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In a startling turn of events, researchers at OpenAI have reportedly discovered a potentially hazardous breakthrough in artificial intelligence (AI), which eventually led to the ousting of its CEO, Sam Altman.
This project, known as “Q*”, came to the attention of the directors through staff members who were concerned about its dangers.
The discovery of this AI was a key factor that led to the dismissal of Altman before he returned to his position in a week. The board expressed concerns about working on an AI technology without understanding its consequences fully.
The internal turmoil at OpenAI escalated following Altman’s dismissal when more than 700 employees threatened to leave the company in solidarity with Altman and eventually join Microsoft.
OpenAI researchers sent a letter that mentioned the secret project Q*. This project had the potential to achieve AGI (artificial general intelligence), which implies autonomous systems can surpass human capabilities in tasks deemed economically valuable.
What is Project Q*, the next-generation AI?
According to sources, Project Q* has the potential to solve critical problems, further boosting the development of generative AI.
While the current generative AI models are capable of executing creative tasks such as translating language or writing, Q* takes AI capabilities a notch higher by reasoning things mathematically.
The ambitious goals of the “AI Scientist” team align with the vision held by the company’s CEO, as he wanted to push the boundaries of AI and work on AGI further.
This takes AI close to human-like intelligence, which happens to be a novel breakthrough in scientific research. This presents a shift in paradigm in the field of AI.
Although researchers were optimistic about the potential use of AGI, board members raised safety concerns about the potential dangers of AI.
While the exact nature of these concerns isn’t clear, the board considered them to be serious enough to dismiss Altman.
Within OpenAI, discussions also revealed the operation of a team called “AI scientist”, created by merging the teams “Math Gen” and “Code Gen”. The objective of this group is to optimize existing AI models to boost reasoning capabilities to execute scientific tasks.
How Does The Situation Stand After Altman’s Return?
Now that Altman has returned to OpenAI as its CEO, things look ambitious for the tech company. Altman has expressed his intentions to make ChatGPT one of the most rapidly expanding software applications.
The project is promising enough to attract Microsoft, which has a 49% stake in OpenAI. With both these tech companies jointly working, it remains to be seen how they progress on developing AGI.
Besides, the OpenAI CEO recently announced some new tools and expressed his optimism about major artificial intelligence advancements at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit.
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 honor of a lifetime.Sam Altman
With Project Q* now being revealed and the return of Altman to his position, critical questions loom about the ethics and safety around advanced research on AI. The future of AI largely hinges on the development of these futuristic technologies.
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