OpenAI’s board may have been right to fire Sam Altman — and to rehire him, too
The seismic shake-up at OpenAI — involving the firing and, ultimately, the reinstatement of CEO Sam Altman — came as a shock to almost everyone. But the truth is, the company was probably always going to reach a breaking point. It was built on a fault line so deep and unstable that eventually, stability would give way to chaos. That fault line was OpenAI’s dual mission: to build AI that’s smarter than humanity, while also making sure that AI would be safe and beneficial to humanity. There’s an inherent tension between those goals because advanced AI could harm humans in a variety of ways, from entrenching bias to enabling bioterrorism. Now,…
The secrets Google spilled in court
The Google search antitrust trial is expected to wrap up by Thanksgiving. And while we’ll have to wait until next year for a verdict, there are a few things we learned over the last two months of the first big test of the limits of Big Tech’s power. The Department of Justice is accusing Google of using its monopoly over internet search to freeze out its competitors — real or potential. Instead of innovating and putting out a superior product that users prefer, as Google insists it does, the government says the company is resting on its laurels and paying off manufacturers, carriers, and browser developers to make Google the…
The new Meta whistleblower adds to an uneven year for online safety laws
There’s a new Meta whistleblower in town: Arturo Béjar, a longtime employee who came forward to the Wall Street Journal last week to accuse the social media giant of knowing, through its own research, that its platforms were hurting children. Not only did Meta refuse to act on that information, Béjar asserted, but it also tried to cover it up. On Tuesday, he repeated those allegations to a very receptive Senate subcommittee. This comes two years after another whistleblower made similar claims, and at a time when state and federal governments are still trying to figure out how to regulate the platforms they believe are harmful to children’s mental health,…
President Biden’s new plan to regulate AI
Since the widespread release of generative AI systems like ChatGPT, there’s been an increasingly loud call to regulate them, given how powerful, transformative, and potentially dangerous the technology can be. President Joe Biden’s long-promised Executive Order on the Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence is an attempt to do just that, through the lens of the administration’s stated goals and within the limits of the executive branch’s power. The order, which the president signed on Monday, builds on previous administration efforts to ensure that powerful AI systems are safe and being used responsibly. “This landmark executive order is a testament of what we stand for: safety,…