If you asked me to spin a narrative of the last 96 hours in AI, I would be hard-pressed to come up with anything more insane than reality itself. The board of OpenAI abruptly voting to boot its beloved CEO, Sam Altman, only to try and acquire him back the following day, only to have Sam, Greg Brockman (ex-President and co-founder of OpenAI) join Microsoft under the careful negotiations of Satya Nadella, which then prompts Ilya Sutskever to flip his support to the duo he previously dumped, signing a letter stating that he, along with the majority of all of OpenAI’s employees, would resign if the board didn’t…
…and that’s not half of it.
Needless to say, it’s been crazy few days following a move by the OpenAI board that’s left the AI / tech community stunned, baffled, and more than a little entertained. Books will be written and movies made about what’s transpired the past few days. But, as of this blog, we don’t yet know the ending.
While the unfolding drama has kept us all on our seats with its daily, often hourly, twists, it’s also fostered a great deal of anxiety amongst developers — specifically those who’ve built their products and/or companies atop the ChatGPT architecture. The fate of the GPT store, an ambitious project envisaged as the marketplace of AI tools and resources, (announced at the OpenAI Dev Day just two weeks before the proverbial defecation hit the ventilation), remains unknown. As does the fate of thousands of “custom GPTs” built in anticipation of its release.
Let’s face it, the AI world evolves at a pace that would make Usain Bolt nervous . If you think you’ve written an awe-inspiring thesis on the latest advancement, you better read it out fast. By the time you reach the full stop, chances are it’s already outdated. Developing in this environment sometimes feels like knitting a sweater in the front seat of a speeding roller coaster, where the yarn keeps unraveling.
The same is true for blogging about AI. Each post is an exercise in capturing the transient, preserving the fleeting — only to find it has morphed into something else by the time you dot the last ‘i’ and cross the final ‘t’. You write with your fingers crossed, hoping your post won’t be laughed out of the servers before the click-bait headline is finished rendering.
As a writer, editor, and newbie developer, I find myself doubly affected. I must confess — I have split my efforts rather ineloquently these past weeks, managing one post or two posts per month, while the bulk of my efforts went toward the development of “Sunblock,” my own writing-focused suite of AI tools which I had originally planned to host on this website.
The announcement of the GPT store sidelined that idea — and how could it not? OpenAI providing a marketplace for the budding and seasoned AI practitioners alike seemed like the most obvious win ever. A game-changing interface that would empower creative and specifically-tailored tools powered by ChatGPT. A win-win-win situation for OpenAI, developers, and consumers.
Enter November 17th, and OpenAI’s top-level game of musical chairs.
As of this post, we still do know where they sit.
What we do know is that Sam, Greg, Ilya, and all the other employees at OpenAI will all end up somewhere doing something. When the dust of this chaotic upending as settled, it may be that OpenAI no longer exists. But something like it will. If not immediately, then very, very soon.
Mario Andretti once said, “If everything seems under control, you’re not going fast enough.” The AI industry isn’t intended for the faint-hearted. It requires determination to navigate the pace, adaptability to switch lanes quickly, and above all, patience to endure the ride.
With that in mind, I’m writing the damned post, knowing damn well it will probably be outdated in an hour. Maybe by then we’ll know where things stand and find some terra firma to begin rebuilding / recoding / rewriting. Probably not, but there’s always hope. In the meantime, I’ll continue knitting this sweater atop the speeding coaster. In the end, I may run out of thread, but as long as I’m along for the ride, I’m going to try and enjoy it.
Author’s Note: In the pursuit of transparency, I want readers of this blog to know that AI assisted in writing this post. While the words and ideas are mine, AI helped to phrase, polish, and edit the content. I strongly believe this is the ethical path forward for us (humans) to best integrate AI into our lives. I also believe that we are the stewards of our own creativity, and that if we cede control of that to artificial intelligence, our creations will inevitably be subsumed by mediocrity and sameness. To that end, I will always append this note to blogs where I have used AI assistance, and encourage every writer who works with AI to do the same. This is, after all, the very essence of what this blog is about.