A few days before the meeting OpenAI the artificial intelligence (AI) company behind the chatbot ChatGPT, made the decision to fire the recently reinstated CEO Sam Altman, several researchers from the company sent him a letter in which they stated that they had made a discovery related to AI that could directly threaten humanity. This is stated by ‘Reuters’, an agency that, it states, has been able to speak with two sources familiar with the discovery.
According to ‘Reuters’, the receipt of this letter by the board of directors was decisive for the decision last Friday to fire Altman in a surprise manner and without giving investors and employees time to react. However, OpenAI denies this in statements to ‘The Verge’. Likewise, this medium points out that, according to a source consulted, the board never received said letter.
Be that as it may, the receipt, or not, of the letter would not have been the only trigger for Altman’s dismissal. ‘Reuters’, in this regard, points to a long list of disagreements and concerns about the commercialization of advances related to AI before fully understanding their potential consequences.
And the fact is that, while a good part of the board of directors – practically all of them yesterday – advocated for a more cautious and secure development of the solutions, the CEO’s plans were precisely the opposite. What the executive wants is to hurry up and put cutting-edge technology on the street available to individuals and companies, so that they can take advantage and help society.
This could be seen perfectly last November, when the company launched ChatGPT on the market without batting an eyelid and without even having made available to users a tool capable of reliably detecting content generated by the machine from that created by a human. . A tool that, by the way, still hasn’t arrived.
In search of the AGI
This letter, in principle, is related to the work of the ChatGPT company on a project known by the code name Q that, on paper, could represent an important step forward in the development of artificial general intelligence, to which OpenAI calls AGI. This futuristic algorithm, which could arrive “soon or in the distant future,” according to the startup, would have knowledge superior to any human regardless of their job or capabilities.
OpenAI believes that AGI could be extremely beneficial to humanity. Obviously, it would not be without dangers; but, at least from Altman’s point of view, it would be worth all of us taking the risk.
“Because the advantages of AGI are so great, we do not believe it is possible or desirable for society to stop its development forever; Instead, society and AGI developers have to figure out how to do it well,” explained the recently reinstated CEO in a publication made last February.
According to a source with knowledge of the Reuters investigation, Q is capable of solving some mathematical problems. Although it would only currently reach the level of primary school students, OpenAI researchers are very hopeful about its possibilities for the future.