Reuters reported that just before Sam Altman was briefly ousted, OpenAI researchers sent the board a warning letter about a potent AI discovery dubbed Q* that could threaten humanity. The model reportedly solved certain grade-school math problems under heavy compute, fueling internal hopes for AGI—and handing the board a key catalyst for Altman's dramatic dismissal.
OpenAI just made ChatGPT's voice conversation feature completely free for all mobile users. Instead of paying for Plus, anyone can now tap the headphones icon in the mobile app to talk out loud with the chatbot and get spoken answers. In a cheeky nod to its wild board drama, OpenAI's announcement demo jokingly calculated pizza orders for 778 hungry employees.
OpenAI employees just staged an open revolt, with 738 out of roughly 770 staffers signing a letter demanding the board resign and reinstate Sam Altman. In a wild twist, chief scientist Ilya Sutskever also signed after expressing deep regret for his role in the firing. With Microsoft offering to take on everyone who leaves, the company faces an existential wipeout.
OpenAI’s board just shut the door on Sam Altman’s return, tapping former Twitch CEO Emmett Shear as interim leader—making him the third CEO in three days. Meanwhile, Microsoft quickly hired Altman and Greg Brockman to head a brand-new advanced AI research team. Why it matters: OpenAI's leadership crisis just triggered an unprecedented talent coup by its biggest backer.
OpenAI's board just entered frantic talks to bring back ousted CEO Sam Altman only a day after abruptly firing him, facing fierce pushback from employees threatening mass resignations. However, the negotiations collapsed over governance demands, prompting the board to name former Twitch boss Emmett Shear as interim CEO—its third chief executive in a single weekend.
Top OpenAI researchers just quit following the board's sudden firing of CEO Sam Altman on Friday. The departures include research director Jakub Pachocki, AI risk team head Aleksander Madry, and 7-year veteran Szymon Sidor, along with cofounder Greg Brockman stepping down. Why it matters: Losing the primary technical minds behind GPT-4 plunges OpenAI into an unprecedented governance and talent crisis.
Google just pushed the release of its flagship AI model Gemini to early 2024, after previously telling cloud customers it would roll out in November. Positioned by DeepMind as its true competitor to GPT-4, the delay shows Google is still having a tough time catching up with OpenAI.
Microsoft just renamed Bing Chat and Bing Chat Enterprise to Copilot, giving its AI assistant a dedicated web home at copilot.microsoft.com. After months of pushing AI inside search to challenge Google, Microsoft is unbundling the chatbot from Bing. It is now positioning Copilot as a standalone product to compete directly with ChatGPT.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman just confirmed the company has started training GPT-5, claiming the next-gen model could potentially cross into superintelligence. But building it won't be cheap—Altman noted that hitting AGI requires massive compute and data, meaning OpenAI will need billions more from Microsoft and other backers before it ever sees the light of day.
Sam Altman just used OpenAI’s new custom GPTs feature to troll Elon Musk’s rival chatbot, Grok. Altman instructed the builder to create a bot with awkward, "cringey boomer humor," which the system humorously dubbed Grok. It marks the latest jab in an ongoing feud between the two former co-founders.
Humane just revealed the AI Pin, a $699 magnetic wearable designed to replace phone screens with OpenAI models and voice controls. The clip-on gadget uses a tiny projector, camera, and gestures to handle messaging, nutrition lookup, and real-time translation. Why it matters: It represents the boldest bet yet on post-smartphone AI hardware, though preorders only begin November 16th.
OpenAI just rolled out custom GPTs to subscribers after beating back a coordinated DDoS attack that took down ChatGPT and its developer API. The rollout was stalled after traffic surges—initially blamed on DevDay hype—turned out to be foul play claimed by Anonymous Sudan. Now the service is stabilized and custom bots are live.
OpenAI just restored ChatGPT and its developer APIs after a major outage knocked services offline for over 90 minutes. The crash hit its 100 million weekly users with capacity errors following DevDay launch hype. Sam Altman warned that surging demand means short-term instability will likely stick around.
Amazon is developing a massive new AI model codenamed Olympus to catch up with rivals OpenAI and Google. Overseen directly by CEO Andy Jassy, the model reportedly features two trillion parameters and could power Alexa and Amazon's online store as soon as December. Why it matters: After falling behind in generative AI, Amazon is ready to throw serious compute behind proprietary foundation models.
OpenAI just launched GPTs, allowing users to create tailored versions of ChatGPT simply by chatting with a builder and plugging in custom instructions, files, and external APIs. A GPT Store is coming later this month with leaderboards and future revenue sharing. It basically turns everyone into an AI app builder, available now to Plus and Enterprise users.
OpenAI is rolling out a new beta update to ChatGPT Plus that lets users upload and analyze files directly in chat. Even better, it drops the clunky tool switcher—GPT-4 can now automatically figure out whether to browse the web, analyze data, or generate images based on context. The update is gradually rolling out to subscribers.
OpenAI just leased two buildings at Uber’s Mission Bay headquarters, marking San Francisco’s biggest office deal since 2018. The setup will provide room for the ChatGPT maker to expand to more than 2,000 employees. Why it matters: After years of tech downscaling, the AI boom is actively reviving SF's struggling commercial real estate.
Boston Dynamics just turned its Spot robot into an autonomous tour guide by wiring it up to ChatGPT, Whisper, and BLIP-2. The quadruped can now inspect its surroundings, navigate on the fly, and banter with visitors in whatever persona it is assigned—including a sarcastic guide. Why it matters: It shows how foundation models can give physical robots commonsense reasoning, even if a 6-second latency and hallucinations remain pain points.
Bill Gates thinks generative AI may have reached a ceiling, telling Handelsblatt that GPT-5 will not be noticeably better than GPT-4. While he called the jump from GPT-2 to GPT-4 incredible, he argues current models are hitting limits. Still, he expects AI accuracy to climb and costs to drop over the next five years, unlocking reliable applications in healthcare.
A deep dive into the top 50 AI tools reveals they generated over 24 billion visits between September 2022 and August 2023, with ChatGPT commanding a staggering 14 billion visits alone. Character AI and Google Bard took the next spots in net growth. Conversational chatbots drove the bulk of web attention, with more than 63% of users logging on from mobile devices.
