Sam Altman acknowledges the fears around creativity, copyright, and misuse of AI

Sam Altman says OpenAI released ChatGPT early as a public service

As the company was developing ChatGPT-4, version 3 was released to allow everyone to adjust to the new tool. Since then, he and his colleagues have called for oversight and regulation to address fears of misuse and AI-enabled pathogens.

OpenAI helped kick-start an AI arms race in Silicon Valley

Led by CEO Sam Altman, OpenAI's mission is to "ensure artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity" by making its products open to all users. In 2023, the $86B company behind the chatbot ChatGPT consisted of a for-profit arm under its nonprofit governing board.

In 2023, OpenAI spent $520 million on ChatGPT

The ongoing development and refinement of new AI models requires larger datasets and processing more parameters between words and subwords to improve the accuracy of generated content. New startups are expected to harness this technology to provide unthought-of products and services.

Scientists increasingly can't predict what AI will do

Most AI systems are so-called "black box" models, where we only see inputs and outputs while the inner workings remain obscure. This piece, written prior to the launch of ChatGPT, cautions developers to know why and how a system produces its results, and not to sacrifice explainability for accuracy.

OpenAI initially focused on novelty projects, like training AI bots to win video games, before becoming known for its AI chatbot ChatGPT.

The philosophy of effective altruism was at the heart of Sam Altman's firing

OpenAI was originally created as a nonprofit to develop artificial general intelligence for humanity's benefit. However, skyrocketing computing costs made adherence to this belief difficult, as new influences, such as external investors, were introduced to accelerate growth with reduced safety.

Decoding the hype around AI

2022 was the year AI broke onto the scene, with applications like ChatGPT amazing users with its ability to generate realistic-sounding answers. Technologist Arvind Narayanan presents a clear-eyed view of what the technologies can (and can't) do.

Google invented the foundation of the AI movement—but ChatGPT was a shock

For years, Google was the cutting-edge of the AI world, including the development of the Transformer—the basis of contemporary AI chatbots. But since OpenAI debuted ChatGPT in 2022, the company was had to play catch-up. This is a four-hour deep dive into Google's AI history.

Elon Musk once tried to make himself CEO of artificial intelligence behemoth and ChatGPT creator OpenAI.

Try OpenAI's ChatGPT for free

In late 2022, OpenAI launched a chatbot that quickly became one of the most viral tech products of all time. The software uses code to interpret natural language to produce sophisticated content based on simple user prompts.

AlexNet was the AI tipping point that set the stage for ChatGPT

AlexNet is a neural network created in 2012 that laid the groundwork for modern AI models. Before AlexNet, the ideas behind neural networks existed, but the computational power to run them didn’t.

AI gained mainstream attention with tools like IBM Watson and Apple’s Siri

With the release of ChatGPT in 2022, which drew over 100 million weekly users in just two months, natural language processing and understanding could be achieved at scale via machine learning. Unlike earlier artificial intelligence that could pull stored knowledge, generative AI produces text, images, or sounds.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has called OpenAI 'the most capital-intensive startup in history'

As of 2024, Silicon Valley was set to spend $1T in the coming years building AI. As companies, including Google and Microsoft, fling billions at AI dreams, concerns are rising about whether that money will ever be recouped. To learn about the argument that there is an AI bubble—and that it could soon burst if AI doesn't prove its worth—read this article.

Listen to Palantir CEO Alex Karp's outlook for how AI will change the economy.

Will AI kill us all? A debate

As AI becomes a bigger part of our lives, what does that mean for the future of humanity? The podcast Entanglements hosts a pessimistic former OpenAI employee and an optimistic Princeton professor to discuss whether AI brings dystopia or a brighter future.

Google’s CEO has warned that today’s AI boom shows ‘elements of irrationality’

An interview with Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai warns that the trillion-dollar surge in AI valuations may contain clear signs of irrationality, echoing past tech bubbles. He says no firm—including Google—would be immune if the boom cools or bursts.

How ChatGPT learns to read

The introduction of ChatGPT last fall jumpstarted public interest in the future capabilities of artificial intelligence and what it means for society. Of many somewhat "jargony" terms thrown around, the phrase "Large Language Model" is commonly seen—but also incredibly unclear as to what it means. In the simplest sense, the programs comb through mountains of internet data in response to a question and guess at what should come next (subscription needed).

Anthropic's staff philosopher discusses the importance of teaching ethics to AI

Amanda Askell's work focuses on the behavior and values reflected in Claude, the company's AI chatbot, and how its character can better align with how the "ideal person" would act in Claude's position. She also emphasizes the importance of humans being ethical in their interactions with current models, from which future ones will be built.

Because they are built on content produced by humans, who possess biases, generative AI tools inherit prejudices and stereotypes from training data, which later appear in their outputs.

Read Sam Altman's life advice that he wrote in a blog post before he became CEO of OpenAI, from "don't lose touch with old friends" to "occasionally stay up until the sun rises talking to people."

Stephen Wolfram on AI's rapid progress & the "Post-Knowledge Work" era

AI, as a concept, has been around since at least the 1950s, but it's only in the last year or so that the technology has been able to equal humans at many tasks -- and in many cases surpass humans. In this podcast, mathematician and computer scientist Stephen Wolfram provides an AI 101, explaining how we got here, how highly advanced chatbots like ChatGPT work, and what our world is in store for next.

View a timeline of Sam Altman's firing and reinstatement as Open AI CEO

Besides saying that Altman hadn't been "consistently candid" in his discussions with them, OpenAI's board did not detail any wrongdoing that led to the firing on November 17, 2023. Four days later, Altman was reinstated, and a new board was assembled.

Through prompt injection attacks, bad actors provide deceptive prompts to generative AI systems in order to manipulate their outputs and acquire sensitive data.

Fair use may shield AI companies from potential copyright violations

AI models are trained on enormous datasets built from content scraped from websites across the internet. Copyright law includes a four-factor test to determine whether copies of content fall under fair use, but the law's enforcement has been inconsistent.

Warren Buffett has worried that AI might end up being as consequential as the development of the nuclear bomb

Berkshire Hathaway chairman Warren Buffett is one of the many people who’ve come face-to-face with the downside effects of AI, and in particular, deepfakes. He was recently shown a deepfake of himself in a video, which caused him to worry about how bad actors will take advantage of the technology.

The rise of generative AI could exacerbate anxiety because people may turn to chatbots for constant reassurance.

Anthropic's interpretability team discusses how AI models' thinking mimics biology

Just as humans engage in complex behaviors to survive and reproduce, teams of experts in neuroscience, virology, mathematics, and other disciplines argue that large language models develop complex mechanisms to achieve their goals. These mechanisms can be manipulated to assess how they modify outputs—much like stimulating individual neurons—to uncover how LLMs "think."

Experiments involving AI agents operating in virtual societies for 15 days produced diverse outcomes, ranging from every agent dying to the creation of a functioning democracy, depending on the AI model used.

Google Search incorporated AI Overviews in 2024 to fight back competitors

Analysts believe that generative AI tools—not antitrust rulings—are Google's biggest threat because they draw users away from traditional search and potential ad revenue. AI partnerships, like the one between Apple and OpenAI, may further reduce Google's market share.

A merger between OpenAI and Anthropic was reportedly proposed after Sam Altman's firing

OpenAI's board of directors reportedly reached out to Anthropic's CEO, Dario Amodei, about the possibility of taking over the role left by Altman in 2023. Amodei declined to take over as OpenAI's CEO and to a merger of the two AI startups.

In 2024, Meta launched an AI video generator to create or edit videos through prompts

The tool puts the Meta in direct competition with OpenAI and Google as more companies are investing billions of dollars to capitalize on the explosion of public interest in machine learning and generative media technologies.

Research suggests using AI for schoolwork may harm critical thinking skills

An MIT study finds lower brain engagement in students who used ChatGPT, resulting in consistent underperformance in neural, linguistic and behavioral levels. AI users struggled to recall their own essays, while the brain-only group showed the highest neural connectivity and satisfaction.

AI-generated avatars allow users to create deepfakes in real time

Synthetic media tools can map voices and faces to make individuals appear as someone else. Although they open the door to new opportunities in immersive education and entertainment, they also raise concerns about the misuse of personal identity.

Anthropic's Frontier Red Team assesses the dangers of its AI tools through 'evals'—safety tests that probe models to disclose sensitive information.

The AI that creates any picture you want and how it works

Since January 2021, advances in AI research produced a plethora of deep-learning models capable of generating original images from simple text prompts. Researchers at OpenAI, Google, Facebook, and others have developed yet to be released text-to-image tools, and similar models have proliferated online. This video is a primer on how we got here, how the technology works, and its implications.

View a timeline of AI deployments from 2017 to 2025

The development of transformer architecture and the release of GPTs across AI labs led to rapid changes in LLM scale and power. Companies like OpenAI, Google, Meta, Microsoft, and Anthropic have invested billions of dollars to develop reliable, versatile models.

The history of Anthropic began with a break from OpenAI over safety concerns.

Unlike the models made by large AI companies, open-weight models can have their safeguards removed or weakened, a process that has become increasingly easy and may expose users to harmful information.