🕸️OpenAI Saga: Who Guards Humanity's Digital Future?
Read about the most important tech news this week and how they affect the products and businesses you build, manage, scale.
In Today's Siam Sixers
🛡️ OpenAI Saga: Who Guards our Digital Guardians?
📺 Video: Tim Cook talks to Dua Lipa about creativity, leadership, and innovation
💡 Essential Reading for Product Leaders
🎧 Podcast: We’ll be surprised by AI again - Bill Gates ft. Yejin Choi
🌟 Visualized: World’s Most Popular Apps By Downloads
😂 Artificial Intelligence vs OpenAI
1️⃣OpenAI Saga: Who Will Guard (and Regulate) the Guardians of Our Digital Future?
You must be following all the drama at OpenAI🤯
It is still unfolding - largely on X - which contrary to what people may say, still remains the first source for information and news tidbits despite the decline in daily active users after Musk’s takeover and his controversial decisions.
And it got me thinking - a very small group of people have come to wield total, personalized control over systems shaping technologies like AI and media that impacts humanity’s present and future.
🕸️The Web of Power: OpenAI Connections
Let me take the example of the people connected with OpenAI to show you a glimpse of the power weilded by the Silicon Valley bosses and how closely knit they are - One of Sam Altman’s co-founders at OpenAI was Elon Musk, which you already know, who has moved on to start his own AI venture.
💸Meanwhile, Greg Brockman, the OpenAI president ousted alongside Altman, was the first CTO of Stripe, which raised money from fellow OpenAI co-founders Musk and Peter Thiel (who was a board member at Meta).
See the web of power that’s spun?🕸️ If you now start to think that the board shakeup of OpenAI was not wrong to bring in more transparency, think again. The OpenAI board is juggling CEOs like a circus clown and the latest to be appointed, Emmett Shear, is a visiting partner at Y Combinator where Sam Altman once was president!
And, Y Combinator, no matter what it claims to be is still a glorified Silicon Valley social hub to put it plainly, and two of its co-founders, Jessica Livingston and Trevor Blackwell, are also🥁OpenAI co-founders. Crazy, right?
🤔Who Guards the Guardians of Our Digital Future?
While world governments are talking about how to govern AI, I think we must also ask - Who guards and regulates the guardians of our digital future? The ability (or audacity) of these leaders to pivot their companies based on personal whims or passions, as seen with Musk's Twitter takeover, Zuckerberg's metaverse push, or OpenAI’s fiasco highlights the unpredictable nature of Silicon Valley and the impact on the future of how humanity accesses tech itself.
Individual personalities and individual fortunes always takes precedence in the world of Silicon Valley startups. And I shudder thinking about the power that a handful of people - Bezos, Zuckerberg, Musk, Nadella, and Cook hold over our digital futures.
🌍Shaping the Fate of a Digital Society
As a tech product builder having an inside view of technology and what AI can do, I firmly believe that how we approach AI governance today will shape the fate of humanity and society tomorrow. And it should not be left to the whims and fancies of the Silicon Valley tech billionaires and their friends.
We have to guard the people who build, shape, and govern AI today while also holding them accountable and demand transparency.
Global governmental regulations are trying to do that - from the European Union’s elaborate regulatory regime to Federal Trade Commission’s belief in antitrust enforcement to some proposals to emulate Silicon Valley governance itself.
But the existing policies are not enough and none are yet to succeeded in the AI era, as is evident in the current OpenAI saga. On top of it, the total lack of understanding that the global bureaucracy has over emerging tech is baffling.
The ultimate lesson we draw from this entire OpenAI saga is not limited to the tech industry or just American tech giants - it speaks to the global implications of a very small group of individuals wielding disproportionate control over tech systems that shape society's present and future.
The OpenAI saga serves as a cautionary tale, highlighting the need for robust strategies to address the personalized rule in Silicon Valley, particularly as the AI era brings forth AGI and changes the fate of humanity.
2️⃣Video: Tim Cook talks to Dua Lipa about creativity, leadership, and innovation
Here are two people who you’d never imagined appearing in an interview together!
BBC managed to put Pop star Dua Lipa and Apple CEO Tim Cook in the same room and what we get is a very refreshing take of Tim Cook’s life at Apple, his personal journey, as well as his perspective on tackling global challenges.
Throughout this conversation, Dua and Tim explore the intersection between creativity, leadership, and innovation. This video offers a unique glimpse behind the scenes of running the world’s largest and most valuable company.
3️⃣Essential Reading for Product Teams and Leaders
Here are the latest articles from Siam Computing and the ProdWrks publication that I feel will be useful for product teams and product leaders.
🤖Entropik’s Lava Kumar Wants to Mainstream Multimodal Emotion AI. Can it disrupt Market Research?
🔒Cloudification, AI, and Cybersecurity Outlook for Tech Companies in 2024
🛠️cURL and Guzzle Comparison: Choosing the Right PHP HTTP Request Tool
🤔To Share, or Not to Share – OTT Industry’s Password Sharing Dilemma
🖥️The Importance of UI in Website Development
💼Fueler.io – Brewing Opportunities for Job Seekers Through Proof of Work
🧪The Importance of Unit Testing For Software Development
🏥The Power of Explainable AI in Enhancing Patient Experience
🚨30% Asian Organizations Lack GenAI Policies, Prone to Security Risks
💥India Worst Hit by Cyber Attacks with 13.7% of Global Strikes
4️⃣Podcast: We’ll be surprised by AI again - Bill Gates ft. Yejin Choi
In this podcast, Bill Gates discusses the recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI), its great potential, challenges, and limitations with Yejin Choi, a renowned AI researcher who specializes in NLPs and computer vision. They say, “There’s a high chance that we’ll be surprised again by an increase in capabilities of AI and then we will also be really surprised by some strange failure modes.”
If you are experimenting with GenAI or NLPs in the products you are building this is a podcast that you mustn’t miss.
5️⃣Visualized: World’s Most Popular Apps By Downloads
Mobile apps have become integral to our daily lives. They define the way we work, interact with others, and entertain ourselves. The good folks at Visual Capitalists have made an interesting tree map to show the most popular apps in the world using download data tracked by Business of Apps.
6️⃣Artificial Intelligence vs OpenAI
I hope you enjoyed this week's curated stories and resources. Check your inbox again next week, or read previous editions of Siam Sixers for more insights. To get instant updates, connect with me on LinkedIn.
Cheers!
Khuze Siam
Founder: Siam Computing & ProdWrks