What Did OpenAI Do This Week? - 23/04/2023 [+15 LINKS]
OPENAI SNAPS; PAYS STAFF TO STAY
Firstly, watch OpenAI’s President/Chairman/Co-Founder, speak on the TED stage and demo unreleased plugins in Vancouver:
Cute, no? At the same time experts were telling MIT Technology Review that it will be next to impossible for OpenAI to comply with demands set out by Italy’s data protection body's April 30th deadline. OpenAI could face hefty fines, be forced to delete data, and even be banned again. A further wave of contention swept in as EU lawmakers called on U.S. President Joe Biden and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to convene a summit to find ways to control ChatGPT and advanced AI development. Both of which spell interesting, likely drawn-out, legal battles ahead. Employees outside of the legal department, however, are too busy counting the zeros on their big (“please stay”) pay day that valued the company at around $27 billion. Snap(!) out of the doom and gloom though, OpenAI will be used by Snap for its ‘My AI’ product, which means 750 million Snapchat users will be using ChatGPT without even knowing about it unless they read the whopping 428-word ‘announcement’ on Snaps media page full of ‘it can make mistakes’ language.
SO WHAT?
OpenAI just seamlessly made its way into +1 billion users’ lives or an eighth of the world's population and few have batted an eyelid. Don’t forget they just partnered with Zoom too. The genie/bottle analogy is looking increasingly untenable by the day as deal after deal is done with massive platforms with little oversight or observable risk framework or mitigation strategies. Safety concerns here are being headed off with upfront apologies about inaccuracies and using a user's self-reported age to inform how the bot responds to prompts. The Verge hit the nail on the head; ‘when My AI was first released to paying Snapchat Plus subscribers, it didn’t take long for it to misbehave’. Here’s an example regarding the location of users. A lot of bad news seems to be forming on the horizon for OpenAI, look out for a quieter HQ and a busier news media to whip us all into a frenzy.
WANT TO INNOVATE LIKE OPENAI? Order your copy of the second volume of ‘Disruptive Technologies’ now!
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to What Did OpenAI Do This Week? to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.