Category Archives: OpenAI

Who is Helen Toner the Australian woman ousted from the board of OpenAI?

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Sam Altman and Toner reportedly discussed a paper she had written criticising the timing of OpenAI’s release of ChatGPT shortly before Altman was fired

After a tumultuous few days at OpenAI, Sam Altman has returned to the helm. But who is the young Australian board member who was reportedly in dispute with the chief executive in the lead up to his firing?

Helen Toner, along with two of the other three board members responsible for firing Altman less than a week ago, is now off the board of OpenAI.

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Sam Altman’s OpenAI exit leads to rollercoaster for sector

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Firing of industry figurehead led to rebellion at his former employer and his hiring by its rival Microsoft


The blog headline was anodyne – “OpenAI announces leadership transition” – but the consequences for Silicon Valley were seismic.

On Friday the company behind the hit AI text-generating system ChatGPT announced that Sam Altman, figurehead for the business and the artificial intelligence revolution that has enthralled and alarmed the world in equal measure, had been fired as chief executive.

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Ousted OpenAI CEO Sam Altman ‘in talks to return at firm’s HQ’

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Boss was sacked by ChatGPT developer over failure to be ‘candid in his communications’

Sam Altman is being lined up for a surprise return as the chief executive of the ChatGPT developer OpenAI amid pressure from investors to reverse his shock ousting.

Altman was fired by the company board on Friday, citing a failure to be “candid in his communications”, in a move that startled Silicon Valley.

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Tech leaders agree on AI regulation but divided on how in Washington forum

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Bill Gates, Sundar Pichai, Sam Altman and others gathered for ‘one of the most important conversations of the year’

A delegation of top tech leaders including Sundar Pichai, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Sam Altman convened in Washington on Wednesday for a closed-door meeting with US senators to discuss the rise of artificial intelligence and how it should be regulated.

The discussion, billed as an “AI safety forum”, is one of several meetings between Silicon Valley, researchers, labor leaders and government and is taking on fresh urgency with the US elections looming and the rapid pace of AI advancement already affecting peoples’ lives and work.

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New cryptocurrency offers users tokens for scanning their eyeballs

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Worldcoin, launched by CEO of ChatGPT developer OpenAI, says scheme will distinguish between ‘verified humans’ and AI

Members of the public are being invited to have their eyeballs scanned by a silver orb as part of cryptocurrency project that aims to use biometric verification to distinguish humans from AI systems.

People signing up to the Worldcoin scheme via an app this week will receive a “genesis grant” of 25 tokens, equivalent to about £40, after having their iris scanned by one of the bowling ball-sized devices.

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Letter signed by Elon Musk demanding AI research pause sparks controversy

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The statement has been revealed to have false signatures and researchers have condemned its use of their work

A letter co-signed by Elon Musk and thousands of others demanding a pause in artificial intelligence research has created a firestorm, after the researchers cited in the letter condemned its use of their work, some signatories were revealed to be fake, and others backed out on their support.

On 22 March more than 1,800 signatories – including Musk, the cognitive scientist Gary Marcus, and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak – called for a six-month pause on the development of systems “more powerful” than that of GPT-4. Engineers from Amazon, DeepMind, Google, Meta and Microsoft also lent their support.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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