Did an AGI cause the chaos at OpenAI?

Fired, reoriented and rehired in four days: As an employee of OpenAI, the cryptocurrency company Worldcoin, had been on vacation last week - along with a digital detox, he might not have noticed the recent chaos in the AI company's boardroom.

After a surprising suspension and quick employment at Microsoft, is Sam Altman now back at his position at OpenAI. The reason: More than 700 employees of the AI company had threatened the board of directors with resignation - and a move to Microsoft. Pressure the board clearly couldn't withstand.

But how did the chaos at the company arise? In this regard, new details keep coming to light. According to one report by the U.S. news agency Reuters it all began with a letter that concerned OpenAI researchers sent to the company's board of directors. The exact contents are not known, but people familiar with the matter told Reuters what it was about: Q*.

What is Q*?

Q* is a AI tool whose exact functionality is not publicly known at the time of writing. Internally, however, it is said that Q* could be a so-called AGI - an Artificial General Intelligence, which OpenAI defines as "AI systems that are smarter than humans."

Q* can still only solve elementary school-level math problems, according to the people who testified anonymously to Reuters. But the tool's potential is apparently much greater. So big that it "could threaten humanity," according to the aforementioned letter to the board.

According to sources at Reuters, the letter was just one factor in a longer list of complaints from the board that led to Altman's resignation, including concerns about commercializing advances before the consequences were known. So it is quite possible that Altman also wanted to push Q* through faster than the drafters of the letter would have liked.