Sam, I Am Rehired
The only thing that could have made the weeklong, OpenAI board-led attempt to oust Sam Altman any more Shakespearean would have been if it has been performed in iambic pentameter. FWIW, I repeatedly tried to get ChatGPT to rewrite the saga in that format and it kept coming back with lines that were 11 or 9 syllables instead of ten. I guess this week took a toll on everyone, even the machine. Maybe it was more soap opera than Shakespeare, anyway. But at least it offered us a respite from much more important and much more depressing news stories. And it is a topic that has been certified safe for discourse around your Thanksgiving table. From The Verge: Sam Altman to return as CEO of OpenAI.
+ “For many people, especially those working in the A.I. industry and the social and professional ecosystems that have grown out of it over the last few years, the news on Friday afternoon that Sam Altman had been fired as C.E.O. of OpenAI–and his subsequent re-instatement late Tuesday night–marked a world-historically shocking turn of events, reverberations from which will be felt for centuries–a turning point on the order of Brutus assassinating Caesar … But for many others, the phrase ‘OpenAI has fired Sam Altman’ is … a collection of words that carries no emotional or semantic weight, an example sentence that exists to demonstrate syntactical rules, language that rolls off the brain like water from a duck’s back.” The interested normie’s guide to OpenAI drama.
+ “The central tension coursing through OpenAI in the past year was whether the company should commercialize, raise money, and grow to further its ambitions of building an artificial general intelligence—a technology so powerful that it could outperform humans in most tasks—or whether it ought to focus its efforts on the safety of its potentially dangerous innovations. Altman represented the former faction, and his aggressive business decisions appear to have been a key factor in his dismissal.” Charlie Warzel: The Money Always Wins. (Or as Falstaff said, “Money is a good soldier, and will on.”)
+ “If this seems dizzying, the next bit might require Dramamine. [Board member Ilya] Sutskever played the key role in firing Altman over Google Meet on Friday, then declined to rehire him on Sunday, and then signed the letter on Monday demanding the return of Altman and the firing of his own board-member co-conspirators. On X (formerly Twitter), Sutskever posted an apology to the entire company, writing, “I deeply regret my participation in the board’s actions.” Altman replied with three red hearts. One imagines Brutus, halfway through the stabbing of Caesar, pulling out the knife, offering Caesar some gauze, lightly stabbing him again, and then finally breaking down in apologetic tears and demanding that imperial doctors suture the stomach wound.” Derek Thompson: The OpenAI Mess Is About One Big Thing. (That one thing is either board governance, or the the fall of Rome. All the Shakespeare references make it difficult to tell.)
