OpenAI has long made it its number one goal to realize artificial general intelligencewhich it described in a 2023 blog post as “AI systems that are generally smarter than humans,” and which will benefit “all of humanity.”
Since thenexperts have often accused the company of repeatedly shifting the goalpostsgreatly watering down its original goal of an AI truly capable of surpassing the intellect of a human being.
And nowOpenAI CEO Sam Altman is reportedly setting aside what was once his firm’s top priority in an effort to stop the company from succumbing to its steep competition.
Last weeknews emerged that the rattled executive had declared a “code red” in a note to staffers obtained by the Wall Street Journalurging them to improve the quality of ChatGPT at the cost of delaying other projectslike advertising and a personal assistant.
Nowthe newspaper has revealed new details about Altman’s call to armssuggesting OpenAI “may have to pause” its quest to pursue AGI for the company to survive.
It’s a damning admissionhighlighting how much pressure is building up on the company as it plans to spend well north of a trillion dollars to build out infrastructure over the next five years. Googlewhose AI offerings are rapidly catching uphas clearly sent a strong signalcausing OpenAI’s executive branch to batten up the hatches and double down on its core offeringChatGPT.
Instead of vetting the tool’s output with the help of human professionalsAltman is looking to make “better use of user signals,” per the WSJ. In other wordsthe company is doubling down on user feedback to boost engagement — even if that means making its models more sycophanticwhich can have disastrous side effects.
It’s a neck-in-neck race between OpenAI and Google. OpenAI is expected to release its latest AI modelcalled 5.2later this weeklikely a response to Google’s Gemini 3which impressed with benchmarks that exceeded OpenAI’s current most powerful models.
Google’s Nano Banana Pro AI image modelwhich was released last monthhas also been hailed as a substantial leapwhile OpenAI’s video and controversy-generating appSorahas fallen by the wayside. In factaccording to the WSJSora may also be put on pause as OpenAI doubles down on ChatGPT.
OpenAI staffers appear to be painfully aware of OpenAI and Google trading blowsclosely following LM Arenaan AI leaderboard that assigns each AI model a score based on users choosing the best output to the same prompt between two AI models.
IndeedAltman argued in his memo that “we should be at the top of things like LM [A]rena.”
To do sothe executive is calling on the company to focus on making its AI models more personablea quality that experts warn could lead to more users spiraling into severe delusions.
Where that leaves OpenAI’s original goal of building an AI that can surpass the intellect of a human being remains unclear at best. Altmanwho has long garnered a reputation for setting sweeping and extremely ambitious goalsis now singing a notably different tune from before — as his company doubles down on its number one money maker at all costs.
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