OpenAI

January 6, 2025 1:06 PM

Murder or suicide: Suchir Balaji’s death fuels Elon Musk – Sam Altman rivalry

On 21 November, Suchir Balaji celebrates his birthday. He's found dead a few days later. Police calls it a suicide. His parents cry murder. Literally. Two parallel investigations are on into his death. One by police in the U.S. and another by a private investigator hired by his parents. Suchir Balaji was a young engineer. A U.S. national of Indian-origin, he had a promising career ahead of him. He worked with the best at OpenAI, the artificial intelligence research organisation best known for ...

January 1, 2025 10:34 AM

‘This doesn’t seem like suicide’: Elon Musk backs OpenAI whistleblower mother’s allegations on her son’s death

Elon Musk has expressed support for allegations of foul play in the death of 26-year-old former OpenAI researcher Suchir Balaji, who was found dead in his San Francisco apartment months after accusing OpenAI of copyright violations. Balaji’s mother, Poornima Rao, has publicly disputed the San Francisco Police Department’s conclusion that her son’s death was a suicide, claiming it to be a case of “cold-blooded murder.” She has demanded a federal investigation, alleging irregularities i...

October 16, 2024 4:12 PM

EU AI Act checker reveals Big Tech’s compliance pitfalls

Some of the most prominent artificial intelligence models are falling short of European regulations in key areas such as cybersecurity resilience and discriminatory output, according to a report by Reuters. The EU had long debated new AI regulations before OpenAI released ChatGPT to the public in late 2022. The record-breaking popularity and ensuing public debate over the supposed existential risks of such models spurred lawmakers to draw up specific rules around "general-purpose" AIs (GPAI). ...

October 3, 2024 11:49 AM

OpenAI closes $6.6 billion funding haul with investment from Microsoft and Nvidia

OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, has raised $6.6 billion from investors, which could value the company at $157 billion and cement its position as one of the most valuable private companies in the world. The funding has attracted returning venture capital investors including Thrive Capital and Khosla Ventures, as well as OpenAI's biggest corporate backer Microsoft, and new participation from Nvidia. The closing of the funds coincides with the company's ongoing restructuring efforts and execu...

September 28, 2024 4:17 PM

If your AI seems smarter, it’s thanks to smarter human trainers

In the early years, getting AI models like ChatGPT or its rival Cohere to spit out human-like responses required vast teams of low-cost workers helping models distinguish basic facts such as if an image was of a car or a carrot. But more sophisticated updates to AI models in the fiercely competitive arena are now demanding a rapidly expanding network of human trainers who have specialized knowledge -- from historians to scientists, some with doctorate degrees. "A year ago, we could get away wi...

September 14, 2024 10:40 AM

OpenAI’s stunning $150 billion valuation hinges on upending corporate structure, sources say

OpenAI's new financing round is expected to come in the form of convertible notes, according to sources with direct knowledge of the matter, who said its $150 billion valuation will be contingent on whether the ChatGPT-maker can upend its corporate structure and remove a profit cap for investors, Reuters reported. The details of the conditions of the $6.5 billion funding, which have not been previously reported, show how far OpenAI, the most valuable AI startup in the world, has come from a res...

September 13, 2024 1:27 PM

OpenAI launches new series of AI models with ‘reasoning’ abilities

Microsoft-backed OpenAI said on Thursday it was launching its "Strawberry" series of AI models designed to spend more time processing answers to queries in order to solve hard problems. The models are capable of reasoning through complex tasks and can solve more challenging problems than previous models in science, coding and math, the AI firm said in a blog post. OpenAI used the code name Strawberry to refer to the project internally, while it dubbed the models announced on Thursday o1 and o1...

August 15, 2024 4:29 PM

Google brings AI answers in Search to new countries

Google parent Alphabet said on Thursday it was expanding its AI-generated summaries for search queries to six new countries, just two months after it rolled back some capabilities following a problem-riddled launch. The search giant made AI Overviews - which are displayed atop a search results page before traditional links to the Web - available to all U.S. users in May after spending one year trialing a limited earlier version. The feature was widely panned after screenshots of factually inac...

July 15, 2024 2:52 PM

OpenAI working on new reasoning technology under code name ‘Strawberry’

ChatGPT maker OpenAI is working on a novel approach to its artificial intelligence models in a project code-named “Strawberry,” according to a person familiar with the matter and internal documentation. The project, details of which have not been previously reported, comes as the Microsoft-backed startup races to show that the types of models it offers are capable of delivering advanced reasoning capabilities. Teams inside OpenAI are working on Strawberry, according to a copy of a recent i...

June 12, 2024 2:16 PM

How Apple used Google’s help to train its AI models

On stage on Monday CEO Tim Cook's Apple announced a splashy deal with OpenAI to include its powerful artificial intelligence model as a part of its voice assistant, Siri. But in the fine print of a technical document Apple published after the event, the company makes clear that Alphabet's Google has emerged as another winner in the Cupertino, California, company's quest to catch up in AI. To build Apple's foundation AI models, the company's engineers used its framework software with a range of...