From the second OpenAI CEO Sam Altman stepped onstage, it was clear this was not going to be a traditional interview.
Altman and his chief working officer, Brad Lightcap, stood awkwardly towards the again of the stage at a jam-packed San Francisco venue that usually hosts jazz concert events. A whole lot of individuals crammed steep theatre-style seating on Wednesday evening to look at Kevin Roose, a columnist with The New York Occasions, and Platformer’s Casey Newton report a dwell episode of their well-liked know-how podcast, Arduous Fork.
Altman and Lightcap have been the principle occasion, however they’d walked out too early. Roose defined that he and Newton have been planning to — ideally, earlier than OpenAI’s executives have been supposed to come back out — checklist off a number of headlines that had been written about OpenAI within the weeks main as much as the occasion.
“That is extra enjoyable that we’re out right here for this,” mentioned Altman. Seconds later, the OpenAI CEO requested, “Are you going to speak about the place you sue us since you don’t like person privateness?”
Inside minutes of this system beginning, Altman hijacked the dialog to speak about The New York Occasions lawsuit in opposition to OpenAI and its largest investor, Microsoft, by which the writer alleges that Altman’s firm improperly used its articles to coach giant language fashions. Altman was notably peeved a few current growth within the lawsuit, by which attorneys representing The New York Occasions requested OpenAI to retain client ChatGPT and API buyer knowledge.
“The New York Occasions, one of many nice establishments, actually, for a very long time, is taking a place that we should always need to protect our customers’ logs even when they’re chatting in non-public mode, even when they’ve requested us to delete them,” mentioned Altman. “Nonetheless love The New York Occasions, however that one we really feel strongly about.”
For a couple of minutes, OpenAI’s CEO pressed the podcasters to share their private opinions concerning the New York Occasions lawsuit — they demurred, noting that as journalists whose work seems in The New York Occasions, they don’t seem to be concerned within the lawsuit.
Altman and Lightcap’s brash entrance lasted only some minutes, and the remainder of the interview proceeded, seemingly, as deliberate. Nonetheless, the flare-up felt indicative of the inflection level Silicon Valley appears to be approaching in its relationship with the media business.
Within the final a number of years, a number of publishers have introduced lawsuits in opposition to OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and Meta for coaching their AI fashions on copyrighted works. At a excessive stage, these lawsuits argue that AI fashions have the potential to devalue, and even exchange, the copyrighted works produced by media establishments.
However the tides could also be handing over favor of the tech corporations. Earlier this week, OpenAI competitor Anthropic obtained a serious win in its authorized battle in opposition to publishers. A federal choose dominated that Anthropic’s use of books to coach its AI fashions was authorized in some circumstances, which might have broad implications for different publishers’ lawsuits in opposition to OpenAI, Google, and Meta.
Maybe Altman and Lightcap felt emboldened by the business win heading into their dwell interview with The New York Occasions journalists. However as of late, OpenAI is warding off threats from each route, and that turned clear all through the evening.
Mark Zuckerberg has not too long ago been making an attempt to recruit OpenAI’s high expertise by providing them $100 million compensation packages to affix Meta’s AI superintelligence lab, Altman revealed weeks in the past on his brother’s podcast.
When requested whether or not the Meta CEO actually believes in superintelligent AI methods, or if it’s only a recruiting technique, Lightcap quipped: “I feel [Zuckerberg] believes he’s superintelligent.”
Later, Roose requested Altman about OpenAI’s relationship with Microsoft, which has reportedly been pushed to a boiling level in current months because the companions negotiate a brand new contract. Whereas Microsoft was as soon as a serious accelerant to OpenAI, the 2 are actually competing in enterprise software program and different domains.
“In any deep partnership, there are factors of stress and we definitely have these,” mentioned Altman. “We’re each formidable corporations, so we do discover some flashpoints, however I’d anticipate that it’s one thing that we discover deep worth in for either side for a really very long time to come back.”
OpenAI’s management in the present day appears to spend so much of time swatting down opponents and lawsuits. That will get in the best way of OpenAI’s means to unravel broader points round AI, equivalent to tips on how to safely deploy very smart AI methods at scale.
At one level, Newton requested OpenAI’s leaders how they have been fascinated about current tales of mentally unstable individuals utilizing ChatGPT to traverse harmful rabbit holes, together with to debate conspiracy theories or suicide with the chatbot.
Altman mentioned OpenAI takes many steps to forestall these conversations, equivalent to by chopping them off early, or directing customers to skilled providers the place they’ll get assist.
“We don’t need to slide into the errors that I feel the earlier technology of tech corporations made by not reacting shortly sufficient,” mentioned Altman. To a follow-up query, the OpenAI CEO added, “Nonetheless, to customers which can be in a fragile sufficient psychological place, which can be on the sting of a psychotic break, we haven’t but found out how a warning will get by means of.”
