Will ChatGPT Users Pay The Price For Sam Altman’s Shenanigans?

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has increasingly come under fire over the past few weeks, casting a shadow of doubt on the world’s leading AI startup and the future evolution of all the cool technologies it is working on, including GPT.

Altman’s firing once almost tore apart OpenAI, with 95% of its employees rallying behind their CEO, ready to follow him to Microsoft or anywhere else. If it had materialized, the world’s leading AI startup would have likely squandered away its massive lead over rivals.

Now, things have once again started to boil with several high-profit exits, belated controversies, and employees voicing concerns about an exit clause. 

This begs the question: Will ChatGPT users end up paying the price for the radical change in opinions about Altman?

OpenAI Finds Itself In Rocky Waters And It’s Mostly Because Of One Man

From the eventually unsuccessful “palace coup” orchestrated by Ilya Sutskever and former board members Helen Toner and Tasha McCauley to the “equity clawback” clause in agreements with OpenAI employees, the going has been difficult for the company and its CEO.

Altman eventually apologized for having this clause and said that it was being “fixed,” but the damage was done.

Daniel Kokotajlo, a former OpenAI employee working on the governance side of things at the company, confirmed publicly that he lost equity because of this. 

Altman also faced backlash when he compared OpenAI’s GPT-4o launch with Google’s Gemini announcements at the company’s annual developers conference, Google I/O.

The AI startup has also been facing criticism after Hollywood actress Scarlett Johansson said she was forced to hire legal counsel after OpenAI allegedly used her voice for its AI technology.

And Then There Are Trust Issues

Former board members Toner and McCauley have not only called for stricter AI regulation to “tame market forces” – in this case, leaders like OpenAI – for “humanity’s sake,” but Toner has also openly slammed Altman publicly.

She said Altman was fired in November because the board could not trust him. For instance, she said the board found out about the ChatGPT launch on social media.

Toner also underscored Altman’s history of “deceptive and chaotic behavior” that led to his firing from startup accelerator Y Combinator, and a company called Loopt.

High-Profile Employees Continue To Leave The Ship

The company has had several high-profile exits – including Sutskever and Jan Leike, who co-lead Superalignment at OpenAI.

Leike joined OpenAI rival Anthropic, backed by Jeff Bezos’ Amazon.com Inc. Sutskever’s plans are unknown, but murmurs suggest he could be headed to Elon Musk’s xAI. 

Other high-profile exits include Andrej Karpathy, Logan Kilpatrick, and multiple OpenAI Superalignment team members.

The Growing Shadow Of Elon Musk And His AI Startup

Another problem for Altman and OpenAI is the rise of Musk’s xAI, which raised a staggering $6 billion in a single round of funding this week.

OpenAI was founded in 2015, and since then the startup’s single biggest stakeholder Microsoft has invested nearly $13 billion. On the other hand, xAI has made almost half of all this money in just one year of existence.

Will ChatGPT Users Pay The Price

According to a study, OpenAI’s chatbot had 14 billion visits between Sept. 2022 and Aug. 2023, out of a total of 24 billion visits to other AI tools.

That gives ChatGPT a market share of 60%, which is substantial. Having said that, Altman’s shenanigans could throw a wrench in ChatGPT’s success.

The ChatGPT-maker has received mostly positive feedback after the launch of its latest GPT-4o model, and the launch of the next major upgrade, GPT-5, is highly anticipated. So, for now, it is safe to say that OpenAI hasn’t disappointed us with its technological innovation.

However, given the rapid pace of competition in the AI market, Altman’s controversies could be a potential distraction for OpenAI. 

And if that happens, ChatGPT users wouldn’t take much time to jump ships and hop onto a platform that’s focusing solely on improving its technology. 

Perhaps it could be Musk’s Grok, Google’s Gemini, Meta AI, or Anthropic’s Claude.

That's all for this week! If you found these updates useful, you'll like more from this newsletter. Get deeper dives, hot takes, and all the latest tech news delivered straight to your inbox.