Proactive Investors - Before Sam Altman was ousted by the board of OpenAI, the developer of artificially intelligent chatbot ChatGPT, the company stumbled across a potential threat to humanity, according to reports.
In a letter to OpenAI’s board of directors, researchers at the company wrote to the board shortly before he was sacked to warn them of a finding that had the potential to risk the future of humanity, Reuters reported, citing sources familiar with the matter.
OpenAI’s board ousted Altman from his role as chief executive on Friday before announcing that he had returned on Tuesday after hundreds of employees threatened to join Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) in protest.
Former Twitch boss Emmett Shear was hired as temporary chief executive for just one day as Altman prepared to join Microsoft.
Prior to this, an internal memo to staff by the company’s executive Mira Murati, OpenAI discussed a secretive internal project known only as Q*.
OpenAI is involved in producing autonomous artificial general intelligence that could exceed human ability in economically valuable tasks.
The company is believed to be working on a model that can solve maths conundrums and researchers are optimistic about the project’s success.
A separate AI Scientist team, which combines the Code Gen and Maths Gen teams, is looking into how to accelerate AI models to make them better at reasoning so that they can practice science.
"Four times now in the history of OpenAI, the most recent time was just in the last couple weeks, I've gotten to be in the room, when we sort of push the veil of ignorance back and the frontier of discovery forward, and getting to do that is the professional honour of a lifetime," Altman said while speaking at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit on the day before he was fired.