Holiday Drama in AI world!

We’re taking a break this week and so should you! As you come out of your turkey coma this morning, feel free to read through some of OpenAI debacle that took place over the last week. We’ve kept it short and sweet

Let’s dig in.

OpenAI drama:

If you’ve been paying attention to any tech news of the week, you’ve at least seen the headlines on the firing of Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, and creator of ChatGPT. Whether or not you care about ole Sammy or not, the story has been pretty crazy! .

If you’re looking for a quick summary with some extra sources so you can get up to speed, we got you covered…

Here’s what’s up!

• OpenAI, the one valued at $80 Billion, is run by a non-profit board 🧐 

• On Friday of last week, this tiny board fired Sam Altman out of nowhere, shocking the tech industry.

  • The Non-profit structure is at the center of the reason why this was even possible at the scale of this company.

• After the firing news, Microsoft’s stock dropped by 1.7% given their $10 Billion investment in the company

• On Monday, Microsoft announced they hired Sam Altman to essentially compete with OpenAI

• As of earlier this week, more than 700 of the 770 total employees signed a letter stating they would quit if Altman wasn’t reinstated by OpenAI and a new board was put in place. This list included one of the board members that fired him!! 🤣 

• As of this past Wednesday, Sam Altman has now returned as the CEO of OpenAI

uhhhhh…..wut?

The two things that stand out to me most in this story are: 

• How fragile the ecosystem was in one of the most valuable companies in the world. This serves as a reminder to me of just how young some of these massive companies are these days.

  • PSA! it’s always good to keep stories like these in mind before putting too much faith or money into the giants before doing your research.

• How compelled almost all of the employees were in order to bring back their leader. That’s when you know your mission is clear. Let’s just hope that the mission is for good! 🙏 

Two predictions that I’m keeping 👀s on:

• With Altman back at the helm, and a new board being put in place, OpenAI comes back more energized than ever and proves their dominance on the space.

• With only a fraction of Microsft’s investment being paid thus far, they’ll be making sure the new OpenAI board knows to not mess with the giants'. Give this podcast a listen to hear Microsoft’s CEO discuss the matter.

That’s it for this week! We’re looking forward to our normal programming next week. We hope you have a wonderful, and hopefully long weekend! 👋 

We could use a little hand here…..