"Like Cruise would get the kick"

 

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Artificial Intelligence  

 

The expert: How the AI fracas affects you  

 

Emma Soutini Ronneklew  

 

Published 21.00  

 

Sam Altman has been the man on everyone's lips for the past few days.  

 

Expert Nicklas Hermansson explains why you should care about a fired AI manager. 

 

- This is as if Tom Cruise would be kicked out of the Mission Impossible films, he says.  

 

Nicklas Hermansson, editor-in-chief of the future magazine NomoFomo, believes that Altman's departure is a big event because he was the front person for the strong forward march of AI tools. 

 

- When the chat bot Chat GPT was released last year by Open AI, it broke all previous records for the number of new users in a short time in the entire history of the Internet, he says. 

 

That Altman was then suddenly fired from his own board is something unusual, he believes.  

 

- Because he was the big star, there are huge shock waves in this world from something like that, he says.  

 

There was early speculation that it was about AI security issues, as Altman and head of research Ilya Sutskever had disagreed about it in the past. 

 

But in a leaked internal memo that came out on Saturday, Open AI's chief operating officer, Brad Lightcap, wrote that the reason for the dismissal did not relate to "financial, business, security or privacy" issues.  

 

 

Sam Altman was fired from his own board. Photo: Eric Risberg / AP  

 

"Be a clear leader in this industry"  

 

The reason was instead communication problems between Altman and the board.  

 

- There are very few people who sit on the board, but many put rationality and safety high on their agenda. So on one side there is a board that wants to make the world a better place, and on the other side we have Sam Altman who has been very aggressive and perhaps thumbed his nose at security to drive development forward, he says.  

 

Hermansson believes that one can only speculate about what effects Altman's departure may have at the moment.  

 

- Open AI and Chat GPT have been clear leaders in this industry, but it seems that many of the staff will also quit now. It certainly opens up the market for other similar tools, he says.  

 

He also believes that Chat GPT will no longer be used as much, and that development will slow down. 

 

- Those who have been in the lead are going to have a big bang now, and many will certainly switch chatbots, he says. 

 

Nicklas Hermansson. Photo: Magnus Wennman