Two of the board members involved in the brief ouster of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman in November have finally broken their silence about what happened in a new op-ed.
The lifting of the lid by former board members Helen Toner and Tasha McCauley comes a week after Altman was forced to apologize to Scarlett Johansson over accusations that he authorized the use of her voice without proper permission. .
In another controversy this month, one of OpenAI’s members, Ilya Sutskever, announced that he was leaving OpenAI for a “very personal and meaningful” project.
Altman has denied that Johansson’s voice was used for the company’s Sky platform despite the actor calling the voice “eerily similar” and tweeting the word “she” when announcing the release.
Johansson starred in a film about a robotic voice called Her in 2013.
Now, Toner and McCauley say in a Economist opinion piece that the company’s senior managers felt in 2023 that Altman created a “toxic culture of lying” and engaged in “behavior (that can be characterized as psychological abuse).
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has been accused of creating a “toxic culture of lying” at his company
Tasha McCauley, left, and Helen Toner, right, wrote an op-ed for The Economist in which they leveled new accusations against Sam Altman.
Toner and McCauley went on to say that their decision to remove Altman was motivated by a desire to “save” OpenAI’s regulatory structure.
The pair go on to accuse Altman’s behavior of undermining “the board’s oversight of key decisions and internal safety protocols.”
The article was published on May 26. Both wrote that when they joined OpenAI, they were “cautiously optimistic” about the company’s future. At the time, OpenAI was a non-profit organization.
In the lead-up to Altman’s firing, Toner and McCauley said board members began sharing their concerns about the CEO “privately.”
“Developments since he returned to the company, including his rejoining the board and the departure of senior security-focused talent, bode poorly for the OpenAI experiment in self-governance,” they wrote.
‘Even with the best of intentions, without external oversight, this type of self-regulation will end up being unenforceable, especially under the pressure of immense profit incentives. Governments must play an active role.”
They regret that OpenAI had the greatest potential of all the companies developing the technology to remain ethical and self-governed. The pair also spoke out against the lack of federal laws regulating AI.
In November 2023, when Altman was temporarily banned from his own company, a statement said his dismissal was due to him “not being consistently truthful in his communications.” Altman returned to ChatGPT as CEO days after he was fired.
Russian-Israeli-Canadian computer scientist Ilya Sutskever, co-founder and chief scientist of OpenAI, left the company earlier this month.
Scarlett Johansson, 39, says she “was shocked, angry and in disbelief” as she claims the company OpenAI took her voice without her consent for a new ChatGPT project.
Sam Altman’s statement on the controversy was issued on X in the wake of Johansson’s damning allegations about the methods employed by OpenAI.
Altman, co-founder of the San Francisco-based company behind ChatGPT and a venture capitalist who, according to Forbes, amassed much of his billion dollars through investments.
His dismissal and subsequent reinstatement as CEO last November blindsided the rapidly commercializing industry, as internal strife threatened to sink one of the most sought-after voices in artificial intelligence.
This week, Altman attracted some positive press when he announced that he had joined his list of wealthy philanthropists pledging to give away more than half of their fortunes.
“We would not make this commitment if it were not for the hard work, brilliance, generosity and dedication to improving the world of many people who built the scaffolding of society that allowed us to get here,” Altman wrote with her husband and its technology. the investor Oliver Mulherin.
“There’s nothing we can do except feel immense gratitude and commit to giving back and doing what we can to build the scaffolding a little higher.”
Bill Gates, Melinda French Gates and Warren Buffett founded the Giving Pledge in 2010 to foster a culture of philanthropy among the world’s wealthiest people to address pressing problems.
More than 240 signatories from 30 countries have pledged to donate most of their wealth to charity, although critics argue there is little oversight to ensure community members fulfill their vows.
In 2013, Johansson voiced Samantha, the virtual assistant to a lonely man (L, Joaquin Phoenix), in Spike Jonze’s sci-fi romantic drama Her, which received rave reviews and grossed $48.3 million at the box office. the world box office.
The Academy Award-nominated actress issued a statement through her publicist Marcel Pariseau to NPR, explaining the issue in detail on Monday.
OpenAI first implemented voice capabilities for ChatGPT, which included five different voices, in September, allowing users to engage in conversations with the AI assistant.
‘Voice Mode’ was originally only available to paid subscribers, but in November, OpenAI announced that the feature would be free to all users with the mobile app.
And ChatGPT interactions are becoming more sophisticated. Last week, OpenAI said the latest update to its generative AI model can mimic human cadences in its verbal responses and can even attempt to detect people’s moods.
OpenAI says the newest model, called GPT-4o, runs faster than previous versions and can reason through text, audio and video in real time.
In a demonstration during OpenAI’s announcement on May 13, the AI robot conversed in real time, adding emotion — specifically “more drama” — to its voice as requested.
It also attempted to extrapolate a person’s emotional state by watching a selfie video of their face, with the help of language translations, step-by-step math problems, and more.
GPT-4o, short for “omni,” is not yet widely available. It will progressively reach selected users in the coming weeks and months. The model’s text and image capabilities have already started rolling out and are set to reach even some of those using ChatGPT’s free tier, but the new voice mode will only be available to paid ChatGPT Plus subscribers.
While most are yet to get their hands on these newly announced features, the capabilities have evoked even more comparisons to Spike Jonze’s dystopian romance ‘Her’.