California Notes. Part 2: Broken Robot Heart — Sam Altman's Final Performance

Hello! This is Pavel Belov from Hi, AI! — continuing with the California Notes.

On the evening of November 16th, in Oakland (near San Francisco), Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI at the time, takes the stage. All tickets for the event were sold out in 6 minutes 🤯

Just before, fortune smiled upon me as friends gifted me the coveted ticket. I hopped into the car — zoomed off to Oakland (it must be said, distances in Silicon Valley are more significant than they seem) — and made it just in time.

The event took place at the Robot Heart Residency. Robot Heart is a collective of doers and dreamers, artists and entrepreneurs, who foster digital art. Their main home is the Burning Man festival. At other times, they organize events like this one. The photos below the post will convey the atmosphere better than words.

The "AI and the Future of Art" discussion featured Sam Altman and visionary digital artist Android Jones. They talked about the impact of artificial intelligence on the artist community, creativity, and what consciousness even is.

Jones: In one year, neural networks have created 15.9 billion images — a lot. Human artists feel the competition and are afraid of the new. Something that has emerged without their knowledge is growing rapidly and impacting their world.

For an artist, their community, support, and audience attention are paramount. Now, they must compete for engagement with AI, especially newcomer artists.

Sam: The connections between people won't weaken with the development of AI, quite the opposite. People understand what other people want and always find ways to surprise and invent new things. You can influence AI with your work on how the generated images will look, and that's amazing.

Jones: How about we forgive all student loans for artists as a thank you for helping to train AI? 😁

Sam: Of course, AI should be trained ethically and legally. Otherwise, it's a system that devours itself.

What is going to happen with the AI is it is going to be able to generate net new knowledge that humans have not figured out before. We need better technologies to cure diseases and prevent climate catastrophe — we need help, and AI will be able to help.

Jones: Sounds like you want to create a Slave-God. Is that what AGI will be?

Sam: I hate the term AGI; no two people agree on what it means. It's like trying to define consciousness. For me, AI will pass the consciousness test when it starts creating new things because it enjoys it.

Something we think about all the time is how we get the world ready for this. We had a lot of ideas, and we could not come up with any solution better than putting it in the hands of people, imperfect, early. And let them tell us what is wrong, what's right, and what we should change. We make changes and give the complex cultural society time to adapt. We create it together.

Broken Hearts 💔

The following day, unexpectedly for everyone, news broke that Sam Altman had been fired from OpenAI. Judging by the comments, at the time of his performance at Robot Heart, Sam already knew about his impending dismissal. In hindsight, one should write that he looked anxious and was elsewhere in his thoughts. But that wouldn't be entirely true. I wouldn't have thought about it if not for what happened later.

When I began writing this post, the general mood in the Valley could be described as a sad surprise. But now, amid rumors of a possible return, it's more an anticipation of a happy ending. Sam is loved here. We want to thank him for his work that changed the world. We await his next incredible project.

P.S. ... or his return to OpenAI 🤖