Fast Facts
- OpenAI completed its review regarding Sam Altman's sudden ouster last year, reinstating him to the board.
- SpaceX is eyeing Thursday for its third Starship test flight.
- Elon Musk said xAI will open-source Grok.
Good morning, happy Monday, and Welcome to Tech News Now, TheStreet's daily tech rundown.
In today's edition, we're covering Sam Altman's return to the board of OpenAI, Starship's third test flight, the open-sourcing of xAI's Grok and Reddit's planned $6.4 billion IPO.
Tickers we're watching today: (MSFT) , (NVDA) .
Let's get into it.
Related: Epic Games CEO explains how it fought Apple and won
Sam Altman's triumphant return
Last year, Sam Altman said that when it comes to OpenAI, "no one person should be trusted, here. The board can fire me and that's important."
The quote may well be remembered as one of Altman's most infamous moments; just a few months later, the board attempted (and spectacularly failed) to do that which Altman suggested was so "important."
In a blog post that came out late on a Friday in November, OpenAI explained that, after a "deliberative review process," the board "concluded that (Altman) was not consistently candid in his communications with the board, hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities."
What followed was a weekend of chaos and rumors out of Silicon Valley. When the dust settled — less than a week later — Altman was reinstated as the CEO of OpenAI, a new board was ushered in and an independent review regarding the events began.
A quote that may well live in infamy. For years, decades, possibly even centuries. https://t.co/GnBfCRtgnT
— Gary Marcus (@GaryMarcus) March 9, 2024
On March 8, OpenAI announced the results of the investigation, which was conducted by the law firm WilmerHale. The investigation involved dozens of interviews with members of OpenAI's prior board, company executives and other witnesses, in addition to the review of more than 30,000 documents.
In a brief summary of the review, OpenAI explained that the previous board's move to fire Altman "did not arise out of concerns regarding product safety or security, the pace of development, OpenAI’s finances, or its statements to investors, customers or business partners. Instead, it was a consequence of a breakdown in the relationship and loss of trust between the prior Board and Altman."
WilmerHale, according to OpenAI, found that Altman's conduct "did not mandate removal."
In addition to announcing three new board members — Dr. Sue Desmond-Hellmann, Nicole Seligman and Fidji Simo — OpenAI announced Altman's return to the company's board.
Cybersecurity expert and executive director of Palisade Research Jeffrey Ladish called Altman a "deeply untrustworthy individually, low in integrity and high in power-seeking."
"I know people who have worked with him... He is extremely good at what he does. He is extremely good at politics," Ladish said. "He schemes to outmaneuver people within his own companies and projects. This is not the kind of person who can be trusted to lead a project that will shape the entire world and the entire future."
Related: Tesla Chief Musk is pleased with the result of OpenAI’s 'Game of Thrones'
Starship number 3
On April 20, 2023, Elon Musk's SpaceX launched its Starship rocket for the first time, achieving a four-minute-long flight that came to an abrupt, fiery conclusion.
SpaceX spent the next seven months making more than 1,000 design changes to the Starship rocket, finally receiving regulatory approval to fly again in November.
This second test flight represented another moment of learning from failure; the rocket flew nearly eight minutes before exploding on the edge of space.
"With a test like this, success comes from what we learn, and today’s test will help us improve Starship’s reliability as SpaceX seeks to make life multi-planetary," SpaceX said in a statement following the launch.
The Federal Aviation Administration wrapped up its standard mishap investigation into that second test flight on Feb. 26, getting SpaceX one step closer to flying Starship again.
SpaceX said in a statement last week that the third flight test of Starship could occur as soon as March 14, though it added that the schedule remains dynamic and likely to change.
"Starship’s second flight test achieved a number of major milestones and provided invaluable data to continue rapidly developing Starship," SpaceX said. "Each of these flight tests continue to be just that: a test. They aren’t occurring in a lab or on a test stand, but are putting flight hardware in a flight environment to maximize learning."
Related: The environmental dichotomy of Tesla CEO Elon Musk
The open-sourcing of Grok
Musk said in a post Monday that his AI company xAI will open-source its flagship chatbot Grok this week.
The move comes in the wake of a lawsuit Musk filed against Altman and OpenAI claiming that OpenAI has veered hard from its original nonprofit charter to build an open, transparent artificial intelligence designed to benefit humanity, rather than shareholders.
"OpenAI has been transformed into a closed-source de facto subsidiary of the largest technology company in the world: Microsoft," the suit claims. "Under its new Board, it is not just developing but is actually refining an AGI to maximize profits for Microsoft, rather than for the benefit of humanity."
"OpenAI is a lie," Musk said in a separate post Monday.
Musk and xAI rolled out Grok in December to premium subscribers on X. He has said that his goal is to build a "maximum truth-seeking AI," though experts have criticized the unusual approach to AI safety.
Related: Tesla chief Elon Musk targets Google, Microsoft and Sam Altman with latest AI move
Reddit's $6.4 billion IPO
Reddit's push to go public — which has been in the works for years — is getting closer.
In a new filing with the Securities Exchange Commission Monday, the company said it is aiming for a valuation of up to $6.4 billion; Reddit is targeting a sale of 22 million shares priced between $31 and $34 each, to raise up to $748 million.
Reddit has also set aside 1.7 million shares to be sold at the initial public offering price to a group of eligible Reddit users and moderators.
The IPO is expected to come this month.
Related: Popular social media platform to sell user data to the company behind ChatGPT
The AI Corner: Nvidia and another lawsuit
The AI sector has become quite litigious of late.
Three authors filed a proposed class action lawsuit against chipmaker Nvidia (NVDA) on Friday, alleging that the company used copyright-protected books to train its NeMo AI model.
Authors Brian Keene, Abdi Nazemian and Stewart O’Nan said that their books were part of a massive dataset used to train NeMo, before being pulled from the set in October "due to reported copyright infringement," according to Reuters.
The authors argue that the removal of their works from the dataset amounts to an admission from Nvidia that it trained NeMo on the dataset and, in so doing, infringed upon their copyrights.
The suit pulls Nvidia into an ongoing storm of copyright-related AI litigation, none of which has yet to result in a clear answer to the critical question of whether it is fair use for AI companies to train commercial models on content scraped from the internet without compensating or crediting the original creators.
Contact Ian with tips and AI stories via email, ian.krietzberg@thearenagroup.net, or Signal 732-804-1223.
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