Former OpenAI board member details Altman firing / Mistral AI launches code-generating model / PwC becomes OpenAI’s first reseller

Plus: Data centers could consume up to 9% of U.S. electricity by 2030, driven by the rapid expansion of AI

Inside AI

For May 29, 2024

Here’s a look at today's AI briefing:

Former OpenAI board member details reasoning behind Altman firing.
Mistral AI launches first code-generating model.
PwC becomes OpenAI’s first reseller.
AI driving data center electricity use.
Meta removes AI-generated influence campaigns.
Fresh AI funding.

Former OpenAI director Helen Toner revealed that the board learned of ChatGPT's launch through Twitter. On the TED AI Show podcast, Toner discussed internal events that led to Sam Altman's firing last year. In addition to not informing the board ahead of ChatGPT's launch, she alleged that the CEO had been "withholding information, misrepresenting things that were happening at the company, in some cases outright lying to the board."

More:

After Altman was fired and reinstated in November, Toner and other directors left the board.
Toner's remarks during the podcast revealed more about the board's majority decision to fire Altman.
In one case, Toner said Altman didn't disclose his involvement with OpenAI's startup fund. Altman has since been removed as owner and manager of the corporate venture fund.
Additionally, she claims that on multiple occasions, Altman gave the nonprofit board "inaccurate information about the small number of formal safety processes that the company did have in place."
After years of "innocuous-sounding" explanations, Toner claims the four board members who fired Altman concluded, "that we just couldn't believe things that Sam was telling us, and that's just a completely unworkable place to be in as a board."

Zoom out:

OpenAI's board chief Bret Taylor said an independent review of Altman's firing concluded that it was "not based on concerns regarding product safety or security, the pace of development, OpenAI's finances, or its statements to investors, customers, or business partners."
The investigation by WilmerHale, a law firm, attributed the firing to "a consequence of a breakdown in the relationship and loss of trust between the prior Board and Mr. Altman."
After interviewing stakeholders and reviewing over 30,000 documents, WilmerHale concluded that Altman and Brockman "are the right leaders for OpenAI."

French AI startup Mistral AI announced its first code-generating model. Codestral was trained in over 80 programming languages, including Python, C, C++, JavaScript, and Bash.

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Codestral supports various coding tasks, allowing developers to analyze, generate, autocomplete, and modify code based on natural language instructions.
The LLM can be used to design advanced AI applications and help test new software for bugs, according to Mistral.
The company released an instructed version of Codestral via Le Chat, its free conversational interface.
The model is available under an open-source license for research and testing, but not commercial activities.

Zoom out:

Paris-based Mistral AI is now broadening its reach in the U.S. market.
The startup hired ex-Foursquare CFO Marjorie Janiewicz as its first U.S. general manager, with plans to hire more staff and capitalize on businesses seeking AI stack alternatives to U.S. tech giants.

PwC will resell OpenAI's business-focused version of ChatGPT. The Big Four accounting firm signed a deal with OpenAI to offer ChatGPT Enterprise to its employees and customers in the U.S. and U.K.

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The deal makes PwC, or PricewaterhouseCoopers, the first reseller of an OpenAI product.
PwC also becomes the largest user of ChatGPT Enterprise, with plans to deploy it to 100,000 employees, who gain access to OpenAI's latest GPT-4o model.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Zoom out:

The PwC resale model ushers in a new era of monetization for OpenAI.
In February, FT reported that OpenAI reached $2B in annualized revenue, ranking it among the fastest-growing tech companies.
Consumer demand remains high for its mobile app. On the launch day of GPT-4o on May 13, net revenue for the ChatGPT app rose by 22%.

Data centers could consume up to 9.1% of U.S. electricity by 2030, driven by the rapid expansion of AI technology according to the Electric Power Research Institute. AI's share of data center electricity use is quickly rising, with AI models using far more energy than traditional applications.

What the numbers show: EPRI projects that U.S. data center electricity use could rise from 4% today to between 4.6% and 9.1% by 2030, depending on the growth scenarios. Computation-intensive AI technologies, such as image and video generation, could fuel that growth. While AI applications currently consume between 10% and 20% of data center electricity, that share is rapidly rising, according to EPRI. For example, ChatGPT was once estimated to use 10 times more electricity than a traditional Google search, consuming 2.9 watt-hours per query compared to 0.3

Zoom out: EPRI suggests three strategies to support rapid data center growth, which are improving data center efficiency, enhancing coordination between data center developers and electric companies, and developing better modeling tools to plan needed grid investments.

Meta said it removed hundreds of Facebook and Instagram accounts linked to global influence campaigns, including some with AI-generated content. The propaganda campaigns originated from Israel, Iran, China, Russia, and other countries, according to Meta's latest threat report.

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The campaigns used fake Facebook and Instagram accounts to promote political agendas and comment on posts.
Campaigns from Israel and Iran supported the Israeli government, praising its Gaza war efforts in comments on posts from news outlets and U.S. lawmakers.
Some accounts, posing as concerned citizens, were linked to a Tel Aviv firm called STOIC.
A Chinese network also spread pro-Sikh posters to target global Sikh communities via Instagram and Facebook.

Zoom out:

Meta found that both the China and Israeli campaigns likely used generative AI tools to create images and comments.
Currently, networks are not using GenAI "in terribly sophisticated ways," said David Agranovich, Meta's policy director of threat disruption.

Fresh funding:

Elon Musk's AI startup xAI has raised a $6B Series B funding round, making it one of the biggest investments yet in the rapidly developing generative AI space. Sequoia Capital and Andreessen Horowitz participated in the funding round, which gave the startup a pre-money valuation of $18B.
AI-powered language translation startup DeepL doubled its valuation to $2B after raising a $300M funding round led by Index Ventures. ICONIQ Growth, IVP, Atomico, World Innovation Lab, and Teachers' Venture Growth participated in the funding round.
AI-driven retail solutions provider Aisles closed its Series A funding round, securing $30M capital from an undisclosed group of investors. The startup will use the proceeds to accelerate the development of its AI ecosystem, which includes solutions for advanced navigation, biometric security, and personalized shopping.
Orca AI, a British startup developing autonomous navigation systems for commercial ships, raised $23M in fresh funding led by OCV Partners and MizMaa Ventures. The round is between Series A and Series B rounds.

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Beth Duckett

AI and technology writer

Beth is a contributing editor and writer of Inside's AI and Tech newsletters. She has written for publications including USA Today, the Arizona Business Gazette, and The Arizona Republic, where she received recognition with a Pulitzer Prize nomination and a First Amendment Award for collaborative reporting on state pension cost increases. You can reach her at Beth.Duckett@yahoo.com.