The Classic Bait-and-Switch
How Sam Altman/OpenAI and Microsoft Played US!
The developments over this past weekend should terrify any thinking person about the state of AI and where it might be headed. The unfolding drama has all the elements of a Big Tech Game of Thrones; with Microsoft taking the throne. Coming off the heels of the AI Safety Summit in the UK and the EU AI Act earlier, this weekend’s events are certainly going to derail things. Because the so-called “leaders” of AI have not only created a mess but have proven that they can’t be trusted. The state of AI and the AI safety agenda is becoming increasingly unpredictable, and the instability only proves that we would be complete suckers to believe anything coming out of the mouths of Big Tech. If someone shows you who they are, believe them!
To see through to the reality of what is happening we must apply some of the principles of applied intelligence | ai — skepticism and objective analytical observational insight. The first thing is to follow the money…who stands to benefit most financially or who is positioning best to financially benefit. That would be Microsoft! It finds itself in the cat-bird seat.
We have increasingly seen an arms-race type push and events with Big Tech; Google vs. Microsoft, for example. AI development and competition have been fierce because big money and market dominance is at stake. Applications are being released without any regard for rigorous safety testing, standards, or regulations. Companies are releasing stuff without any true understanding of the potential harm it may cause. The money is too big for them to care about humanity.
For example, Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Amazon, all the usual suspects along with their Big Tech blessed, up-and-comers — Anthropic, DeepMind, and OpenAI, to name a few, are dominating the AI/tech landscape. And anyone who dares to roam out there without the protection of Big Tech will just get sniped out.
Open AI has been a proxy for Microsoft since it began taking billions from it, as Microsoft didn’t pour billions into OpenAI for it to remain a “non-profit” and play nice. It was always a stealth strategy for Microsoft to one day dominate everything AI. If you can’t see that then you might as well stamp sucker on your forehead — let’s keep it real.
Furthermore, this competitive alliance among the Big Tech kings to invest in the up-and-comers and promising start-ups is further supported by Big Tech’s venture capitalists (VC) acolytes, the courtiers, grooming start-ups/founders away from their original ideas to what will align best with the likes of Microsoft’s of the world.
The VC space has become a perverted top-down authoritative New Tech Aristocracy (NTA) which stifles innovation, and competition — leading to the end of authentic capitalism as we know it! Pushing us back many centuries to Feudalism, where the Overlords dictated everything and the peasants had to obey. Make no doubt, all the power over you is in Big Tech. And there is no diversity in it just different shades of pale whites.
It’s a place of phony valuations created by the NTA in their own interests, then it’s divided amongst them…nothing for the peasants, and often, the peasants come to worship the aristocracy. Blinding them to the reality of their own demise.
The OpenAI weekend saga — CEO Sam Altman getting fired and getting instantaneously “hired” by Microsoft, demonstrates one thing, we have no idea of the level of dishonesty and greed occurring in the NTA. And to believe that any Big Tech organization is working for the benefit of humanity is to be wilfully ignorant of the realities of self-interest and big money.
What transpired over the weekend was all part of the game plan, the classic bait-and-switch. The only thing was it didn’t go as smoothly as they planned or wanted — the OpenAI board held to its responsibility.
Hundreds of OpenAI employees signed and circulated (obtained by The Associated Press) a letter early Monday calling for the board’s resignation and Altman’s return, but they’ve been played too. Royally screwed by Altman, left swinging in the wind. They were wilfully ignorant pawns on Sam’s chessboard and they might now just be watching a potential 86 billion dollar valuation go up in smoke. But like many other contrived and disingenuous tech valuations before, it was never real to begin with.
We can never be sure about all that went down and who’s telling the truth, but what is objectively true is that none of the actors can be trusted here.
Jeremy Khan of Fortune describes the situation best:
OpenAI’s structure was designed to enable OpenAI to raise the tens or even hundreds of billions of dollars it would need to succeed in its mission of building artificial general intelligence (AGI), the kind of AI that is as smart or smarter than people at most cognitive tasks, while at the same time preventing capitalist forces, and in particular a single big tech giant, from controlling AGI” Altman … struck the deal — for just $1 billion initially — with Nadella in 2019. From that moment on, the structure was basically a time bomb. By turning to a single corporate entity, Microsoft, for the majority of the cash and computing power OpenAI needed to achieve its mission, it was essentially handling control to Microsoft, even if that control wasn’t codified in any formal governance mechanism.”
Who really knows what was Altman’s original intent? I’m not a mind or heart reader but money is seducing and it corrupts, but if his original intention was honestly for a “non-profit” “it will prove that Altman’s structure failed — OpenAI was not able to both raise billions of dollars from a big tech corporation while somehow remaining free from that corporation’s control.”
Was Altman naive or a shrewd genius mastermind who planned this maneuver over many years, or did he succumb to the enormous weight under Microsoft’s stacks of billions of dollars? Or as some have suggested he tried to pull a boss move as Microsoft’s proxy…came to the board and said make me king or else — the board called his bluff.
At some point, the board came to believe that Altman’s true intentions were no longer aligned with the company’s non-profit mission, and I imagine intelligent and sophisticated people on the board decided that it was meaningful enough to take action.
According to a prospectus that was shared online “The Company exists to advance OpenAI, Inc.’s mission of ensuring that safe artificial general intelligence is developed and benefits all of humanity”.
A board with no financial interest was supposed to look out for humanity.
“Regarding Mr. Altman’s departure…follows a deliberative review process by the board, which concluded that he was not consistently candid in his communications with the board, hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities”
The OpenAI board became wise to what was happening and that Altman was no longer aligned with the goals of the “non-profit.” Therefore, in his capacity as CEO Altman would essentially be misrepresenting himself and OpenAI.
Altman was bought and paid for by Microsoft, this is clear, so it was just a matter of time before something like this went down anyway. There were also rumblings that Altman was exploring other ventures and looking to gather interest to raise capital around the world. So there’s a lot more beneath the surface, as always.
The Big Tech/NTA world is a very small one and it is pretty hard to keep efforts a secret so it is likely members of the board knew what was stirring. At the same time, Microsoft was engaged in building an AI chip business to challenge Nvidia. So things were coming to a head and the lie of OpenAI maintaining itself as a non-profit looked increasingly to becoming exposed, so the board had no choice but to act. If for nothing else but to cover its own ass. Self-interest always prevails.
But the bigger observation and question here is do we really believe that companies like OpenAI, DeepMind, and Anthropic who have been raising billions from tech giants can do so and it wouldn’t result in de facto control by Big Tech? Bedtime stories are not for me.
This flushes out the real danger of allowing only a few companies to dominate an entire industry that is so integrated into the global economy. The likes of Microsoft have long been the arbiters of our lives and now AI offers them the opportunity to further entrench for total control. How could they resist?
Big Tech has also locked down incompetent politicians who, blinded by their greed and politics, have no idea what’s happening. They’ve even brought Altman in front of Congress to say that he supports regulation, however, that’s only a ploy, cleverly used to build barriers to entry against their future competitors. This just allows Altman/Big Tech to make the rules to their advantage. Eyes wide open folks! Don’t be suckers!
The longer it takes us to wake up to the reality of what is going on in Big Tech /NTA, the greater the danger becomes for a future world where just a few mega-corporations and their billionaires will dominate. Continuing along this path of letting Big Tech AI development go unregulated, the closure we get to the end of humanity. AI safety and full disclosure must be priority one! Acquiescing authority to the NTA creates a labyrinth for the ethical advancement of AI and the future of capitalism and free market competition. Ultimately we’ll end up in a world where machines not humans are in control, but not exactly, the likes of Microsoft of the world and the billionaires will be the actual ones in control!
