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- OpenAI co-founder shakeup continues...
OpenAI co-founder shakeup continues...
PLUS: Elon sues Sam Altman (again)
Rowan Cheung
August 06, 2024
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Welcome, AI enthusiasts.
OpenAI is facing another major leadership shakeup as three key figures, including two co-founders, head for the exit or take extended leave.
With the AI giant continuing to lose top talent — is there a possibility of something bigger brewing behind the scenes? Let’s investigate…
In today’s AI rundown:
OpenAI co-founder leaves for Anthropic
Elon sues Sam Altman… again
Turn images into videos with Gen-3
Nvidia trains video model ‘Cosmos’
6 new AI tools & 4 new AI jobs
More AI & tech news
Read time: 4 minutes
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS
OPENAI
Image source: Jim Block / UC Berkeley
The Rundown: Three key leaders at OpenAI are departing or taking leave, including co-founder John Schulman, co-founder Greg Brockman, and Peter Deng — another major shakeup for the AI powerhouse.
The details:
John Schulman, co-founder and a key leader at OpenAI, has left to join rival AI startup Anthropic — one of OpenAI’s biggest competitors.
Greg Brockman, OpenAI's president and co-founder, is taking an extended leave of absence until the end of the year.
Peter Deng, a product leader who joined last year from Meta, has reportedly also departed.
These moves follow other recent high-profile exits, including co-founders Ilya Sutskever and Andrej Karpathy.
Why it matters: OpenAI has struggled to regain its footing after Sam Altman's departure and eventual return as CEO in November 2023. Brockman, one of Altman's biggest supporters during the ousting, mysteriously takes a leave of absence at a crucial time as OpenAI sees increased competition from Anthropic and Meta AI.
TOGETHER WITH WORKOS
The Rundown: WorkOS is the most comprehensive user management platform for leading AI companies like Perplexity, Jasper, and Cursor.
WorkOS delivers:
WorkOS is designed for B2B SaaS, providing easy-to-use APIs to integrate SSO, SCIM, RBAC, and audit trails in minutes.
WorkOS AuthKit provides a complete user management solution that is free up to 1 million MAUs.
From high-quality documentation to self-serve onboarding for your customers, WorkOS removes all the unnecessary complexity for your engineers.
ELON MUSK
Image source: Midjourney
The Rundown: Elon Musk just filed a new lawsuit against OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman, alleging manipulation and deceit in the company's shift from non-profit to for-profit status.
The details:
Musk's lawsuit claims OpenAI breached its "founding agreement" to develop AI for humanity's benefit.
The new complaint alleges violations of federal racketeering laws and "numerous acts of wire fraud."
OpenAI denies the allegations, referring to previous statements that Musk supported the for-profit transition.
This lawsuit comes only months after Musk dropped a similar case.
Why it matters: It's been a brutal day for OpenAI, marked by leadership shakeups and now Elon Musk once again challenging the company's for-profit business model. While the lawsuit’s outcome is uncertain, it could uncover several mysteries at OpenAI, including the departure of key leaders, the Q* breakthrough, and more.
AI TRAINING
Image source: Runway
The Rundown: Runway's Gen-3 Alpha model now offers image-to-video capabilities, allowing users to upload an image and turn it into a short video for more consistent generations.
Step-by-step:
Visit Runway and sign up for an account (paid plans only).
On your dashboard, click "Text/Image to Video" under "Runway's AI Tools".
Select "Gen-3 Alpha", upload a 16:9 image as your starting point and describe your desired video.
Choose a duration (5 or 10 seconds), click "Generate", and watch your image come to life!
PRESENTED BY FLIBBO
The Rundown: Flibbo AI Lab's new AI-based social platform just gained 10k+ users in its first release with its innovative approach of combining all AI chatbots for the most accurate answers.
Flibbo delivers:
Instant AI Vision and Voice — launching mid-August, ahead of OpenAI to market
An ‘AI Mastermind’ that combines ChatGPT, Llama, Gemini, and Claude for the most accurate answers
Exclusive early access to shape the future of AI
Click here to join the limited alpha testing phase.
NVIDIA
Image source: Midjourney
The Rundown: Leaked documents obtained by 404 media report Nvidia has been scraping millions of videos daily from YouTube, Netflix, and other sources to train its unreleased foundational AI model.
The details:
Nvidia's project, codenamed Cosmos, aims to process "a human lifetime visual experience worth of training data per day."
The company used open-source tools and virtual machines to download videos, including full-length movies and TV shows.
Employees raised concerns about copyright and ethics, but were told there was "umbrella approval" from executives.
Nvidia claims its practices are "in full compliance with the letter and spirit of copyright law."
Why it matters: Project Cosmos appears to be Nvidia’s big move into video-based AI, which could revolutionize everything from 3D world generation to self-driving cars, digital humans, and more. However, this harsh introduction is not a good look for the company, especially as the industry's practices are coming under intense scrutiny.
NEW TOOLS & JOBS
⚡ Deepgram - All-in-one Voice AI API to transcribe, analyze audio, and convert text to human-like voices instantly*
👩🎤 Synthesia Personal Avatar - Create lifelike avatars with just a 5-minute video
🎬 Meta SAM 2 - Segment anything, track an object across any videos
🧠 Minduck - Simplify AI communication through visual thinking
🧑💻 Ollama - Effortlessly run LLMs and customize your own
📍Placer - Make smarter real estate decisions with location and foot traffic insights
📱Captions - Software Engineer - iOS
💹 DeepL - Sales Enablement Director
💽 Contextual AI - Data Validator - Copy Editing
👩🔬 Hippocratic AI - Physician Researcher - Bilingual Mandarin/English)
*Sponsored listing
QUICK HITS
Groq raised $640 million in Series D funding at a $2.8 billion valuation, aiming to scale its AI inference capacity and accelerate development of its next-generation LPU technology.
Meta announced the Llama 3.1 Impact Grants program, offering up to $2 million in funding for projects using Llama 3.1 to address social challenges.
New AI technology developed by Caristo Diagnostics can detect hidden heart attack risk by analyzing CT scans for coronary inflammation.
OpenAI reportedly built a text watermarking tool to detect ChatGPT-written content with 99.9% effectiveness, but has not released it publicly.
Tencent joined a $300+ million funding round for Chinese AI startup Moonshot, valuing the company at $3.3 billion, as competition intensifies in China's AI sector.
Secretaries of state from five U.S. states urged Elon Musk to address misinformation spread by X's AI chatbot Grok regarding the upcoming November election.
THAT’S A WRAP
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