources on that for month for a VC/Startup founders program head but for the CEO of the “hottest” company right now its a no brainer