What you need to know
- Sam Altman has reportedly negotiated a new deal with Apple to bring ChatGPT to the iPhone.
- OpenAI’s partnership with Microsoft gives it access to infinite computing and perpetual customers.
- Two employees left OpenAI when it announced its new flagship GPT-4o model.
Reports flooding the internet indicate that OpenAI and Apple are ironing out the final details in a new deal that would see ChatGPT make its debut on iPhones and the upcoming iOS 18 update.
In addition to the new flagship GPT-4o model, OpenAI unveiled its new macOS app that Windows rejected despite Microsoft’s heavy investment in the company. OpenAI explained that the decision to ship ChatGPT to Mac users was based on it prioritizing where its users are located. This may indicate that most ChatGPT users use Apple devices.
OpenAI’s top executives are leaving the company
OpenAI has had a busy week, launching a new flagship GPT-4o model at the just-concluded Spring Update event that can reason over audio, images, and text in real time, making interactions with ChatGPT more intuitive.
Strangely enough, the ChatGPT maker has lost a number of employees during this crucial week in its history. Ilya Sutskever, co-founder and chief scientist at OpenAI, announced he was leaving the popular startup after nearly a decade for a project that is “personally meaningful.” While details remain limited, Sutskever indicated he would release more details about his next move in due course.
Sutskever added:
“The company’s journey has been nothing short of miraculous, and I am confident that OpenAI will build an AGI that is both secure and useful under the leadership of Sam Altman and other top executives.”
After almost ten years, I have made the decision to leave OpenAI. The company’s journey has been nothing short of miraculous, and I am confident that OpenAI will build AGI that is both secure and useful under the leadership of @sama, @gdb, @miramurati and now, under the…May 14, 2024
A few days later, after Sutskever, @signüll on X (formerly Twitter) announced that they had also resigned from OpenAI. They have since updated their profile on
The former OpenAI employee didn’t reveal why they resigned from the company, but did provide some insight into what’s going on within the company. In a post on
Signüll mentioned the following as a starting point for the statements highlighted above:
- He completely neutralized the threat of Elon Musk.
- He negotiated an incredible deal with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella for infinite computing and everlasting customers.
- He negotiated a new deal with Apple to make OpenAI native to the iPhone, capturing the zeitgeist and consumer usage.
Sam Altman is a genius masterclass strategist: he used the enemy-of-my-enemy principle to perfection. 1) He completely neutralized the threat of Elon. 2) Negotiated an incredible deal with Satya for infinite computing power and eternal customer.3) Now negotiating a deal with apple to make openai… pic.twitter.com/RiTTrsslHTMay 15, 2024
“OpenAI now sits squarely between two of the largest companies in both the consumer and enterprise worlds. It has forever cemented OpenAI as the de facto name when anyone in the world thinks of ‘AI’ and has turned every single weakness of OpenAI into a strength made – the only man who could do that makes Google dance and be put in a hugely awkward position. Absolutely incredible performance.
The intricate collaboration between Microsoft and OpenAI may be too complex to understand
Microsoft’s multibillion-dollar investment in OpenAI and its technology allowed the company to join AI and integrate it into most of its products and services. The company is now the world’s most valuable company with a market capitalization of more than $3 trillion, ahead of Apple.
But the partnership wasn’t a walk in the park either, especially after last year’s OpenAI fiasco that led to Sam Altman’s resignation and his reinstatement as CEO by the board of directors. During this period, Microsoft was quiet, but rumors reaching the mill indicated that the company was ready to absorb hundreds of OpenAI staffers into its new AI division at its LinkedIn offices in San Francisco.
As you may know, Microsoft has a 49% stake in OpenAI’s profitable arm, which essentially means the company stands to lose big if OpenAI’s success is short-lived. Interestingly, this doesn’t seem to bother Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella:
“We had a lot of confidence in our own ability. We have all the IP rights and all the capabilities. I mean, look, if OpenAI disappears tomorrow, I honestly don’t want any of our customers to worry about that because we have all rights to continue the innovation, not just to serve the products. But we can just do what we did in partnership, ourselves, and so we have the people, we have the computer, we have the data, we have everything .”
Satya Nadella has previously indicated that OpenAI would not have existed without Microsoft’s early investment and adoption of its technology and services. Interestingly, the former OpenAI employee revealed that most people do not understand the complicated collaboration between Microsoft and OpenAI. The deal reportedly includes “a very nice clause.”
what most people don’t understand or realize is that @sama negotiated a very nice clause in the deal with microsoft. Once openai hits AGI microsoft has zero IP and at 49% they have no control. who can declare when/if there is AGI? that would be openai & @sama.May 16, 2024
Once OpenAI reaches the coveted AGI status, Microsoft will no longer have any IP and despite its 49% stake, it will no longer have control. OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman will reportedly take all the credit.
Sam Altman and Satya Nadella on superintelligence
Last year, a report indicated that OpenAI was on the verge of achieving superintelligence (codenamed Q* (Q-Star)), which may have contributed to Sam Altman’s firing. It further announced that the company would hit AGI within a decade or sooner, with chief scientist Ilya Sutskever leading operations on that front at the time.
OpenAI’s CEO hasn’t been shy about his ambitions to achieve AGI, but Microsoft’s Satya Nadella doesn’t seem too concerned about superintelligence. His focus lies elsewhere, as highlighted in an earlier interview:
“I’m much more focused on the benefits for all of us. I am haunted by the fact that the Industrial Revolution did not reach the parts of the world where I grew up until much later. So I’m looking to do something that might be even bigger than the Industrial Revolution, and really do what the Industrial Revolution did for the West, for everyone in the world. So I’m not at all concerned about AGI popping up or showing up anytime soon. Amazing, right? That means 8 billion people have abundance. That’s a fantastic world to live in.”
During an interview with The Economist’s editor-in-chief, OpenAI Sam Altman and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella talked about the future of AI. Altman revealed that the company is still pursuing the AGI benchmark, although he did not indicate whether the company was taking a radical or incremental path in exploring opportunities in the space.
When asked about the safety of such a major technological breakthrough, Altman admitted that there is no big red button designed to stop the progress of AI. He added that if OpenAI wants to achieve superintelligence AGI, people would have the standard “two-week freakout” before things return to normal:
“One thing I often say is that no one knows what happens next, and I can’t see the other side of the horizon with any detail. But it seems the deep human motivations aren’t going anywhere.“
When it comes to maintaining privacy and security regarding AI, Sam Altman says there should be an ‘international agency’ tasked with investigating the safety of the technology and regulating AI like an airplane to prevent that it harms humanity.
Elon is suing OpenAI for a major betrayal of its founder’s mission, amid copyright infringement issues
Earlier this year, Elon Musk recently filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and Sam Altman for abandoning their original mission and vision: making AI available to everyone for free. The billionaire claimed that OpenAI has been turned into a de facto subsidiary of Microsoft and is now more focused on monetization, while referring to the ChatGPT maker’s GPT-4 model as “a de facto proprietary algorithm of Microsoft. ”
Musk added that the GPT-4 model constitutes AGI and wants the law to force OpenAI to return to its original mission, which includes making its research, findings and technological advancements easily accessible to the public.
Elon Musk has been quite vocal about advances in AI and has even indicated that we are on the cusp of the biggest technological revolution with AI, but there won’t be enough power in 2025. He believes there is a 20% chance that AI will end. humanity, but still says the technology needs to be explored despite inevitable demise.