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Techmeme
November 18, 2023, 10:15 PM
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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:
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
Jay Peters / The Verge:
OpenAI CTO Mira Murati becomes the interim CEO as OpenAI searches for a permanent CEO; sources say that employees found out when the news was announced publicly
Bloomberg:
Source: Ilya Sutskever and his OpenAI board allies may have been put off by Sam Altman looking to raise tens of billions to create startups off OpenAI's name
Erin Woo / The Information:
Sources: OpenAI Interim CEO Mira Murati tried to calm shell-shocked employees in a companywide meeting following Sam Altman's firing
Kara Swisher / @karaswisher:
Sources: Sam Altman's exit followed a “misalignment” between OpenAI's profit and nonprofit adherents; some may view the company's development speed as too risky
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:
A look at OpenAI's complicated relationship with Microsoft, which does not have a seat on the OpenAI board due to OpenAI's origins as a non-profit organization
Forbes:
A look at OpenAI's unusual equity-less board of directors, which includes Quora CEO Adam D'Angelo, entrepreneur Tasha McCauley, and Georgetown's Helen Toner
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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This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 10:15 PM ET, November 18, 2023.

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From Mediagazer

Naman Ramachandran / Variety:
BBC DG Matt Brittin says the BBC and UK public service broadcasting face “real jeopardy” as license fee erosion drives BBC's third consecutive annual deficit

Natalie Korach / Status:
Memo: NYT CEO Meredith Kopit Levien says the five reporters subpoenaed by the DOJ, and the whole newsroom, have the “full weight of The Times” behind them

Brooks Barnes / New York Times:
Lionsgate's Michael crosses $1B at the global box office, its first film to reach the milestone, per Rentrak, reviving Hollywood's last major independent studio

More News

Will Douglas Heaven / MIT Technology Review:
An interview with DeepMind's Shane Legg and Meredith Ringel Morris, who propose five levels of AGI taxonomy and say the first, “emerging”, has been achieved
New York Times:
Argentina's election has become a testing ground for AI in campaigns, as candidates use AI-created images and videos to promote themselves and attack each other

Earlier Picks

Jonathan Vanian / CNBC:
Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery, Paramount Global, Lionsgate, and Comcast suspend ads on X, joining Apple and other companies
Benj Edwards / Ars Technica:
Cambridge Dictionary announces “hallucinate” as its word of 2023, citing the word's new meaning: generative AI that hallucinates “produces false information”
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