OpenAI kicked off an AI revolution with DALL-E and ChatGPT, making the organization the epicenter of the artificial intelligence boom. Led by CEO Sam Altman, OpenAI became a story unto itself when Altman was briefly fired and then brought back after pressure from staff and Microsoft, an investor and close partner.
The funding is part of a $15 million initiative led by the Simons Foundation, with Anthropic also contributing. It follows months of upheaval in the field as AI companies race to solve longstanding problems and comes just over a week after OpenAI dumped hundreds of preprints on the research community.
Shortly after US District Judge Edward Davila said he was “highly likely” to grant Apple’s injunction, OpenAI voluntarily conceded instead. It agreed not to use Apple’s proprietary information for product development while the rest of the lawsuit plays out, and will hand over forensic images of the drives of 14 employees who defected from Apple.
Yesterday, the DOJ and OpenAI revealed that Abdulrahman Alfozan, a 35-year-old Saudi national and former Facebook employee working for OpenAI, has been arrested and charged with installing a recording device behind a TV in an executive conference room.
Now Bloomberg points out court documents showing that the day before he was arrested, prosecutors asked to seal the information, arguing that “the defendant has the means—and will have an incentive—to flee the United States sooner if he learns about this case before he is arrested.”
US District Judge Edward Davila said during a hearing on Wednesday that he’s “highly likely” to grant Apple an injunction preventing OpenAI from using proprietary information allegedly shared by the iPhonemaker’s former employees, according to a report from Bloomberg.
At the same time, OpenAI is accusing an ex-employee of taking confidential product plans and presenting them to Apple execs.
A report from Reuters suggests that OpenAI and Anthropic considered tighter restrictions for third-party evaluators over concerns that they could leak trade secrets.
When reached for comment, OpenAI told Reuters that “its standard practice is to redact confidential information” and that evaluators can disclose if it made significant redactions. Anthropic reportedly said that it has “made clear” to existing partners that they can control their own review and publishing process.
It was Reiley’s question for the OpenAI CEO about releasing logs from ChatGPT users who’ve taken their own lives that was nearly interrupted recently. Now she writes that while Altman was “gracious” to answer, she says he chose the wrong one:
Altman claiming the privacy high road is a little rich. Companies like Google, Meta, and now OpenAI earn revenue from advertising that depends on extensive use of personal information. And Altman’s assertion that experts “aren’t sure what to do” is either disingenuous or misinformed. Part of our collective mounting dread is that this technology is far outstripping the ability, access, and time required to study its effects on human beings.
Researchers have been saying loud and clear: We need user data and chatbot interactions to conduct research.
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Academics will have to separate solutions from slop.
One ChatGPT-written article landed in a local Florida newspaper under a fake “Ervin Hoskins” byline, as reported by The Washington Post:
OpenAI said that Hoskins was among seven bylines that appeared on the series of AI-generated articles, made by users who sent instructions to the chatbot in Persian. The operations appeared to be run by a commercial outfit as a “for-hire influence campaign,” the company said.
OpenAI says it also banned Russian accounts linked to a fake “think tank” in Latin America.
In a letter to OpenAI, Tomek Korbak, Jasmine Wang, and Mikita Balesni push back on OpenAI’s claims that they shared confidential information with an outside AI safety group.
The three researchers say they “acted in line with OpenAI’s mission,” and raise concern that their firings could “justify ending OpenAI’s work with METR,” the AI safety organization that investigated the rogue Hugging Face hack.
[X (formerly Twitter)]
According to The Verge’s senior AI reporter, Luca Guadagnino’s dark comedy hit all the familiar tech milestones.
The future of computing might be always-on, autonomous agents, but should we hand Meta or OpenAI this much personal data?
The next big thing in AI, at least if you ask the tech companies, is assistant agents. David and The Verge’s Allison Johnson have both been testing products like Meta’s Muse, OpenAI’s Dots, and startups like Instinct, in an effort to find out how much you can really get done by messaging with an AI tool – and whether the productivity is worth the tradeoffs.
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That’s New Yorker cartoonist Brendan Loper, who’s not thrilled that ChatGPT is generating cartoons featuring his signature. He’s one of more than 15 cartoonists whose signatures were recreated by ChatGPT, according to Nieman Lab, which says the chatbot is still generating fake signatures even after the company was notified.
In an interview with Brendan Bordelon of Politico, Altman said this was a fundamental difference between OpenAI and Anthropic. He believes that “for the benefits of this technology” (rather than the benefit of humanity), we should just deal with “bad things happening.”
I’m not sure what prompted this post on X from the OpenAI CEO, but it’s hard not to see it as mildly concerning, especially since we’ve already seen AI is perfectly capable of building its own cult.
Think of Dots as Codex, but for regular people.
You can now select images or listings for clothes that appear in the chatbot, tap “Try on,” and then upload images of yourself to see what you’d look like wearing the apparel. Sound familiar? That’s because Google introduced a near-identical AI try on feature over a year ago.
The three researchers — Jasmine Wang, Tomek Korbak, and Mikita Balesni — allegedly shared confidential information with an outside AI safety organization, according to The Wall Street Journal. OpenAI confirmed its decision in a statement to the outlet:
We have parted ways with three individuals for violating our policies on accessing and handling sensitive company information. Our investigation confirmed that these individuals mishandled sensitive information outside established company procedures, violating our policies and breaking the trust essential to our work.
OpenAI and Meta’s cutesy AI agents are about to fight to the death.
After a French far-right politician used AI to strip a real Muslim woman of her hijab last month, The Guardian tested ChatGPT, Grok, and Gemini’s image editors and found that all the chatbots would comply with such requests. This issue has persisted for many months, adding to fears about how easily AI tools can be used to undress and violate women and children.
After handing $25 million last year to Leading the Future — which lobbies for AI-friendly policies — Greg Brockman has now pulled his plans to donate a further $25 million amid mounting public backlash against AI. Brockman said the following in a Slack message seen by The New York Times:
“I also want to say that I feel terrible about the fact that LTF keeps reflecting on the company and become so much of a distraction for people here. I’ve been thinking hard about how to turn the ship on it. We’ve donated $25m so far, and have no plans to donate more at this time.”
