The myth of Hal 9000 is getting closer to ceasing to be a myth.
That metaphor of the domination of man by the machine that thinks and feels autonomously, a key argument of 2001: a space odyssey that Arthur C. Clark published in 1968 –in parallel to the film directed by Stanley Kubrick–, took shape this week on the OpenAI soap opera.
This company was at the top for the development of artificial intelligence (AI) tools. His work is responsible for the popularization of this industry with his chatbot ChaptGPT, which is the computer device that marks the route to follow collectively with millions of daily visits. The firm had a market value of $90 billion.
Suddenly, everything that had been achieved in just twelve months was thrown into the abyss. Without prior notice, or any apparent symptom of an outward dispute, on Friday, November 17, there was general surprise with the dismissal of Sam Altman, 38, not only its chief executive, but the smartest guy, the global face of the sector and the current success and that which is just around the corner.
On that horizon, however, some see pink tones, or rather, the color of money, and others dark, verging on black.
In the 1960s, Umberto Eco published his reflection on mass culture that he titled Apocalyptics and Integrates, a work that serves as an application to what has happened with OpenAI.
In the ranks of the integrated, defenders of the acceleration of AI maintain that it brings innovations and benefits for society and, above all, for the bottom line. There, among others, Altman and the investors, led by Microsoft and its 13 billion contributions to that company, are active.
On the other side are the apocalyptics, who on this occasion have been identified as the engineer Helen Toner, the entrepreneur and researcher Tasha McCauley and the AI pioneer Ilya Sutskeyer. They are the three members of the board of directors who lost their chair in this crisis, encouraged by their own initiative, by sowing doubts regarding the conduct of Altman, who in his creative zeal disregarded the warnings that AI harbors a tragic destiny and that you have to step on the brake.
Sutskeyer, who later regretted it, was responsible for informing the CEO of the decision to fire him. That unexpected communication soured the Formula 1 weekend in Las Vegas, but it stimulated him to move his cables to annul the internal coup d'état.
Altman proved that he is more than the poster photo by gaining massive support from employees. On Tuesday night there was a big party at the San Francisco barracks (even the firefighters had to go when the fire alarm went off). He emerged victorious from the challenge. Thanks to this combination between the workforce and Microsoft, he regained his position and the board of directors that dared to defenestrate him were purged, just as he demanded to return. His reinstatement capped a corporate drama involving billions of dollars, intense pressure from allies, passionate media attention, and a firm belief among members of the artificial intelligence community that the right thing to do. cautiously with what they are building in the laboratories.
This is not the prevailing trend. The struggle between the two visions is resolved in OpenAI. “The capitalist team won. Team Leviathan lost,” stated Kevin Roose in The New York Times. The Leviathan is that destructive and inhuman monster, another way to nickname Hal 9000, an acronym in English for a heuristically programmed algorithmic computer. Now, taken to real terrain, extracted from science fiction, it is reminiscent of the superintelligence that OpenAI has in development, a reason for the alert of the dismissed managers, with the capacity to threaten humanity. They say it is comparable to the meteorite that caused the extinction of the dinosaurs.
As if it were a premonition of these five days of November, Mustafa Suyleyman, precursor and creator of two AI companies, launched his book The Coming Wave in September, a reflection on technology and power, to the great dilemma that arises. Talking about a wave falls short. This is a tsunami, he says.
In its pages it states that artificial intelligence (as well as synthetic biology) will mark “the beginning of a new dawn” creating wealth and a surplus never seen before.
“And yet, its rapid proliferation also threatens a wide range of bad actors to unleash disruption, instability and even catastrophes on an unimaginable scale,” he notes. The future depends on these technologies and, in turn, they endanger it. Under his opinion, that of an optimistic technologist, there is no going back, so everything depends on caution and not underestimating the challenge of this matter.
Remember that after he founded DeepMind in 2010 (acquired in 2014 by Alphabet, Google's parent company), he held a conference in which he praised the efficiency and advances that AI would allow. He warned in parallel that this tool will replace “intellectual manual work” in the same sense that robots will do with physical force. He suggested that there was little precedent for the new form of concentration of power that was coming. “They are coming for us, the technology creators,” he clarified.
The message did not sink in. All around her she saw empty looks. They conceded that there could be some risk, but it wasn't that bad, people are intelligent and solutions have always been found.
So, when I was writing this volume, the emergence and implementation of ChatGPT began to leave its mark on what it had already predicted.
“People often seem to think that this is too far away, that it sounds very futuristic and absurd, that it's just the territory of nerds and fringe thinkers, more hyperbole, more technobabble, more impulse stuff. That is an error. This is real,” she emphasizes.
“We urgently need irrefutable answers on how the coming wave can be controlled and contained, how the safeguards and possibilities of democratic nation states can be maintained, but at the moment no one has such a plan,” he reiterates. “It is a future that none of us wants, although I fear that it is becoming more and more likely,” he clarifies.
In the midst of governments trying to regulate this containment, the solution to the crisis opened by OpenAI suggests that the new era is focused on business.
One survivor remains on the company's board of directors, Adam D'Angelo, chief executive of Quora. Joining him will be Bret Taylor, former Facebook and Salesforce executive, and Larry Summers, former head of the US Treasury and former president of Harvard University. The new members, who may be joined by someone from Microsoft and perhaps Altman, are the type of business leaders who would be expected to oversee a project of this type, experts stressed.
OpenAI emerged in 2015 as a non-profit company, the so-called “effective altruism”. In 2019, it established a commercial subsidiary. The creature has eaten its creator.
“I am Spartacus,” Altman proclaimed to praise the loyalty of OpenAI workers. Spartacus was the slave who led a rebellion against the Roman Empire. To many it sounded like a distortion of history. They think that Altman has put himself at the service of the dominant empire, without worrying about the people.
