AI belongs to the capitalists now

The OpenAI office in San Francisco. On Nov 17, Altman was pushed out of the hot artificial intelligence start-up that he ran. But an intense pressure campaign and days of negotiations brought him back. — ©2023 The New York Times Company

WHAT happened at OpenAI over a few days last month could be described in many ways: a juicy boardroom drama, a tug of war over one of America’s biggest startups, a clash between those who want artificial intelligence to progress faster and those who want to slow it down.

But it was, most importantly, a fight between two duelling visions of AI.