who is behind openai的进一步展开说明

Elon Musk and Sam Altman’s Role in OpenAI’s Transformation

In 2018, Elon Musk and Sam Altman, two of Silicon Valley’s most prominent names, unexpectedly became pivotal figures in the narrative of OpenAI. Prior to this, both Musk and Altman were already well-known contributors to the tech industry. Musk, in particular, faced challenges with Tesla, as the company struggled to meet production goals and its stock price plummeted, raising concerns about its future.

At that time, Greg Brockman, the chief technology officer at OpenAI and co-founder, along with others at the organization, opposed Musk’s involvement in the company’s operations. This disagreement led to a power struggle within OpenAI.

However, Altman, who also headed the influential startup accelerator YCombinator, intervened in the situation. He assumed the additional role of president in 2018, alongside his position as a director, as stated in tax documents.

Consequently, Musk stepped down from OpenAI’s board of directors. Publicly, both Musk and OpenAI cited a conflict of interest as the reason for his departure. Tesla, which was developing its own artificial intelligence (AI) for autonomous driving, was posed to compete for talent with OpenAI.

While there was some truth to this rivalry, not many employees at OpenAI believed it to be the sole reason for Musk’s exit. His departure speech, which primarily focused on the potential conflict of interest, was met with skepticism by most of the staff.

According to sources, OpenAI announced that Musk would continue funding the organization, but in reality, he didn’t. Although Musk had pledged to donate around $1 billion over several years (with $100 million already contributed), his payments stopped after he left. As a result, the nonprofit was left without the financial means to cover the exorbitant fees associated with training AI models on supercomputers.

The Increasing Costs and Need for Pivoting

During the same period, OpenAI realized that becoming an advanced AI company would require significant financial resources. Google Brain’s “transformer” had paved the way for a new frontier in which AI could continuously improve. However, this entailed feeding the model endless data for training, which was a costly endeavor.

In response, OpenAI made a crucial decision to shift its focus towards these transformer models.

On March 11, 2019, OpenAI announced the creation of a for-profit entity to raise sufficient funds for the massive compute power required to pursue ambitious AI models. The company explained that it aimed to balance its mission with the ability to attract capital and proposed capping profits for investors, with any excess being dedicated to the original nonprofit cause.

In an unusual move for a tech executive, Altman chose not to receive any equity in the new for-profit entity, as insiders shared. Altman, already wealthy from successful tech investments, believed that transforming OpenAI into a business was essential for its continued progress. However, he made it clear that the project was not designed for profit. While this decision aimed to maintain alignment with the original mission, it discouraged some potential investors who wanted to see upside in their investments.

Less than six months later, Microsoft invested $1 billion in OpenAI, providing not only funding but also infrastructure expertise. Collaboratively, they built a supercomputer to train massive models, which ultimately led to the development of ChatGPT and the image generator DALL-E. The latest language model, GPT⑷, is composed of 1 trillion parameters.

OpenAI’s launch of ChatGPT in November instantly positioned them as the hottest new tech startup, prompting Google to scramble to catch up. Musk, on the other hand, was reportedly furious.

In December, just a month after ChatGPT’s launch, Musk revoked OpenAI’s access to the Twitter “fire hose” of data—a contract that was signed before Musk acquired Twitter.

On February 17, he tweeted, “OpenAI was created as an open source (which is why I named it ‘Open’ AI), non-profit company to serve as a counterweight to Google, but now it has become a closed source, maximum-profit company effectively controlled by Microsoft.”

On March 15, he tweeted again, stating, “I’m still confused as to how a non-profit to which I donated ~$100M somehow became a $30B market cap for-profit. If this is legal, why doesn’t everyone do it?”

OpenAI declined to comment, and Musk didn’t respond to the request for comment. However, on Friday, he tweeted, “I’m sure it will be fine” along with a meme of Elmo with the words, “Me realizing AI, the most powerful tool that mankind has ever created, is now in the hands of a ruthless corporate monopoly.”

Recently, The Information reported that Shivon Zilis, a board member of OpenAI and the mother of Musk’s twins, had stepped down. Zilis did not respond to requests for comment.

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