Hello, friends! Just a year ago, ChatGPT was launched in front of the public. And in this one year, it has literally changed the world. ChatGPT. It was difficult for people to believe that an artificial intelligence software could be this powerful. The company that made it, OpenAI, and the CEO of the company, Sam Altman, emerged as the new face of the AI But a few days ago, this company faced some strange things. Suddenly, the board of directors of the company fired Sam Altman. The employees working in the company were shocked to hear this news. They were threatened that a lot of people would resign from their jobs.
In the next 4 days, the CEOs were replaced 3 times in OpenAI. But the most shocking thing is that a mysterious AI is being told the reason behind this controversy. Q-Star. You heard it right. A few days before Sam Altman was fired, the researchers working in the company had written a letter to the board of directors of the company. There was a warning in the letter. The letter said that the company had invented an extremely powerful AI. An AI that could put humanity in danger. An AI that can not only solve complex mathematical and scientific problems, but can also predict future events to some extent. The company has internally named this AI as Q-Star. Let's understand this mystery in depth in this artical.
This year, Tom Cruise's new Mission Impossible film, Dead Reckoning Part 1. If you remember, the main villain in this film was not a human, but a software of artificial intelligence. The entity. It knows your every secret. The film named this AI the Entity. And this AI was shown to be so powerful that it was present at all times. And it could manipulate humans for its benefit. Mathematically, with the help of its mass surveillance, it could predict the future.
And by predicting the future, it didn't mean telling what would happen in the next 10-15 years. Rather, in any particular situation, in the next day or week, what will be the future outcome of that particular situation. This AI was not only good at a few tasks, but it was able to do almost every task better than humans. This type of artificial intelligence is given a name in real life, friends. AGI. Artificial General Intelligence. AGI. A computer system that can do any job or any task that a human does, but only better. Today, the famous AI softwares like ChatGPT, Language Learning Models, or the generative AI tools like Mid-Journey, are put in the category of weak AI. They are weak AI softwares. They are good only in specific tasks.
The tasks they are made for, are done in a very good way, better than humans. But they are specialised only in those tasks. If a strong AI like AGI exists, it will be able to work better than humans in many different things. at the same time. But at this point of time, no strong AI exists in the world. In 2015, the Open AI Company was established as a non-profit. And there was only one purpose behind the creation of this company. To create an Artificial General Intelligence. To create AGI that would benefit humanity. Even today, if you go to the company's website, they have written their mission in clear words. To ensure that Artificial General Intelligence benefits all of humanity. The company was led by many big tech entrepreneurs including Sam Altman and Elon Musk.
There were a total of 10 co-founding members including the current Chief Scientist, Ilya Sutskiver, and the President of OpenAI, Greg Brockman. Remember these names because they play an important role in our story. All the co-founders together, pledged $1 billion to OpenAI. In 2019, 4 years after the company formation, Sam Altman becomes the CEO of Open AI. And 4 years later, on 17th November, 2023, the Board of Directors of the company suddenly fire Sam. In such big companies, if you don't know, there is a Board of Directors. In most cases, they have the power to fire and hire the CEO. According to the rules, it's normal for the Board of Directors to have so much power. The opening was that there were 6 members in this board.
I've already told you the names of the three. One was Sam, the other was Ilya, the third was Greg, and the other three were independent executives. The CEO of Quora was Adam, a tech entrepreneur Tasha McCauley, and a Helen Toner. Majority voting was needed to reach any decision. And obviously, Sam wouldn't fire himself. So only 5 people were left. The other thing here is that along with firing Sam, the board of directors also fired Greg from the board. Greg wouldn't have voted against Sam either. There were only 4 people left. Ilya, Adam, Tasha, and Helen. These were the 4 people who informed Sam via a Google Meet call that they were being fired. What was the reason behind the fire? It wasn't told publicly.
The board said that Sam didn't talk to us openly. His communication wasn't clear. This indicated that he was hiding something from us. After being fired from the company, neither Sam nor Greg gave any statement on why they were fired. They just went on Twitter and told people that they felt very disappointed about it. This decision was shocking in the world of tech. How is it possible that such a powerful and influential CEO, was suddenly fired from the company with four board members? What was the real reason that was being hidden from the world? I had told you in the beginning that OpenAI was founded as a non-profit company. This is very unique and important. Because all the other popular companies in Silicon Valley, are for-profit.
Facebook, Meta, Google, Microsoft, Apple, all these companies make their products and services to earn money. And their main goal is to earn money. But OpenAI's main goal was to create an AGI for the benefit of humans. It was a research facility. In the OpenAI Charter, it was written that the duty of the company was on humanity. Neither on the investors, nor on the employees. But unfortunately, this non-profit model didn't last for long. In 2019, the year Sam Altman became the CEO of OpenAI, OpenAI made a subsidiary company. This subsidiary company was kept for-profit. It was called OpenAI Global LLC. And this subsidiary company works on the model of capped profits. Capped means that the profit will be earned up to a limit. This limit is 100 times the investment.
So the investors who invest in this for-profit company, can get a maximum of 100 times the return of their investment. And if the company earns more than that, all that profit will go to this non-profit main company. OpenAI was actually started, and it was meant to be open source. I named it OpenAI. After open source. It is in fact a closed source. It should be renamed super closed source for maximum profit AI. In 2019, this for-profit subsidiary company gets its first and biggest funding from Microsoft. Microsoft invests $1 billion in it. But in the next 4 years, as the popularity of this company increased, this subsidiary company has raised an investment of $13 billion in total. Today, it is said that Microsoft has a 49% stake in OpenAI's for-profit subsidiary.
Let's move on to Microsoft. But before that, it is important to understand that when this for-profit subsidiary was created, it was also said that the control of the company would still be with the non-profit OpenAI main company. But a big question arose from all these conflicting arguments. How much work should be done for-profit and how much work should be done for non-profit? And when this AGI is invented, to what extent can this AGI be kept for-profit and to what extent can it be kept non-profit? If everything becomes for-profit, it can have a very harmful effect on the world. The best example of this is Facebook. Facebook's algorithms optimized everything for their profit. Whether people have mental health issues, or are addicted, or spread hate speech on the platform, even if there are riots in the world,
Facebook in India has been selective in curbing hate speech, misinformation and inflammatory posts. This is according to leaked documents obtained by the Associated Press. Exposing all these things, 2 years ago, there was an opening of a Facebook paper, which I talked about in this video. This is the same fear that some people have about AI. Before Sam was fired, some researchers working in OpenAI had written a letter to the OpenAI board, according to the insiders. It was written that the Q-star AI they're developing, can be a huge step towards reaching AGI. And they're worried about the potential of the Q-star. What exactly can be done with the help of the Q-star? Only the researchers and employees working in the company know this. But conceptually, the Q-star AI also has a concept, in the field of reinforcement learning.
Reinforcement learning is basically a way to train the AI. To give human feedback to the AI repeatedly, so that the AI keeps learning, understands its environment better, and takes better decisions gradually. Those of you who have completed my ChatGPT course, must know about it. And for those who haven't, let me tell you, I have made a 4.5 hour course on ChatGPT, which has both theory and practical. In which I have taught you how you can use AI for your own benefit. To take your life and career to the next level. There are 6 chapters in the course. In the first chapter, I have explained the basics of reinforcement learning. In the second chapter, I have explained the technology behind Prompt Engineering Tokens and ChatGPT.
But in the third chapter, you will realise that this is a tool that should be used every day. Studying for exams can be 2-3 times more efficient. If you need motivation, you can get it from here. If you need advice on anything, ChatGPT can give it to you. The fourth chapter focuses on daily life uses. For example, if you want to travel somewhere, and you want to plan your travel, then stop wasting money on a travel agent. ChatGPT can do all this work for you for free. Food and diet planning can also work for you. The fifth chapter is my personal favourite, because it focuses on business owners. How you can use it to increase sales in your business, to handle customer feedback, and for marketing your business.
This is why I use ChatGPT on a daily basis, and you won't believe how much my productivity has increased. This entire course is a one-time purchase, you can watch these videos for a lifetime. And I'd like to give you some good news, because this technology is improving rapidly. In the coming months, I'll be adding free updates to this course. Those of you who have already bought this course, check it out after 2 months, you'll get new lessons in this course. And for those of you who haven't joined it yet, the link is in the QR code, or you can find the link in the description and pinned comment below. Use the coupon code AGI40 to get 40% off. This will be applicable to 400 people.
You can go and check it out, I'm sure you'll find it very useful. Coming back to Q star, Q star is known as a Q-value function. This function is written like this, Q bracket S comma A. S stands for State. And A stands for Action. Q is a function that represents the most optimal point. Let me explain it with an example. Suppose you are playing chess. Your soldier is standing on a square or a position in the chessboard. Where he is standing, he will be called State S. The next move you want to make in the chess, will be called Action A. The Q-value function of this will predict all possible scenarios. What can happen when you make a move? An analysis of this will tell you the best possible move according to your position.
The best and most optimal move derived from this Q-value function is called Q-star in the language of maths. Which means, what is the best move in the chess game in any situation for you to move? I just took an example of the chessboard here. But think about it, if this can be done for anything in the world, like if you are driving on the highway, and AI can predict the speeds of all the cars around you, can see their driving styles, can do an analysis of how all the cars will potentially go in the next 1-2 seconds, and can give you the best possible driving instruction based on that. Or before an election, QSTAR AI can do an analysis of every possible scenario,
and predict the election results. If OpenAI has the ability to predict the future to a large extent, then it can predict the future to a large extent. The same thing that was shown in the film Mission Impossible can be done. To predict human thought patterns. Analyzing all possible decisions at any moment, accurately predicting how a person will take a decision in any situation, from business deals to political moves, everyone can be influenced by this Q-Star. People can do these things to some extent, but AGI can go to the next level than humans. Because humans have their own biases. Humans are emotional. and make decisions based on those emotions. But AI will make its predictions based on mathematics. After analyzing all possible moves in a chess game, you will be told the most optimal move.
This AI will be able to give the most accurate prediction. The current chat GPT can do writing and language translation very well by predicting the next words. But if Q-value learning is added to this AI, then the answers to the questions in the most optimal way. We will get the most optimal answer to any question. This is just a guess that we can make about this mysterious Q-star AI. But in reality, only people working in Open AI know how much progress has been made here. And how close it is to AGI. Those who rang the Q-star alarm, were afraid that we might be going in the wrong direction. That the loss to humanity might be too much in comparison to the benefit. Even though the Board of Directors had given a vague reason to fire Sam, the actual reason was two different ideas.
One of the ideas in OpenAI is for profit, which represents commercialisation. And the other is the idea of this non-profit group, who are more afraid of this technology. Which side of the two is right, is a matter of debate. Those who favour the for-profit side, say that if And to develop better technology, it would require a lot of money. Investors would need money. Without which, it wouldn't be possible. And those who are on the non-profit side, they say that the ideology of profit, can destroy our original ideology. And can be a big threat to humanity. A few days before the controversy started, Microsoft's President Brad Smith, said at a conference on 10th November, Who do you trust the most? If your technology comes from a non-profit company, or from a for-profit company, which is being controlled by only one person.
Here, he was indirectly pointing to Mark Zuckerberg. But the balance between both sides of OpenAI, had been deteriorating for a long time. In February 2023, the first paid version of ChatGPT was launched, ChatGPT+. The next month, on 1st March, an API was launched. so that other companies can integrate ChatGPT. After this, on 14th March, GPT-4 was launched. The employees said that the hyper-commercialisation seen by OpenAI in the last few months, caused a rift between these two sides. After the release of ChatGPT, there was a clear path for revenue and profit. We couldn't remain as an idealistic research lab. We had our customers and it was important to serve them. In October 2023, OpenAI launches its powerful image generator, Dally 3. It is combined with paid versions of ChatGPT.
After that, on 6th November, the company's first developer conference takes place. Welcome to our first ever OpenAI Dev Day. Today, we've got about 2 million developers building on our API for a wide variety of use cases, doing amazing stuff. In this conference, Sam gives a presentation in front of the public, just like an Apple or Google presentation. It is said that they can now make a custom-built model of the Chad GPT. They are called GPTs. Not just one Chad GPT, but a lot of customized GPTs. We'll talk about all of this in detail in the course update. But what was happening here, as the commercialisation was growing, one side was Sam and President Greg, who were encouraging the commercialisation. But the other side was Chief Scientist Ilya, who was feeling very uncomfortable with it.
Ilya was very obsessed with AI safety. He once told his employees that he was afraid that AGI systems would treat humans the same way humans treat animals today. According to Ilya, AGI is not far off. In the coming years, we'll see AGI very soon. And we all need to be prepared for it. More and more people see what AI can do. and where it is headed towards, then it will become clear how much trepidation is appropriate." In July, OpenAI announces that a new super-alignment team will be formed, which will focus on AI safety techniques. The leader of this team is Ilya himself. The company decides that 20% of the computer chips that the company has, will be dedicated to this task only. Focusing only on safety related to AI.
By August-September, it had become clear that the company had split into two different groups, working in opposite directions. Sam was talking about which new big thing would be launched next. After GPT-4, he was talking about GPT-5. On the other hand, Ilya was focusing on how to increase AI safety in the company. What precautions should we take? Sam was focusing on how to raise the investment of billions of dollars, so that our speed could increase. The result of this was that the other four board of directors of OpenAI were more on the side of Ilya. When he received a letter that a very powerful Q-Star had been invented, he thought that the for-profit section would be beneficial to get him out of the company.
After firing Sam, the board announced that the new CEO of the company would be Meera Murati. She would work as the interim CEO, and this was on 17th November. But by the morning of 19th November, the employees of the company had started making a ruckus. Most of the employees of the company were actually on Sam's side. Microsoft was also in a strange position because they had a 49% stake of the for-profit subsidiary. They didn't want the company to fall apart. Microsoft was putting pressure on the board to make Sam the CEO again. On 19th November, there were some negotiations between the board and Sam, where Sam wore the Guest Pass and went to the OpenAI office. People thought that Sam might become the CEO again, but that didn't happen.
The next day, OpenAI announced that the former CEO of Twitch, Amit Sher, had become the new CEO of OpenAI. On the same day, Microsoft's CEO Satya Nadella informed that their company would form a new advanced AI research team, and Sam and Greg would lead the team. Due to Satya Nadella's move, Microsoft's stock price reached a record high. But the question that arises is, what will the CEO of OpenAI do? What will I do? Should I quit my job? Because it is reported that out of the 770 employees of the company, 743 have written a letter saying that if Sam and Greg don't return to the company, they will resign as well. Meaning that more than 90% of the employees threaten to quit the company.
The first person to sign this letter is Meera Murati herself. And then we get to see a lot of tweets. A lot of employees keep tweeting, OpenAI is nothing without its people. It's true that when the CEO of a company is fired, and only 90% of the employees are gone, then what's the use of the company? Then comes the biggest twist of the story. Ilya himself signs the letter and tweets it. Ilya also realises that if the company doesn't survive, then what safety precautions will be taken? As a result, The three co-founders of OpenAI came to one side. Sam, Ilya and Greg. The other three independent board members remained silent. But then, the new CEO of the company, Emmett, threatened to resign. He said that if he wasn't told the reason why Sam was fired from the company, he would resign.
After all this, it was clear that no other option was left. So on 21st November, Sam was called back into the company. and Sam became the CEO of OpenAI. In the end, these three board members were left on one side, and on the other side, the company's CEO, co-founders, and all the other employees. After Sam's return, two of these board members were fired. Only Adam D'Angelo was left as the only exception. Both women were to leave the board, and two new members were added to the board. Brett Taylor, former Co-CEO of Salesforce, and Larry Summers, former Secretary of the Treasury. The first task of this new board was to appoint a big board, with 9 members. After this, Sam tweeted, I love OpenAI.
Whatever I have done in the last few days, I have done it to keep this team together. I have done it to move forward on my mission. When I said I would join Microsoft's new team, I thought that would be my path. But now, I'm happy to be back in OpenAI. And our new board also has the support of Satya. From the perspective of Satya Nadella, the situation was such that whatever happens, Microsoft would benefit. If the OpenAI company didn't survive, a new department that was built within Microsoft, would have almost all the employees of OpenAI, the CEO and co-founders. They could have done the same thing. But now that the OpenAI company has survived, They already have a good partnership with Microsoft, so Microsoft is already benefitting.
Satya Nadella tweets, We are encouraged by the changes to the OpenAI board. We believe that this is the first step towards stable, well-informed and effective governance. It is also expected that Satya Nadella will become a board member of OpenAI. This company is safe for now. But the question is, will OpenAI turn more towards for-profit in the future? Or will it still maintain its non-profit values? And what impact will it have on the development of AGI? Time will tell. But one thing that can be said for sure is that AI is not going anywhere. Artificial intelligence has become a part of our world. And the sooner you learn to use it, the easier it will be for you to move forward in this changing world.
