Elon Musk founded — and has since criticized — the company behind the buzzy new AI chatbot ChatGPT. Here's everything we know about OpenAI.

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Grace KayDec 11, 2022, 19:53 IST
Elon Musk founded — and has since criticized — the company behind the buzzy new AI chatbot ChatGPT. Here's everything we know about OpenAI.

OpenAI logo displayed on a phone screen and a laptop keyboard are seen in this illustration photo taken in Poland on April 24, 2022.Photo illustration by Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images

  • ChatGPT went viral on social media for its ability to do anything from code to write essays.
  • The company that created the AI chatbot has a history with some of Silicon Valley's biggest names.
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OpenAI released an early demo of ChatGPT last week, and the conversational chatbot quickly went viral on social media.

OpenAI released an early demo of ChatGPT last week, and the conversational chatbot quickly went viral on social media.
ChatGPT

Within five days the chatbot had over one million users, as people took to social media to share examples of ChatGPT's many capabilities — from casual conversation to essay writing and coding.

The artificial intelligence company that created it is now backed by Microsoft, but has a long history with some of Silicon Valley's biggest names.

Sources:Entrepreneur, Insider

Elon Musk and former Y Combinator president Sam Altman cofounded OpenAI in 2015.

Elon Musk and former Y Combinator president Sam Altman cofounded OpenAI in 2015.
Elon Musk and Y Combinator President Sam Altman speak onstage at the Vanity Fair New Establishment Summit in 2015.Michael Kovac/Getty Images for Vanity Fair

Musk, Altman, and other prominent Silicon Valley characters, including Peter Thiel and LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman, pledged $1 billion to the project in 2015.

The group aimed to create a nonprofit focused on developing artificial intelligence "in the way that is most likely to benefit humanity as a whole," according to a statement on OpenAI's website from December 11, 2015.

Sources: Open AI, BBC

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At the time, Musk said that AI was the "biggest existential threat" to humanity.

At the time, Musk said that AI was the "biggest existential threat" to humanity.
Elon Musk looks down during a speech.Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images

Musk isn't the only one who's warned about the harmful potential of AI. In 2014, Stephen Hawking warned that artificial intelligence could end mankind.

"It's hard to fathom how much human-level AI could benefit society, and it's equally hard to imagine how much it could damage society if built or used incorrectly," a statement announcing the founding of Open AI reads.

Sources: BBC, OpenAI

Over the following year, OpenAI released two products.

Over the following year, OpenAI released two products.
OpenAI logo displayed on a phone screen and binary code displayed on a laptop screen are seen in this illustration photo taken in Krakow, Poland on December 5, 2022.Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images

In 2016, the company launched Gym, a platform that allowed researchers to develop and compare reinforcement learning systems. These systems teach AI to come to decisions with the best cumulative rewards.

Later that year, OpenAI also released Universe, a toolkit for training intelligent agents across websites and gaming platforms.

Source: OpenAI

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In 2018, three years after helping found the company, Musk resigned from OpenAI's board of directors.

In 2018, three years after helping found the company, Musk resigned from OpenAI's board of directors.
Elon Musk at the Tesla Grünheide site in May 2021.Christophe Gateau/Getty Images

In a 2018 blog post, the company said that the Tesla CEO resigned to "eliminate potential future conflict" due to the carmaker's focus on AI.

The company added that Musk would continue to donate to the nonprofit.

Musk had been telling Tesla investors for years about his plans to make the electric cars autonomous.

Sources: OpenAI, CNBC

Musk later said he quit the company because he "didn't agree with some of what [the] OpenAI team wanted to do."

Musk later said he quit the company because he "didn't agree with some of what [the] OpenAI team wanted to do."
OpenAI logo displayed on a phone screen and Elon Musk's Twitter account displayed on a screen in the background are seen in this illustration photo taken in Poland on April 24, 2022.Photo illustration by Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images

In 2019, the billionaire said on Twitter that Tesla was also competing for some of the same employees as OpenAI, adding that he hadn't been involved with the company for "over a year."

"Add that all up & it was just better to part ways on good terms," he said.

Sources: Twitter, Futurism

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Musk has continued to take issue with OpenAI in recent years.

Musk has continued to take issue with OpenAI in recent years.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Elon MuskGetty

In 2020, Musk said on Twitter that his confidence in the company was "not high" when it came to safety.

"OpenAI should be more open imo," the billionaire tweeted in response to an investigation into the company by MIT Technology Review.

The publication said that an investigation into OpenAI revealed a culture of secrecy that ran counter to the nonprofit's purported commitment to transparency.

More recently, Musk said he paused OpenAI's access to Twitter's database for training its software.

"Need to understand more about governance structure & revenue plans going forward," he said on Twitter on Sunday. "OpenAI was started as open-source & non-profit. Neither are still true."

Sources: Twitter, Insider, MIT Technology Review

In 2019, the company built an AI tool that could craft fake news stories.

In 2019, the company built an AI tool that could craft fake news stories.
OpenAI

At first, OpenAI said the bot was so good at writing fake news that they decided not to release it. Later that year, the company released a version of the AI tool as GPT-2.

The company released another chatbot called GPT-3 in 2020.

Source: MIT Technology Review, The New York Times

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That same year, OpenAI shed its status as a nonprofit.

That same year, OpenAI shed its status as a nonprofit.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.Brian Ach/Getty Images for TechCrunch

The company announced that it had become a "capped profit" corporation in a blog post.

"We want to increase our ability to raise capital while still serving our mission, and no pre-existing legal structure we know of strikes the right balance," the company said. "Our solution is to create OpenAI LP as a hybrid of a for-profit and nonprofit — which we are calling a 'capped-profit' company."

With the new profit structure, OpenAI investors could earn up to 100 times their original investment, but nothing over that. The remaining money would go to not-for-profit work.

Sources: OpenAI, Futurism

OpenAI announced a partnership with Microsoft at the end of 2019.

OpenAI announced a partnership with Microsoft at the end of 2019.
Abdulhamid Hosbas/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

Microsoft invested $1 billion in the AI company, and OpenAI said it would exclusively license its technology with the tech company.

"The scope of commercial and creative potential that can be unlocked through the GPT-3 model is profound, with genuinely novel capabilities – most of which we haven't even imagined yet," Microsoft said in a blog post.

"Directly aiding human creativity and ingenuity in areas like writing and composition, describing and summarizing large blocks of long-form data (including code), converting natural language to another language – the possibilities are limited only by the ideas and scenarios that we bring to the table," it said.

The partnership allows Microsoft to compete with Google's DeepMind AI company.

Sources: OpenAI, Microsoft

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Last year, the company released an AI-art generator

Last year, the company released an AI-art generator
Screenshot of Dall-E webpageOpenAI

Dall-E is an AI system that can create realistic images and even art based on descriptions of the images.

The company released an updated version of the program in November.

Sources: Insider, OpenAI

While OpenAI's chatbot has taken off over the past week, the updated version of the software could be released as soon as next year.

While OpenAI's chatbot has taken off over the past week, the updated version of the software could be released as soon as next year.
A screenshot of a post about ChatGPT on TwitterTwitter

The chatbot that was released as a demo on November 30 represents OpenAI's GPT-3.5. The company plans to release a full GPT-4 next.

Sources: TechCrunch, OpenAI

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Musk, meanwhile, is still commenting.

Musk, meanwhile, is still commenting.
AP

"We are not far from dangerously strong AI," Musk tweeted in response to a post from Altman.

He called ChatGPT "scary good."

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