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Nov 20 (Reuters) — Following a surprise ouster, OpenAI co-founder and former CEO Sam Altman joined Microsoft (MSFT.O) as the head of artificial intelligence research along with the ChatGPT maker’s former President Greg Brockman and other staff.

The developments come less than a year after OpenAI kicked off the generative AI frenzy with the launch of viral chatbot ChatGPT and bagged Microsoft as an investor, among other big names.

The shakeup is not the first at OpenAI, which was launched in 2015. Tesla CEO Elon Musk, a co-founder of the non-profit, was once its co-chair, and in 2020 other executives departed, going on to found competitor Anthropic, which claims to have a greater focus on AI safety.

Investors raced to reinstate Altman after the OpenAI board fired him Friday. But Elon Musk says for AI safety reasons the true reason for the firing must be revealed.

Elon Musk said that the potential danger of AI is so great that OpenAI, the most powerful artificial intelligence company in the world right now, should disclose the reason it fired CEO Sam Altman. OpenAI announced Altman’s firing on Friday, saying only that the company, which makes ChatGPT, “no longer has confidence in his ability to continue leading.”

Musk, responding to a post on X from former Yammer CEO David Sacks, said that “given the risk and power of advanced AI, the public should be informed of why the board felt they had to take such a drastic decision.”

AI is already transforming the way we search, gather information, create, code, decipher data and more, and now it may democratize the process of building an app, too. A new AI-powered startup called Sutro promises the ability to build entire production-ready apps — including those for web, iOS and Android — in a matter of minutes, with no coding experience required.

The idea is to allow founders to focus on their unique ideas by leaning on Sutro to automate other aspects of app building, including the necessary AI expertise, product management and design, hosting, use of domain-specific languages, compiling and scaling.

The company was founded in late 2021 by Tomas Halgas, who sold his previous startup, the group chat app Sphere, to Twitter, alongside former Google and Facebook Product Manager Owen Campbell-Moore. The two have taken turns running the company, with Campbell-Moore at the head while Halgas worked at Twitter in its chaotic days leading up to Elon Musk’s takeover. Now, with Halgas having departed Twitter, he’s acting as CEO as Campbell-Moore has shifted to a day job at OpenAI.

Grok is based on xAI’s proprietary “Grok” model, which Musk claims is one of the best in the market.

So it was eventually coming and now here it is. After initially announcing that Elon Musk’s xAI, an artificial intelligence company will release its new AI product. The company has surprised the AI community by launching its first AI model, named “Grok.” Grok is a chatbot that can converse with users on various topics using xAI’s proprietary “Grok” model. What makes Grok stand out from other language models, such as OpenAI’s GPT and Google’s PaLM, is its ability to access information from X, Musk’s popular social media platform (formerly known as Twitter), in real-time.

Elon Musk/X

Continue reading “Meet Grok: Elon Musk’s new AI chatbot that can access X” »

SpaceX Starship 25 and Super Heavy booster 9 launched to orbit on Nov. 18, 2023 from the Starbase facility in South Texas. Following the launch, the booster had a Rapid Unplanned Disassembly (RUD) shortly after separation.

Starship consists of a first-stage booster called Super Heavy and an upper-stage spacecraft known (a bit confusingly) as Starship. Both of these elements are designed to be fully and rapidly reusable. SpaceX thinks the vehicle will make the settlement of Mars — a long-held dream of company founder and CEO Elon Musk — economically feasible in the not-too-distant future.

Continue reading “SpaceX Starship launches on 2nd integrated test flight, booster explodes after separation” »

Here’s one we weren’t expecting: the creator of ChatGPT, OpenAI, has unexpectedly announced that it’s ditching its charismatic CEO Sam Altman, effective immediately.

“Mr. Altman’s departure follows a deliberative review process by the board, which concluded that he was not consistently candid in his communications with the board, hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities,” the company wrote in the surprise announcement. “The board no longer has confidence in his ability to continue leading OpenAI.”

The statement is strikingly vague about exactly what went off the rails with Altman, who cofounded the company alongside the also since-departed Elon Musk back in 2015.

During the company’s second quarter earnings call in July, Musk had said that combining the two could provide a cyber body that is incredibly capable.

Months after signing a letter calling for the pause of AI development, Elon Musk started a new company designed to create it.