Recently, I was honored and excited to be invited to the ZENIT “Innovationspreis 2025 / 2026” awards ceremony at ZENIT in Mülheim, NRW. It was an interesting opportunity to check out what else is going on when it comes to innovation outside that of startups in our state.
We’ve worked together on some interesting digital innovation projects (under NDA) in the past and it’s always a great pleasure to work with their talented people.
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Some of my other happy Pitching Masterclass (Startup & Corporate Edition) customers
I of course have zero special insights into the matter (other than mostly publicly available information – growing by the hour – and having lived some), but that has never deterred me from mouthing off my opinions (and being substantially more right than wrong) in the past – so here are my two cents on the latest Open AI developments that you never asked for.
The Doomer vision of General AI, created by generative AI
The board (read: e.g. Ilya Sutskever or one Adam D’Angelo, who is also behind Poe, a ChatGPT competitor — of all things to have as an independent director — Toner, or McCauley) has had plenty of time to explain, but have so far chosen not to. Until I learn otherwise, I’ll assign ego and zealotry – two of the universe’s most destructive forces – as the reasons for this mess.
As long as there is no public explanation from the board as to why exactly they fired the co-founder CEO Sam Altman, I am going to assume the reason is one big f*ing nothing burger — and they know it. (Happy to change opinion if facts to the contrary appear — which I think is unlikely at this point, but would make for a great plot twist).
I guess the most likely scenarios so far are a) The Decel faction of the board getting cold feet about the current speed of things b) D’Angelo feeling snubbed by ChatGPT’s new AppStore stealing Poe’s thunder c) A combination of both, with or without an active coup conspiracy — although I lean heavily in the active conspiracy direction; Envy, spite, and zealotry (aka ego), are in my experience the usual suspects when it comes to the motivation behind cataclysmicly stupid decision making.
Now, Open AI is not operating in a vacuum. Open AI does not have monopoly on creating AGI; Other projects are trying to develop AGI — safely or otherwise. If AGI will happen, it will happen — with or without Open AI and with or without Open AI playing it safe & slow. Applying Game Theory would tell you Open AI would be playing a heavily biased game (which I guess you could also call hubris or ignorance — or of you’re a decel, “acting on [your religious sci-fi fantasy cult-like] conviction”). Ok, so now someone else developed AGI — what now Open AI? Congrats, you’ve become irrelevant. Who cares if you warned the world, who cares if you developed safe guidelines, who cares if you developed a “safe” neutered AGI now? I think this is also why I don’t lean towards “decel” as the real or only motivation behind the ousting, but it may have been used as an argument by the coup faction to sway the zealots on the board to make an insanely stupid decision.
Also, applying Game Theory 101 to an aftermath of ousting an “everybody’s darling” CEO with no outside or bottom up support, indicates a thinking (or perhaps just a complete lack of thinking?) that they could somehow survive this (which I guess means they have the legal paperwork to back them up — for now) — and to be fair, if the direction for Open AI is to regress into a [somewhat irrelevant] research organisation, I think they’ll achieve it quicker than they could ever dream of — and I also think they’ve already potentially achieved one of the fastest & largest destruction of value in history in the process — at least for now.
Update: I’m not the only one noticing the board flunked Game Theory 101 – Kindergarten Edition
The board governing the roll out of super-intelligence couldn’t understand game theory enough to think 1 step ahead in a coup of their beloved leaders. pic.twitter.com/lF46OXQ1dw
Also, as a Norwegian, I’ll never pass on an opportunity to dunk on Swedes ;), so I guess I should also assign some blame and shame to the harebrained economist Nick Boström for fueling the AGI danger scare – I’m only half joking, though: Boström has been highly influential in turning Musk and others into doomers with his (IMO stupid and also in blatant disregard of Game Theory basics) book “Superintelligence”. And the kicker being Boström now has come to regret his scaremongering doom & gloom. Heuristic: Never believe a word an economist is saying. Ever.
Now, Sam and Greg “joining” MSFT sounds like MSFT creating an interim CYA (Cover Your Ass) vehicle (aka a story at the moment, not necessarily anything set in stone yet) to protect their AI interests (and more importantly, their share price) until situation gets further sorted out – MSFT is not exactly known for creating great products and daring innovations, so I don’t see how those two people would thrive under the MSFT (or any) corporate yoke for the long run. I’d bet against it.
I think MSFT definitely won the narrative so far, but I’m not so sure about actual value (did they sign / formalise anything yet?). Anyways, MSFT with Nadella taking a stance of seemingly extreme optionality was a good move, perhaps the only move to preserve any upside potential.
Update 2: Proof that clown car will keep on clowning: Ilya Sutskever has regrets. Regrets of the actions of the board that he was supposedly in control of. Give me a fucking break. I just can’t… How was / is any of this possible?
I deeply regret my participation in the board's actions. I never intended to harm OpenAI. I love everything we've built together and I will do everything I can to reunite the company.
That said, hindsight of course having perfect vision, there was bound to be an enormous amount of friction building between the intentions of the founding of Open AI as a safety-first non-profit and the commercial entrepreneurial ambitions and speed of someone like Altman as the CEO — not to mention between egos, not to mention from having what seems like a competitor as an independent director on the board, perhaps.
I can’t remember who said it on X/twitter, but I agree with their sentiment that the board might have still been a floppy kludge that Altman as CEO and co-founder didn’t pay too much mind to tighten up since “no CEO was ever fired by a board for being too successful”.
Now, what’s next for me as an Open AI / ChatGPT customer? What can we expect going forward? Neutered nanny ChatGPT v4 forever? Greatest come-back since Steve Jobs? I think it’s time for me to look into the current state of the alternatives again, regardless.
Although I don’t feel this soap opera is canceled just yet. I expect at least one more season of twists and turns. Stay tuned — I have a feeling The Sam & Greg Show can still surprise us.
Update: Yes, they did. Although, not so much of a surprise as a big ado about nothing in the end.
As you might know, Germany has decided to end using brown coal as an energy source – and that even faster than initially planned: 2030 instead of 2038 – and this will obviously have an effect, especially in the regions where they are depending on the coal, for cheap electricity to industry, a major source of employment, stability, and prosperity.
To help alleviate the transitional pain, public funds have been made available and regional projects have been formed to support the affected regions in many different ways.
One way is to support and stimulate innovation, to enable an environment that can facilitate the creation of new exciting opportunities for the industries of the future – a second industrial revolution if you will — for when the coal that powered the first industrial revolution and has been generating unprecedented prosperity (and unprecedented damage to the planet) comes to an end.
That’s where I and my company +ANDERSEN & ASSOCIATES come in; I was there to give a teaser overview of some of the methodologies anyone can use (startups as well as established industry) to create disruptive innovation at 50 (!) times faster (and with less resources) than previous methods – to inspire and also to showcase what is indeed possible today; what is actually actionable and teachable.
Special thanks to WFMG – Wirtschaftsförderung Mönchengladbach, Zenit GmbH, and Zweckverband LANDFOLGE Garzweiler for inviting me and to all of the very enthusiastic and motivated participants that came to my fully-booked workshops.
Looking forward to be of further service to the region going forwards!
(And yes, that is an actual original Junkers Ju 52 airplane inside the event location – Hugo Junkers was born in Rheydt in today’s Mönchengladbach.)
Google Stadia wasn’t a perfect cloud gaming experience (missing a lot of game titles, multiplayer often impossible to find other players, etc) by any account, but it was more than good enough to enjoy casual gaming without having to buy and manage the PC hardware and software.
Stadia is however the best effort to make casual AAA-title gaming without a PC or console an enjoyable and frictionless experience to date.
But only two years old, Google has already decided to kill it January 2023.
I guess this is what happens when previously disruptive startups become public corporations: Out the window goes the long-game and everything shifts to short term gains. No vision, no leadership, no will of taking risks beyond the scope of fulfilling career-based KPIs.
As a friendly free word of advice; If you’re intending to disrupt an existing market, don’t apply a two year horizon for it to be even remotely successful. (Or if you only have two years, make sure it has enough funding and priority to actually be able to achieve rapid Horizon 3 scaling.)
The sad-funny part is that even Microsoft is more innovative than Google at this point.
Cloud gaming is obviously the future (lower barrier to consume, hardware homogeneity and stability for game developers, no-cost upgrade cycles for consumers, lower environmental impact for everybody, near-zero cost distribution, etc.). I mean, considering the computing power needed for the Metaverse(s) / AR-Verse(s), it is inevitable — you’re not going to render that locally on your iPhone or on your Quest headset any day soon now.
Now, Stadia isn’t the first and probably won’t be the last to drop out of the cloud gaming race.
NVIDIA (GeForce Now) already copped out by castrating themselves by publisher demands (games you previously bought suddenly disappearing because the publishers’ knee-jerk reactions). IMO, if NVIDIA was serious about cloud gaming, they would have litigated publishers to a settle that would set precedence and benefited consumers — but I deem from their no-contest fold that they are not really in the cloud gaming race at all.
Like Apple’s AppStore, I don’t think you’ll win cloud gaming without winning the devs. And by that, I don’t mean the existing publishers. (No, by all means screw those gatekeepers over for good — They represent most things bad with gaming today.) You cannot and will not win them over as they have every incentive in the world to fight for their status quo. You need the games. The games with mainstream appeal. Games that will bring the gamers. The games with epic experiences. Games like those coming out of the studios of Naughty Dog, Crystal Dynamics, or Rockstar.
You also need the multiplayer games to be multiplayer-playable — which cannot be said about a lot of games played in the cloud (not cross-platform compatible, no critical user mass of cloud-only version yet), which renders them unplayable (e.g. Red Dead Redemption 2 Online is completely unplayable on Stadia as there are no other players being matched to your game).
I’m not getting my hopes up for Amazon Luna (everything Amazon touches turns out mediocre at best) and it’s not even available in Europe (yet?).
I think Steam would be in a good position as they are already in the sales and distribution game, have a large customer base — but it feels like Valve got lost after the Half Life 2 release party and is still trying to find their way home.
Sony bought Gaikai in 2012 (I tried it sometime 2011 and I was very impressed by how I was able to play Crysis 2 on my non-gaming MacMini 2009 with it. It was one of those very rare “DANG! This-is-the-future-right-here” moments.) and has since pretty much squandered the potential as they are too entrenched (witch is a nicer way of saying Sony management have a track record of having their heads too far up their behinds) in their existing Nespresso lock-in business model. I’m not expecting miracles.
Which surprisingly makes me believe Microsoft with its XBOX Live (no Mac app yet — to no one’s surprise) is currently in the best position. It’s a distributor and publisher with its own game dev studios — and it seems (for now) that they are playing for the long game. I’m not sure if they will be willing or able to thoroughly disrupt their hardware / software lock-in model any day soon (hey, throw us a Mac app bone), though. Probably a positioning play for now that affords future optionality.
I’m not getting my hopes up for Ubi/EA/EPIC/etc siloed cloud subscription services. A siloed market represents added inconvenience and added costs (subsidise the publisher for what you don’t want, pay for several silos to get what you want) for the consumers. Besides, some of them got cultural baggage and some have a problematic developer / publisher paradox.
And what about those rent-a-windows-box-in-the-cloud services? Have you ever tried one of these? Don’t get me started. It’s still all of the hassles of actually owning and managing a Windows gaming PC — but with higher latency and frame drops. The pain. The horror.
Personally, I would like to see Apple get over their Pippin complex and just get on with it and own the market. It’s the only media type that is missing from their offerings, IMO. But I’m not getting my hopes up. Knowing Apple, they will probably join the fray if and when the time is right — which is to say probably not any day real soon now. (Come on Apple, you need another “hobby”! Maybe hot on the heels of the Apple AR Glasses?)
OTOH — As another corporate venture gets it chain yanked, it’s leaving the opportunity on the table for the startup with the grander vision and deeper (accessible) pockets and more freedom to operate.
What do you think?
(This article was originally published on LinkedIn 2020.09.30)
