Sam Altman and the AI Conspiracy

As if there weren’t enough AI headlines in the news over the last year plus…

The ejection of Sam Altman reads like a magician redirecting our attention away from where the sleight of hand is manipulating the coin and creating the illusion.

Just three days later, there is no way the public knows what was going on behind the curtain to cause such a rift.

My feeling — yes, feeling, not belief, because I don't have enough data...

My feeling is that the basic conflict between the drive toward one corporate player holding commercial dominance of a General Artificial Intelligence and the need to tamp down any possible existential threat is at the root of this drama.

I can mentally put myself in Sam Altman's shoes (before being fired) and feel myself being pulled in opposing multi-dimensional directions like a rag doll. These forces include governments, political parties, philosophies, present desires, future worries, academics, consumer expectation, venture capitalists, "the market", and four score companies nipping at OpenAi's heels.

Would I have Done Better Than Sam?

Definitely not.

I would have crumpled under the pressure and quit long before I was fired for actual cause.

And that's just it. We don't know the cause of Sam being unceremoniously booted without the option to save face. It could have been a combination of any of the forces I mentioned above.

There's no need to speculate. We either get actual information or we live in the dark.

Does it affect my life directly?

Not that I can sense as an immediate impetus.

Could it affect my life, your lives, the lives of all humanity as a ripple effect into the future?

Possibly, but it's like seeing a butterfly flap its wings overy Kyoto and making claims about the time, date, direction, and strength of a hurricane affecting New Orleans next year.

Giving this drama any more of my attention robs me of making my own strides in the arena where I want to compete.

So think of this short article as a call to your own adventure. Let's put our heads down, get to work, and move our little corner of humanity a bit closer toward wellness and fulfillment and away from suffering.

WHERE SPECULATION HAS ITS PLACE

Wouldn’t it be a beautifully scary situation if the board members had received emails faked by another AI to disrupt OpenAI from the inside out?

Imagine that those emails set the tenor of the subsequent clandestine board meeting that led to Altman’s ouster?

I’m a fiction author, so I can’t help thinking in these unlikely, but dramatically rich scenarios.