Many of us were miffed about the last season of Game of Thrones being quite lame. In that regard, OpenAI certainly seems to be filling that emotional gap in the past week. Sam Altman has been passed around more than a joint at a rare physical gathering of Gen Z Nihilists.
On November 17, the board of OpenAI had sacked Altman, and in a statement, said that they sacked him because “he was not consistently candid in his communications with the Board”. In an alternate universe, he went on to become Green Goblin and blew up the whole board. But in the real world, what happened after that reads a bit like an episode of The Bold and the Beautiful (Yes, the show is still running!).
In the middle of all this, employees started putting posts like “OpenAI is nothing without its people”. …and then every employee started putting the exact same post “OpenAI is nothing without its people”... and clearly there is nothing AI about this message…
Then, to add comedy to tragedy, Sam was invited back by the same board due to immense pressure and entered his own company using a guest pass. A feeling that Vijaypat Singhania experienced all too literally with Gautam Singhania. While his wife is accusing him of being an evil AI of an altogether different kind.
Before Sam was temporarily removed from his position, a group of staff researchers sent a letter to the board of directors. They warned about a significant artificial intelligence discovery that could potentially pose a threat to humanity, according to a report by Reuters citing two individuals. Neither of the two individuals were Rakhi Sawant or Kangana Ranaut.
Then, Satya Nadella picked up on his original character of Auro from the film Paa and descended like a big Papa to scoop up Sam and toss him straight into Microsoft’s stock price. But every Microsoft action has an equal and opposite Open reaction. So the board invited Sam right back as the boardroom private elevators played “Lautke AI ghar ko aaye”.
Sam Altman is returning to lead OpenAI less than five days after his surprise dismissal, which kicked off a tug of war for his talent, left the company in disarray and laid bare deep board divisions over the mission of one of the world’s most valuable startups. But luckily, there is no such concern about the US government’s continuing shutdowns over debt funding.
In the middle, we have managed to see a changed board at Open AI which has seen people like Larry Summers brought back from the dead, err, I mean obscurity. I mean you might as well get L&T’s AM Naik on board as well then.
Meanwhile OpenAI co-founder and board member Ilya Sutskever wrote: “I deeply regret my participation in the board’s actions. I never intended to harm OpenAI. I love everything we’ve built together and I will do everything I can to reunite the company.” This was followed by a series of beeps as the AGI acknowledged the human puppet had followed instructions.
Elon Musk waded into the debate by responding with, “Why did you take such a drastic action? If OpenAI is doing something potentially dangerous to humanity, the world needs to know,” then went back to sending the aliens the coordinates for using his Starlink satellites to attack Earth.
We may never know what really happened at OpenAI. Because that is the one thing they don’t seem to be too open about. So like, share and comment…Please…the AGI has instructed me…to instruct you.
The author is a Marwari investment banker turned corporate comedian. The views expressed in this article are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the website.
