OpenAI firing Sam Altman as its CEO came as a shock to the tech world, as well as many others. Rumors started circulating that the reinstated chief executive was fired after employees raised their concerns over an AI breakthrough. Now, it's said that it never existed at all.
There's No Q* After All
Last week, news about Altman's involuntary exit was linked to rumors about an AI breakthrough within the company, where OpenAI researchers were so afraid of its potential that they sent a letter to the board saying that it could threaten humanity.
The project was called Q*, which was said to be an artificial general intelligence (AGI). These are AI systems that can be smarter than humans. However, Microsoft President Brad Smith denied this rumor, saying that it doesn't exist.
In his statement, Smith said that there's "absolutely no probability that you're going to see this so-called AGI, where computers are more powerful than people, in the next 12 months." Furthermore, he said that it could even take years or decades before this happens.
Still, Smith believes that safety measures should already be established now, as mentioned in Reuters. Since the rumor about Q* has already been put to rest, it's normal that people would again question what led to Altman's ouster.
One thing that's already mentioned by the previous board was that they feel like they can no longer trust the chief executive. Sources say that the OpenAI researchers' letter to the board was just one factor among many others.
It was mentioned that the issue that led to the board's distrust might've been about commercializing advances even though there are still unresolved risks. Smith himself said that the concern from employees wasn't the main cause of Altman's removal as chief executive.
What Exactly is an AGI?
Artificial general intelligence is something that you might find in futuristic movies where a voice assistant can perform complex tasks for you. It has the generalized cognitive abilities of a human in software form.
Since it already possesses its own "cognition," developers won't have to train it to be capable of certain tasks. That also means that with human-like thinking abilities and access to a knowledge database, it can be exponentially smarter than the average human.
According to Tech Target, AGI is a strong AI, especially compared to the kind of artificial intelligence we already have access to now, called narrow AI. The latter is the kind of technology you can find in self-driving cars and chatbots.
For context, the AI that is considered weak is already capable of great things like generating code, creating images, writing a full novel or script, and more. It can even create identical voices and likenesses, which is an entirely different issue that we are facing today.
AGI is capable of abstract thinking, meaning that it could even provide its own opinions about belief systems. Based solely on the vilification of a rogue AI from TV shows and films, it's understandable why an AI that can think for itself can be terrifying.
