OpenAI is founded

- To understand what motivated the formation of OpenAI, the San Francisco based company behind GPT, requires a brief discussion on an ongoing core debate within the AI community. This debate asks whether advances in AI present, on one side of the argument, a better, more prosperous future, or on the other side, a future where AI is to be feared. Those who say AI is a positive force, such as Ray Kurzweil, the American inventor and futurist, argues that it will free up humans for more leisure time and enable more of us to focus on creative pursuits. Those on the other concerned side of the argument, such as Bill Gates, the former CEO of Microsoft, worry that AI, while remarkable, may be dangerous. He fears, for example, AI being applied in warfare to manage autonomous weapons, those that search for and destroy targets without human intervention. Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, SpaceX, and Twitter, has been outspoken about his concerns. He shares views similar to the late Stephen Hawking, the notable theoretical physicist and cosmologist. They have characterized some form of future AI as potentially humanity's "greatest existential threat," a concerning view indeed. Responding to this concern, in October, 2015, Elon Musk along with Sam Altman, former president of startup accelerator Y Combinator, and other investors such as co-founder of LinkedIn Reid Hoffman and Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal, created OpenAI. Corporations such as Microsoft, who recently, significantly increased its investment in OpenAI, and Infosys were also founding members. Acknowledging their concerns about the risks of future AI, they committed to actions that could prevent major risks. These partners formed OpenAI in the spirit of promoting and developing AI in a manner that would benefit humanity. To demonstrate their commitment, together they pledged over $1 billion to create the organization. Their mission was clear. OpenAI would be focused on ensuring that the development and usage of Artficial General Intelligence, or AGI, would benefit the world. They would build safe AGI and consider their mission successful if it helped others achieve the same outcome. The organization began as a nonprofit in early 2016 with nine researchers. By April of that year, they released their first product called OpenAI Gym. This was a toolkit for developing and comparing reinforcement learning algorithms. Reinforcement learning is when a computer employs trial and error to come up with a solution to a problem. In December, 2016, OpenAI released Universe. This was a platform for enabling AI software to interact with a computer, such as viewing what's on the screen and using a virtual keyboard and mouse. These solutions were followed by several more in the machine learning space. In 2018, OpenAI published a paper on Generative Pre-Training and what would soon become the first version of GPT software. At first, much of the code behind OpenAI was open source, thus the use of the term "Open" in its name, enabling others to inspect, modify, and distribute the code for their purposes. Transparency and sharing were consistent with the organization's founding mission. However, as with so many initial intentions, strategy can often change in response to market conditions, leadership, philosophy, and opportunity. In 2019, OpenAI dropped its designation as a pure nonprofit and became a for-profit enterprise. This was done for a variety of reasons that included the ability to attract further investment through monetization opportunities. Microsoft stepped forward and became a significant investor. Further, Microsoft became OpenAI's preferred partner to license its technology and integrate it into their existing and future products and services. In addition, Elon Musk resigned from his board seat. He cited a potential conflict of interest with the work at Tesla in developing AI for self-driving cars, as well as his concerns about the new for-profit direction. With the massive success of ChatGPT and GPT-4, OpenAI is pushing the boundaries of what is possible. It's becoming clear already that OpenAI's competition will be rigorous and the future incredibly unpredictable for all of us.