The growing troubles at OpenAI

Make Me Smart May 30, 2024 Transcript

Note: Marketplace podcasts are meant to be heard, with emphasis, tone and audio elements a transcript can’t capture. Transcripts are generated using a combination of automated software and human transcribers, and may contain errors. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting it. 

Kai Ryssdal 

Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry. Sorry. Sorry.

Kimberly Adams

A whole minute. Unacceptable.

Kai Ryssdal

1:05 baby. A minute and seven seconds now. Jay Siebold, save me. Hey everybody, I’m Kai Ryssdal. Welcome back to Make Me Smart, where we make today make sense even if we’re late getting into the studio.

Kimberly Adams 

And I’m Kimberly Adams. Thank you everyone for joining us whenever you can on this Thursday. It is May the 30th.

Kai Ryssdal 

We are going to do what we do on Thursdays. Listen back to some of the big stories of the week. We’ve got some audio clips lined up as we do. The first one is from a series we’ve been doing on the show called “Breaking Ground” about the Biden administration’s infrastructure push and clean energy push. And their decision and desire to involve the government more deeply in the economy. The first one. The first piece of tape we’re going to play is about the semiconductor boom in Phoenix, Arizona courtesy of the CHIPS Act and how it is changing that city, and in a way that state. Here you go.

Yvette Stumph

“I see that as a boom to my business because that’s more people. However, I also do like not having. I don’t like the big city feel, and we still feel like country.”

Kai Ryssdal 

So, that was a woman named Yvette Stumph. She was on the program yesterday. She runs a kid’s hair salon on the sort of northern border of Phoenix. And I was asking her how she feels about all the new development, how she feels about the economy, how she feels about what the Biden administration is doing, how she feels about the state of the economy, which is not great. And she, well, I will use her words. She said, “I want the economy to be like it was four years ago when it was great again.” And then she said, “Look, I appreciate the government spending money here, but I don’t want the government spending money to help the economy.” It was very interesting that whole exchange she and I had.

Kimberly Adams 

Well, it was similar to what the guy you talked to in that story was saying too. He was like, “Yeah, this is great. I’m going to make money off of it, but I still don’t like the government, and I still think the economy is doing poorly.” You know, it’s like, it’s useful to hear. You know?

Kai Ryssdal 

Yeah, that’s exactly right.

Kimberly Adams 

You know, you think that. You would imagine that somebody who’s materially about to benefit from federal investment in huge amounts might think more positively of said federal government, but they do not. And there’s definitely a disconnect there. That was really interesting. And that kid was howling when you walked in at the barber shop.

Kai Ryssdal 

Oh my. He was like two years old and wanted nothing to do it. God bless. And I said this on tape. God bless the woman who was cutting his hair because she was so patient with him, and he was just not having it. I rarely do this, but all y’all to go back and listen to yesterday’s Marketplace. It’s on the website. It’s on your podcast feed. Super interesting Very subtle piece, actually if I say so myself.

Kimberly Adams 

I have to tell you that it reminded me of a dramatic moment I had when my sister asked me to take my nephew for a haircut when he was, I think like, two or three. And he screamed the whole way in the car, and he was like, throwing himself against the window. And then when I tried to get him out of the car, he’s screaming bloody murder, saying,” Somebody help me! Somebody helped me!” Like, I’m just trying to kidnap him. I was convinced I was going to be arrested. Finally got him in there. And he calmed down eventually under eight very professional barbers’ care. And then he was so happy with how he looked at the end of it. And he was like, nodding. I was just like; this is some this is not for me. All right, so our next clip is from a podcast called The TED AI show. And in the episode, which came out on Tuesday, a former board member of OpenAI, Helen Toner, shared her account of what went down when CEO Sam Altman was briefly ousted last year, and she dropped quite a bombshell in terms of allegations against Altman. Let’s hear it.

Helen Toner

“When ChatGPT came out November 2022, the board was not informed in advance about that. We learned about ChatGPT on Twitter, Sam didn’t inform the board that he owned the OpenAI Startup Fund, even though he constantly was claiming to be an independent board member with no financial interest in the company. On multiple occasions, he gave us inaccurate information about the small number of formal safety processes that the company did have in place.

Kimberly Adams 

Yeah, so first, it’s important to note that the current board chair of OpenAI sent a statement to The TED AI Show disputing Toner’s claims that the previous board fired Altman over safety concerns. But Toner is not the only person who has voiced concern. Several other OpenAI scientists and board members have resigned or publicly raised concerns about the company’s commitment to safety. And Toner’s allegations, you know, they raise questions about whether tech companies like OpenAI can be trusted to govern themselves. I mean, this is the question, right? And I remember when this whole Sam Altman thing went down, and we were talking about it, and we said, this is going to be the moment we look back on to see if AI is going to be like, for good or for money. And I think we’ve seen ever since you know, how that’s gone. So.

Kai Ryssdal 

I think, you know, after this and, you know, acknowledging the current board chairs dispute of the allegations. Between this and the Scarlett Johansson thing, Sam Altman is not covering himself in glory. You know?

Kimberly Adams 

Yeah. But I mean, I think if we’ve learned one thing, and the way this economy works, and the way that America works right now, is that if you’re rich enough, you don’t have to.

Kai Ryssdal 

Yeah, well, it’s white tech bro dudes, right? I mean, you know? All right, change of gears here. College sports let’s go.

Greg Sankey

“There is no better time to be a student athlete than right now. Period. And we have to protect those opportunities, and we have to also acknowledge there are limits. And we’re going to have some hard decisions to make over the next few years as we transition to this new model. But we’ve got an opportunity, I think, to control elements of our future and keep these broad-based programs intact.”

Kai Ryssdal 

That is a guy who is going to have to be making some of those hard decisions. His name is Greg Sankey. He’s the commissioner of the Southeastern Conference, the SEC. He was on the conference’s new show, it’s called SEC Now, this past weekend to talk about this settlement or the proposed settlement, we should say, between the NCAA and its power conferences over a class-action lawsuit that includes billions of dollars in what you have to call back pay for college athletes who missed out on some of those NFL earnings. Name image and likeness, right? That’s the settlement from a couple of years ago, where current athletes can profit from their name, image and likeness, even though they’re not getting paid to play. But now, maybe they will be. It will be a revenue sharing deal. We don’t know. A judge still just has to approve it. All sides have to agree to the fine print. I don’t know that college athletes are actually going to be employees of the schools. But maybe? It’s super interesting. It’s super interesting. And look, the really good part is that college sports are being acknowledged as a business, a multi-billion-dollar business. That’s the main thing.

Kimberly Adams 

Yeah. And I just wonder what it’s going to mean for them as students, you know? When it does get so professionalized, and like, look it’s all it’s been the case forever that these kids are going to school to play sports, and the school is kind of secondary, but you know, what is it going to mean for them when there is so much more money involved, and they are dealing with the additional pressures and responsibilities that come with that? And with the brand deals? You know, do you just sort of give up on the idea of like, actually, meaningfully getting an education while you’re doing this? Or how does that even work? But I don’t know.

Kai Ryssdal 

Right. Right. And we also need to differentiate between, you know, football players at the Big Five, the Power Five conference schools like Alabama, versus like, women’s field hockey players at, you know, eastern Tennessee or something, you know?

Kimberly Adams 

Yeah. Okay, last one for today. This is about Buy Now, Pay Later services.

Sebastian Siemiatkowski

“What we see with Buy Now, Pay Later credit of this type is that it is paid back quickly, and it isn’t a great concern. It does have lower loss levels than credit cards. So, I think that to some degree, it may be wise to put some regulation around this because I’m not an anarchist. And I do believe the rules in society are helpful. But they have to put that into perspective of how good of a product is this for consumers’ best interests versus credit cards, which are a much more harmful product the way they work.”

Kimberly Adams 

Interesting. That runs counter to a lot of the data I’ve read. Anyway, that was Sebastian Siemiatkowski, CEO of the Buy Now, Pay Later service Klarna, and he was on CNBC on Friday talking about whether these services should be regulated like other types of credit lenders. And this is because last week, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, newly validated by the Supreme Court, issued an interpretive rule that says Buy Now, Pay Later lenders are credit card providers, and this means that BNPL users have to have the same legal protections as regular credit card users. And this comes as there’s been quite a bit written about what people call “ghost debt.” These Buy Now, Pay Later services are becoming really popular, but a lot of the debt that users are accumulating is invisible to regulators and invisible also to the markets. You know, the companies and the businesses that try to look at consumer debt to sort of get a sense of how things are going in the economy. They can’t see what’s happening with these loans and how many of them people have and how much debt is just rolling over, how many of them are going into delinquencies, and things like that. And that makes it hard to get an accurate picture of what the consumer credit market looks like and what consumer debt looks like. And that has a lot of folks nervous.

Kai Ryssdal 

Yeah, and you know, for all the protestations of these BNPL companies, ain’t nothing free man. Ain’t nothing free, you know? All right, we are done.

Kimberly Adams

Except this podcast.

Kai Ryssdal

Except this podcast, but also. Also.

Kimberly Adams

Free for you, but we need your help.

Kai Ryssdal

There you go. We need your help. Your local public radio station need your help. You know, we all need help. We are done for today. Join us for more news and drinks tomorrow on Economics on Tap. YouTube live stream starts at 3:30 Pacific, 6:30 back East. Do not miss it.

Kimberly Adams 

Make Me Smart is produced by Courtney Bergsieker. Audio engineering by Jay Siebold. Ellen Rolfes writes our newsletter. Thalia Menchaca is our intern.

Kai Ryssdal 

Marissa Cabrera is the senior producer of this podcast. Bridget Bodnar is the director of podcasts. Francesca Levy is the executive director of Digital.