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November 18, 2023, 11:35 PM
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Top News

The Verge:
Source: OpenAI's board had agreed to resign and let Sam Altman and Greg Brockman return, but has since waffled; Altman would want significant governance changes  —  The OpenAI board is in discussions with Sam Altman to return to CEO, according to multiple people familiar with the matter.
Forbes:
Sources: OpenAI investors discussed reinstating Sam Altman by threatening OpenAI with mass researcher revolt, withholding Microsoft cloud credits, and a lawsuit  —  With the ousted OpenAI CEO actively discussing a new artificial intelligence venture, investors in his previous company are trying …
Bloomberg:
Sources: Microsoft and Thrive are working to reinstate Sam Altman as OpenAI's CEO; Satya Nadella, blindsided by the board's decision, pledged to support Altman  —  - Board has considered resigning, hasn't made final decision  — Altman has been weighing new venture, but open to returning
Kate Clark / The Information:
Source: Sam Altman was in discussions with semiconductor companies, including Arm, on the morning of November 17 about designing new chips that lower LLM costs  —  Sam Altman, the recently ousted CEO of OpenAI, has been telling investors that he is planning to launch a new artificial intelligence venture …
Axios:
OpenAI memo: Sam Altman's firing wasn't due to “malfeasance” or related to financial, business, safety, or security practices but a “breakdown in communication”  —  Team - after yesterday's announcement, which took us all by surprise, we have had multiple conversations …
Kevin Roose / New York Times:
Source: at an OpenAI all-hands meeting, Ilya Sutskever defended Sam Altman's ouster as necessary to protect OpenAI's mission of making AI beneficial to humanity  —  Everything seemed to be going his way.  Then his time at OpenAI was over.  —  All over Silicon Valley …
Jay Peters / The Verge:
OpenAI CTO Mira Murati becomes the interim CEO as OpenAI searches for a permanent CEO; sources say that employees found out when the news was announced publicly
Bloomberg:
Source: Ilya Sutskever and his OpenAI board allies may have been put off by Sam Altman looking to raise tens of billions to create startups off OpenAI's name
Jon Victor / The Information:
Sources: three senior OpenAI researchers resign, including Director of Research Jakub Pachocki, and Head of Preparedness Aleksander Madry
Erin Woo / The Information:
Sources: OpenAI Interim CEO Mira Murati tried to calm shell-shocked employees in a companywide meeting following Sam Altman's firing
Kara Swisher / @karaswisher:
Sources: Sam Altman's exit followed a “misalignment” between OpenAI's profit and nonprofit adherents; some may view the company's development speed as too risky
Reed Albergotti / Semafor:
Sources: OpenAI has received only a fraction of Microsoft's $10B investment, a big portion of which is in cloud purchases, giving Microsoft significant leverage  —  Only a fraction of Microsoft's $10 billion investment in OpenAI has been wired to the startup, while a significant portion of the funding …
Todd Bishop / GeekWire:
A look at OpenAI's complicated relationship with Microsoft, which does not have a seat on the OpenAI board due to OpenAI's origins as a non-profit organization
Ben Schoon / 9to5Google:
Nothing pulls its Sunbird-based iMessage app Nothing Chats from the Play Store after a researcher found messages are not E2EE, attachments are public, and more  —  Sunbird has been promising iMessage support on Android for about a year now, but the company has always seemed rather sketchy.
Will Douglas Heaven / MIT Technology Review:
An interview with DeepMind's Shane Legg and Meredith Ringel Morris, who propose five levels of AGI taxonomy and say the first, “emerging”, has been achieved  —  AGI is one of the most disputed concepts in tech.  These researchers want to fix that.

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This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 11:35 PM ET, November 18, 2023.

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From Mediagazer

David Folkenflik / NPR:
The EU says it will give $6.2M in emergency funding to RFE/RL, after Trump withheld its funding; Sweden pledged $2M, but those funds have yet to arrive

Corbin Bolies / The Daily Beast:
Sources: Disney CEO Bob Iger and ABC News President Almin Karamehmedovic asked The View hosts to tone down their political rhetoric, particularly about Trump

Helen Davidson / The Guardian:
The Hong Kong Journalists Association says it has been subject to “random” tax audits, along with at least eight independent outlets and at least 20 journalists

More News

New York Times:
Argentina's election has become a testing ground for AI in campaigns, as candidates use AI-created images and videos to promote themselves and attack each other

Earlier Picks

Jonathan Vanian / CNBC:
Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery, Paramount Global, Lionsgate, and Comcast suspend ads on X, joining Apple and other companies
Benj Edwards / Ars Technica:
Cambridge Dictionary announces “hallucinate” as its word of 2023, citing the word's new meaning: generative AI that hallucinates “produces false information”
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