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Daily Digest #365

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Hello folks, here’s what we have today;

PICKS

1. The whole mess with OpenAI's leadership is finally getting sorted.³¹² They did an internal investigation and the results are out. OpenAI’s board had legit concerns but firing Sam (that too, suddenly) was a bit of an overreaction. Sam stays the CEO, and is back at the OpenAI board with three new members.🍿Our Summary¹⁵ (also below)

2. Elon Musk announces that xAI will open-source Grok this week.⁴⁴⁹ For context, Elon Musk is suing OpenAI over betraying their founding contract regarding the openness of their work.

3. Midjourney accuses Stability AI of theft^499† and bans its employees. Emad Mostaque (Stability AI’s CEO) commented they’re investigating this internally. Midjourney’s CEO, David Holz, confirmed the action and communicated extra details with Emad.

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NEWS

• Nearly 3-in-4 game devs are excited about AI NPCs.²⁴¹

• Sarah Guo and Elad Gil⁴⁴⁵ recap AI in 2024, and what’s ahead.

• Chipmaker Astera wants to raise $534M⁶¹ in its US IPO.

• The GPT-4 barrier⁶⁸⁶ has finally been broken.

• My attempt at an AI writing assistant for Chinese¹²⁷. The resulting app⁷².

• Soul Machines and Authentic Brands revealed an AI avatar of Marilyn Monroe²⁴³ at SXSW.

• US President Biden calls upon Congress to ban AI voice impersonation.¹³⁹

• Thomson Reuters has $8B war chest¹⁸³ for AI-focused deals.

• The risks of expanding the definition of AI safety.¹¹⁹

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QUICK BITES

The whole mess with OpenAI's leadership is finally getting sorted. They did an internal investigation and the results are out.³¹² OpenAI’s board had legit concerns but firing Sam (that too, suddenly) was a bit of an overreaction. Sam is back at the OpenAI board with three new members.²¹

What is going on here?

OpenAI finished its internal investigation of November 2023 events.

What does this mean?

OpenAI hired a fancy law firm called WilmerHale to dig into what went down. Quick rewind: the board at the time kicked Sam off the board and straight-up fired him as CEO. Cue employee freakout, some backroom deals, and a few days later Sam's back as CEO, but not on the board (and some of the old board members are out).

The whole reason for the drama was that Sam and the board weren't seeing eye-to-eye. The investigation basically confirmed the same but also made it clear it wasn't about messed-up products or money problems. Sam even admitted²² he could've handled a certain situation (whatever that was) way better.

Now, Sam is back on the OpenAI board with three new members: Dr. Sue Desmond-Hellmann (ex-Gates Foundation CEO), Nicole Seligman (a former top lawyer at Sony), and Fidji Simo (Instacart's CEO). These people know how to run big, complex operations.

The Information²⁸ on the street is that Ilya Sutskever, OpenAI's Chief Scientist, is sticking around. Sam seems pretty keen on keeping him around too, as “Nothing is changing”, “Ilya is awesome” and “I hope we work together for the rest of our careers.” (via The Verge²⁵)

Why should I care?

This shakeup could have derailed OpenAI. CTO Mira Murati also criticised¹³ news outlets and previous board members on their attempts to “pit them against themselves”. Now, they're back on track. And everyone’s asking when are we getting the next release? The boss replied: “patience jimmy. it will be worth the wait.’⁶¹

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