The massive question of the world amidst the turmoil on OpenAI is if it is building a humanity-threatening artificial intelligence, referred to as the Q*, unveiled in recent events. This was brought to public attention through the open letter from alleged former OpenAI employees, the one which Elon Musk posted via X, where they aired the company’s dirty laundry.
However, reports now are saying that the company is not doing such an AI, with researchers and experts also sharing their two cents on the matter, deconstructing this alleged Q*.
TechCrunch reports that the recent open letter reported by the likes of Reuters and The Information, the same one shared by Elon Musk on X, has prompted a new controversy over OpenAI. The events that took place in the past several weeks were also questioned, particularly with this alleged humanity-threatening AI project called Q* (pronounced as Q star).
Q* was said to be able to solve certain math problems, particularly grade school-level math, and while this may not sound impressive, it was claimed by the anonymous former OpenAI employees to be the step towards a breakthrough.
This is with the company’s progress towards creating the so-called artificial general intelligence (AGI), the next step in its development.
However, several comments from experts are debunking this claim.
The Verge claimed that OpenAI’s spokesperson Lindsey Held Bolton said that there are inaccuracies in the reports from the media.
On the other hand, Meta’s Chief AI Scientist, Yann LeCun, there are certain challenges in LLM reliability to replace Auto-Regressive token prediction with planning. Moreover, LeCun added that other labs have their take on this and had results on the said planning.
More than ten days ago, OpenAI fired its CEO, Sam Altman, in a surprise announcement by the company, and it was because of his lapses in communication with the board and its entirety. It also saw a chain reaction where Greg Brockman left his post as OpenAI’s president, along with others who voluntarily left their posts in protest against the decision.
He was quickly reinstated, around four days after the first announcement, and this saw significant events in the company that brought different controversies as well. Amidst this, Elon Musk, a former OpenAI board member and investor, shared an open letter that raised a massive question against Altman, asking the company’s board to further investigate it.
This led the tech industry to avert its focus to insider happenings within the company, with the secret AI project rocking it to its core, and the shake-up looking to unearth more information behind it. Now, several industry experts and AI researchers have shared their take on this Q* project, but many have said that this is not a threat, with some pointing out that this tech was already seen before.
