“We found out about ChatGPT on Twitter”: another possible reason for the anger of the OpenAI board with Sam Altman comes to light

ChatGPT is one of the most important technological products of recent years. OpenAI’s conversational chatbot marked a before and after in the world of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI), caused an earthquake in large technology companies such as Google and launched a billion-dollar race to lead the industry.

If we take this scenario into account, we could think that the launch of this important tool received the approval of the OpenAI board. Now, we have at least one reason to believe that this was not the case. Sam Altman would have given the green light to the launch of ChatGPT without notifying the company’s management body.

A (too) discreet launch

About a year and six months ago, ChatGPT appeared on the scene. Although the concept of chatbot existed long before, for the first time we could have Free access to a wonderful language model that allowed us to converse with him in a natural way. And, furthermore, he boasted an enormous amount of knowledge.

Many of us found out about this tool through Twitter. The curious thing is that some of the most important members of OpenAI would also have found out through the social network. “When ChatGPT came out in November 2022, the board was not informed about it in advance.
We found out about ChatGPT through Twitter”, said Helen Toner on The TED AI Show podcast.

Helen Toner

When we talk about Helen Toner we are referring to an artificial intelligence (AI) researcher who was part of the board of directors of OpenAI at the time of the ChatGPT release. However, she left her position alongside Ilya Sutskever and McCauley when Altman was reinstated following her firing.

Shortly before his resignation from OpenAI, Toner had co-published a study from the Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET) at Georgetown University where he warned of the risks of the products of the firm led by OpenAI. “We were not motivated by a desire to slow down OpenAI’s work,” he said last year.

The researcher’s recent comments join others that are in line with the November 2023 OpenAI crisis. Just a few days ago, a controversy related to the attempts to reach an agreement with Scarlett Johansson so that ChatGPT could have the voice of Samantha from Her’, a negotiation that failed, but that did not prevent the chatbot voice mode from having a similar voice.

Although Altman now leads OpenAI with more power than ever, and even sits on its security committee, he was fired by the board of directors last year. The company’s administrative body alleged that the executive had not been sincere in his communications and that it could no longer trust his ability.

Images | CSET | OpenAI | TechCrunch | Solen Feyissa

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