Game Of Drones - 12/1/23/23

Happy Belated Thanksgiving! 

For this holiday edition, I thought we’d journey together on another thought experiment. This time, we’ll write a synopsis for a new novel.

So let’s say our hypothetical plot is grounded in the current state of artificial intelligence, addressing the tug-of-war developing between two opposing factions. On one side, you have those who are all-in, passionately embracing the wave of technological advancements and ready to let the chips fall (literally) where they may. The believers are convinced the current race to innovate will result in a treasure trove of benefits the world has never known and that the tech industry must throw all its resources toward AI’s development. 

There are even some in this camp like Google co-founder Larry Paige who believes that evolved AI not only should exist but has the inherent right as a potential new form of life, even if that results in the displacement of humanity—sort of the next generation of Earth’s ruling inhabitants that would make us irrelevant. 

On the opposite side of the philosophical spectrum are those who passionately believe any incremental advancements should occur only after applying a significant level of scrutiny and that the whole industry should be rigorously regulated to ensure an abundance of caution. Some even believe the whole artificial general intelligence movement should be completely halted in its tracks before the inevitable new creations run amok—that the existential threat they represent will inevitably doom humanity, and unlike Larry Paige’s take, is an unacceptable outcome. 

But as I’ve stated before in these letters, I don’t think it’s very likely countries like China, Russia, and North Korea are planning any slowdowns in their race for AI dominance. 

Now for the purposes of our synopsis, let’s assume one company emerges as the clear leader in everything AI. And that its charismatic CEO becomes the face of the whole movement. In an effort to make him more interesting, we’ll flesh him out a bit, give him specific and somewhat quirky characteristics; things like the fact our hero is 5’6” tall, sometimes likes to carry a broad sword to work, and has stock-piled a significant amount of guns, ammunition, and Israeli-made gas masks at an undisclosed location somewhere in Hawaii, preparing for a day the crap hits the fan. Our protagonist is hedging a bet, playing the odds around the possibility of an apocalyptic event resulting in his retreat to a well-armed, purpose-built bunker to wait out whatever threat may occur. 

By the way, this is more common than most people realize among many tech billionaires, including Peter Thiel who’s said to have built a very elaborate underground survival fortress somewhere in a remote section of New Zealand. I did quite a bit of research on this for one of my books.

But back to our hypothetical story. Let’s assume that on a Friday just prior to a national holiday, news breaks that our famous CEO has been fired by the Board of Directors from the company he co-founded. This particular board is known for its commitment to the overly cautious take when it comes to AI and the official reason for this shocking news is that the CEO “wasn’t clearly communicating with them.” In other words, they’re saying he lied.

So the first thing most readers of our story might assume is that some significant advancement in AI had occurred, a leap initially undisclosed, that rattled the board so deeply, they summarily ran off an iconic Steve Jobs-like figure, well aware of the resulting storm to follow. 

That sounds like a pretty good setup for a novel… But what I described above isn’t fiction. That’s all fact and what actually happened the Friday before Thanksgiving to our real-life protagonist, Sam Altman, the CEO of Open AI, and the man who led the efforts to create Chat-GPT, something that started the explosion in AI large learning modules this year. You might remember a few months ago when Sam testified before congress on the potential dangers of AI.

Et Tu Ilya’?

The whole saga is pretty fascinating and includes a well-respected Open AI chief scientist (Ilya Sutskever—a very cool and appropriate name) who apparently turned on Altman and helped the board with his ouster, only to change his mind after the Red Wedding-like event and proclaim his regret. There was Game of Thrones-level intrigue in the whole history of the directors and what appear to be dubious conflicts of interest with several of the members who maintained vested interests in some of Open AI’s competitors.

I won’t go into the whole background here since you’ll probably be watching it all unfold in the inevitable Netflix movie, or possibly reading in the next Michael Lewis book. But punching a hole in the moldy corporate board room drywall revealed a snake nest of conflicting interests and inappropriate personal agendas that are almost as dramatic as Sam’s firing itself. 

To complicate matters, Microsoft’s CEO, Satya Nadella was said to have been livid, having invested billions in Open AI and seemingly given no warning of the impending mutiny. It’s no secret that Microsoft’s cash turned the tide for Open AI and provided the capital necessary to transform Chat-GPT (and the whole AI movement) into a household name. 

But the tide quickly reversed over the weekend when Nadella made a public statement that Altman and his lieutenants would be joining Microsoft. Once that news broke, most of the +-700 employees remaining at Open AI said they’d follow Sam to Microsoft. 

In other words, Nadella had basically leveraged the Open AI board’s incomprehensible, heavy-handed misstep and engineered the takeover of a $90 billion company at a total cost of zero. 

Now that would have gone down as one of the most epic Silicon Valley maneuvers ever had it come to fruition, destined to become a case study in elite business schools for decades. But as things turned out, the members of the board saw their company disintegrating by the minute as a result of their hubris and quickly found themselves flipped from predators to prey before the day was over. 

Within a week, Altman was back as CEO, only agreeing to return with the contingency that the entire board bend the knee then step down. As things turned out, the failed coup de gras only consolidated Altman’s power thus inevitably moving the needle significantly in the whole AI philosophical argument. The fallout from all this will no doubt have a huge impact on the entire industry. 

This whole saga took place over the course of only a few days and the dust is still settling. The final organizational structure will no doubt be reconfigured, probably in a way that will make Altman totally bulletproof to any future ill-conceived actions by the (new) Board of Directors. 

But through all the smoke and intrigue, there’s an obvious question that still lingers. Just what got everyone so spooked? When I heard the news that Altman had been unceremoniously dumped, and the reason given, the first thought I had was, they did it. They created artificial general intelligence.

Whatever occurred may not be known for a while. But it’s fairly obvious some kind of leap took place. The question is, what happens now? Do they have some next-level tech isolated in a digital cage within Open AI’s headquarters? 

Stay tuned. I think this whole story is about to get even more interesting…

I’ll be preparing for the annual Best Movies list later in the month. If you have any you’d like to nominate please let me know.

Thanks again to those of you who volunteered to read the first draft of the new book. I really appreciate it.

As always, it’s great to hear from you all.