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Updated 09.54 |Published 2023-11-20 16.38
Sam Altman.Photo: Alastair Grant/AP
The turbulence surrounding fired AI guru Sam Altman points to an unpleasant truth:
In the choice between money and what is best for humanity, money will always win.
It was the news that caused all the world's tech bros to completely spin this weekend: Sam Altman, the golden boy of AI technology, received a passport on gray paper from OpenAI - the company behind ChatGPT.
That a CEO gets kicked is in itself about as dramatic as a plate of yogurt, it's part of everyday life.
The company leader who does not deliver "shareholder value" is in the long run as impossible in his position as a national team captain who loses to a Tintin country in football.
That was precisely why Sam Altman's exit came as a shock.
This 38-year-old with a boyish appearance has made his owners enormously wealthy in a short time.Before the weekend's events, OpenAI expected to bring in new money at a valuation of $86 billion, almost SEK 1,000 billion.
The explanation is the incredible success of ChatGPT.
In any other company, Sam Altman would be so securely in the CEO's chair that he might as well have been screwed.
FACTS
5 points about the chaos surrounding Open AI
Microsoft presents the signing of Altman.Photo: Barbara Ortutay / AP
But OpenAI is not just any company.Founded in 2015 by a group of researchers with the stated goal of ensuring that AI technology is developed in a way that "has the greatest likelihood of benefiting humanity at large".
OpenAI therefore consists of two parts – a non-profit company that deals with research and a subsidiary company that will finance the party by collecting money.
It seems to be in this built-in tug of war between idealism and profit that the problems arose.
According to several business media, the board felt that Sam Altman expanded far too quickly without taking security into account enough.
Sam Altman, for his part, believed that the company must accelerate in order to finance the development of the technology.According to the Bloomberg news agency, the rush to ChatGPT has been so great that the company's computing power is simply not enough - and investing in new equipment costs a lot of money.
Sam Altman has admitted that there are dangers with AI but believes that they can be managed and that the possibilities of the technology are so great that it is worth the risk.
But in OpenAI's board, the skeptical research types are in the majority.Therefore, they were able to force Altman out.
The reason, that Sam Altman was not too bad at making money but, on the contrary, too good – is what makes this story unique.
In a normal corporate economic context, the board appears as a bunch of aloof hoodlums.
But the strong reactions also say something about today's modern capitalism, where, despite all the talk about climate, gender equality and social responsibility, economic interests come first.
OpenAI is the antithesis.The company's statutes even state that profit must always be prioritized lower than the company's main purpose of promoting humanity.
It oniy took about a day before it became clear that Sam Altman got a new job at Microsoft, which is OpenAI's biggest investor.
He is said to be bringing a large group from OpenAI with him, and one guess is that they will not be primarily concerned with helping old ladies across the street.
After all, it is not Microsoft's altruism that has made the company the world's second largest after Apple, with a market capitalization of just under SEK 30,000 billion.
AI is not like any other technology.If just one tenth of the scientists' prophecies come true, it will change the world.And if only one hundredth of the warnings come through, the risks are enormous.
Whoever has the most money will win the race for AI.And thus gain a power that can be equated with a kind of god.
Okay, that might sound a bit over the top.
For everyone except the Silicon Valley tech dudes.
Several of them have already donned the role of world ruler without the slightest hint of blushing.
Via Instagram, Mark Zuckerberg has the well-being of hundreds of millions of young people in his hands.Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page know more about people's innermost thoughts than we do.And Elon Musk with his X actively brings out the less beautiful sides of man.
Ironically, it was Elon Musk who was one of the initiators of OpenAI, and is among those who have spoken most dystopianly about AI.
Mark Zuckerberg.Photo: Mark Lennihan/AP
What he seems to have given less thought to are the existential dangers of concentrating economic and technological power in a few people – himself, for example.
With his Starlink satellite system, he has unsolicitedly taken on the task of deciding wars (as in Ukraine) - and thus who gets to live and who gets to die.His power is so great that people in the US military call it a kind of "shadow government".
Why is no one close to Elon Musk telling him to tighten up?Because he is the richest man in the world and has no boss.And more importantly, that he has made so many so incredibly rich.Few things more effectively silence critics.
Musk.Photo: Michel Euler / AP
And while in the eyes of some Elon Musk is increasingly acting like a Bond villain, millions of people see him as an idol and role model.
"You cannot serve both God and mammon", it says in a thick, well-known book.
Those who wrote it cannot have foreseen the 2020s.
It is perfectly possible to work for both.They are now one and the same being.
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