Daily AI Newsletter: Breaking: Sam Altman to return as CEO of OpenAI

In today’s email:

📣 ChatGPT with voice is now available to all free users.
🐥 Screenshots show xAI’s chatbot Grok on X’s web app
🎥 Stability AI gets into the video-generating game
🧰 8 new AI-powered tools and resources. Make sure to check the online version for the full list of tools.

Breaking: Sam Altman to return as CEO of OpenAI

Sam Altman, initially ousted as CEO of OpenAI, will return to the position following a turbulent series of events. This turnaround comes after Greg Brockman, former president, resigned in protest of Altman's firing but will now rejoin the company. An interim board comprising Bret Taylor, Larry Summers, and Adam D’Angelo (from the previous board) was established to vet and appoint a larger, 9-member board for governance restructuring. Microsoft, a significant investor, seeks representation on this expanded board.

The recent developments have been marked by internal power struggles and negotiations. An independent law firm will investigate the entire saga. While the formalities of Altman's return are nearly complete, the underlying tensions within the company appear unresolved.

OpenAI's other major investor, Thrive Capital, supports Altman's return, highlighting the company's potential in computing history and the leadership qualities of Altman and Brockman. Key board member Helen Toner expressed relief at the resolution of these events.

The drama began with the board's firm decision to remove Altman, leading to internal chaos, including threats from employees to leave with Altman and Brockman for Microsoft if the board didn't resign. Key board member Ilya Sutskever, OpenAI's chief scientist, switched allegiance back to Altman's side, further weakening the opposition. Interim CEO Emmett Shear, who was temporarily replacing Mira Murati, played a role in seeking evidence for Altman's firing and has commented positively on the resolution of the situation.

Related:

Before Altman’s Ouster, OpenAI’s Board Was Divided and Feuding
Behind the Scenes of Sam Altman’s Wild Ouster From OpenAI
Microsoft Is Discussing Governance Changes It Wants From OpenAI

Anthropic Introduces Claude 2.1 With 200K Context Window

Claude 2.1 can now process up to 200,000 tokens of context, equivalent to around 150,000 words or 500 pages of text.
Claude 2.1 has a 2x reduction in false/hallucinated statements.
Early support for connecting Claude to existing company APIs, databases and web services, in beta.

Also, the new Claude 2.1 Refuses to kill a Python process :)

ChatGPT with voice is now available to all free users.

Download the app on your phone and tap the headphones icon to start a conversation. Story illustration

To get started with voice, head to Settings → New Features on the mobile app and opt into voice conversations. Then, tap the headphone button located in the top-right corner of the home screen and choose your preferred voice out of five different voices.

The new voice capability is powered by a new text-to-speech model, capable of generating human-like audio from just text and a few seconds of sample speech. We collaborated with professional voice actors to create each of the voices. We also use Whisper, our open-source speech recognition system, to transcribe your spoken words into text.

Screenshots show xAI’s chatbot Grok on X’s web app

Elon Musk's company X is developing an AI chatbot named Grok as part of its new three-tiered subscription service, which includes X Basic, X Premium, and X Premium+. Grok, which is compared to OpenAI's ChatGPT and other AI systems, is designed to be more conversational with a personality inspired by "The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy". It aims to answer questions with wit and a rebellious streak, including queries that other AIs might reject. Unlike its competitors, Grok will have real-time knowledge access and web browsing capabilities.

Grok was initially released on November 4 to a select group of testers and will eventually be available to all X Premium+ subscribers. X Premium+ is the most expensive subscription at $16 per month or $168 per year, offering ad-free content and a Creator Hub, among other features. The integration of Grok into this tier is intended to make it more attractive, especially to non-creators.

The implementation of Grok into the X app is underway, with its icon already added to the X web app’s code. Non-subscribers will see a prompt to subscribe to Premium+ upon clicking the Grok icon, while subscribers will access a basic chat interface.

Other stuff

Stability AI gets into the video-generating game
Break the Sequential Dependency of LLM Inference Using Lookahead Decoding
The first three recordings from the TED event in San Francisco on Oct 17-18, focusing on AI's power: Ilya's talk at TED AI published