Techmeme
November 18, 2023, 10:15 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: Microsoft and Thrive are working to reinstate Sam Altman as OpenAI's CEO; Satya Nadella, blindsided by the board's decision, pledged to support Altman  —  - Possible outcome is that board resigns as soon as this weekend  — Altman has been considering new venture, but open to returning
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.
Kate Clark / The Information:
Source: Sam Altman was in discussions with semiconductor companies, including Arm, on the morning of November 17 about designing 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 …
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 …
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 …
Greg Brockman / @gdb:
Jay Peters / The Verge:
Bloomberg:
Erin Woo / The Information:
Kara Swisher / @karaswisher:
Reed Albergotti / Semafor:
Sources: OpenAI has received only a fraction of Microsoft's $10B investment, a big portion of which 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

Uncapped with Jack Altman:
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Conversations with people I admire about things I'm genuinely interested in.
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Invest Like the Best:
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The leading destination to learn about business and investing. We do this by showcasing exceptional talent and ideas.
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Grit:
How Evan Spiegel Is Building the Future of Computing
Grit explores what it takes to create, build and scale world-class organizations.
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Lenny's Podcast:
Why humans are AI's biggest bottleneck (and what's coming in 2026) | Alexander Embiricos (OpenAI Codex Product Lead)
Interviews with world-class product leaders and growth experts to uncover actionable advice to help you build, launch, and grow your own product.
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More News

Will Douglas Heaven / MIT Technology Review:
New York Times:

Earlier Picks

Jonathan Vanian / CNBC:
Benj Edwards / Ars Technica: