Techmeme
November 18, 2023, 9:10 PM

Top News

The Verge:
Source: OpenAI's board had agreed to resign and let Sam Altman and Greg Brockman return, but has since waffled; Altman would want significant governance changes  —  The OpenAI board is in discussions with Sam Altman to return to CEO, according to multiple people familiar with the matter.
Forbes:
Sources: OpenAI investors discussed reinstating Sam Altman by threatening OpenAI with mass researcher revolt, withholding Microsoft cloud credits, and a lawsuit  —  With the ousted OpenAI CEO actively discussing a new artificial intelligence venture, investors in his previous company are trying …
Bloomberg:
Sources: Satya Nadella, blindsided by the OpenAI board's decision, has been in touch with Sam Altman and pledged to support him in whatever steps he takes next  —  - Possible outcome is that board resigns as soon as this weekend  — Altman has been considering new venture, but open to returning
Kate Clark / The Information:
Source: Sam Altman has been in discussions with semiconductor companies, including Arm, on Friday morning about efforts to design new chips that lower LLM costs  —  Sam Altman, the recently ousted CEO of OpenAI, has been telling investors that he is planning to launch a new artificial intelligence venture …
New York Times:
Sources: Sam Altman and Greg Brockman are planning to pitch a new AI startup to investors and are considering which OpenAI employees would join them  —  Sam Altman, who was forced out of his company on Friday afternoon, was quickly moving to create another company with another OpenAI executive who quit on Friday.
Axios:
OpenAI memo: Sam Altman's firing wasn't due to “malfeasance” or related to financial, business, safety, or security practices but a “breakdown in communication”  —  Team - after yesterday's announcement, which took us all by surprise, we have had multiple conversations …
Kevin Roose / New York Times:
Source: at an OpenAI all-hands meeting, Ilya Sutskever defended Sam Altman's ouster as necessary to protect OpenAI's mission of making AI beneficial to humanity  —  Everything seemed to be going his way.  Then his time at OpenAI was over.  —  All over Silicon Valley …
Greg Brockman / @gdb:
Greg Brockman describes OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever's role in Sam Altman's firing, Brockman's removal from OpenAI's board, and Mira Murati's foreknowledge  —  Sam and I are shocked and saddened by what the board did today. Let us first say thank you to all the incredible people who we have worked with at OpenAI, our customers, our investors, and all of those who have been reaching out. We too are still trying to figure out exactly...
Jon Victor / The Information:
Sources: three senior OpenAI researchers resign, including Director of Research Jakub Pachocki, and Head of Preparedness Aleksander Madry  —  Three senior researchers at OpenAI resigned Friday night as the artificial intelligence developer suffered fallout from the firing of CEO Sam Altman …
Bloomberg:
Jay Peters / The Verge:
Erin Woo / The Information:
Kara Swisher / @karaswisher:
Reed Albergotti / Semafor:
Sources: OpenAI got only a fraction of Microsoft's $10B investment and a big portion of the funding is in cloud purchases, giving Microsoft significant leverage  —  Only a fraction of Microsoft's $10 billion investment in OpenAI has been wired to the startup, while a significant portion of the funding …
Todd Bishop / GeekWire:
Forbes:
Ben Schoon / 9to5Google:
Nothing pulls its Sunbird-based iMessage app Nothing Chats from the Play Store after a researcher found messages are not E2EE, attachments are public, and more  —  Sunbird has been promising iMessage support on Android for about a year now, but the company has always seemed rather sketchy.

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Featured Podcasts

Big Technology Podcast:
OpenAI's User Growth Miss, Musk vs. Altman, Prediction Market Ban
The Big Technology Podcast takes you behind the scenes in the tech world featuring interviews with plugged-in insiders and outside agitators.
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Training Data:
OpenAI's Greg Brockman: Why Human Attention Is the New Bottleneck
Sequoia Capital partners host conversations with leading AI builders and researchers to develop a deeper understanding of the evolving technologies and their implications.
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The Upstarts Podcast:
Runway's Cris Valenzuela: Building The Hollywood-Friendly Video AI That OpenAI Couldn't
Veteran tech reporter Alex Konrad sits down with breakout entrepreneurs taking on the status quo to shake up their fields in AI, design, nuclear energy, space, and more.
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Hard Fork:
OpenAI's Big Reset + A.I. in the Doctor's Office + Talkie, a pre-1930s LLM
The future is already here. Each week, journalists Kevin Roose and Casey Newton explore and make sense of the latest in the rapidly changing world of tech.
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Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith:
Ryan Roslansky: Turning AI Anxiety into Skills for the Future of Work
Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith speaks with leaders in government, business, and culture to explore the most critical challenges at the intersection of technology and society.
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Earlier Picks

Jonathan Vanian / CNBC:
Benj Edwards / Ars Technica: