Not, that is emphatically not about Marjorie Taylor Greene dumb discredited QAnon stuff, but entirely different. Lovers of mystery and intrigue, pay attention.
Reuters reports about Q*
So read all about it. Start by recalling the board's message of the firing drew its focus upon perceived insufficient candor to where the board could not effectively do its job.
That board is history. That we also know, but this Q* stuff might touch upon candor. So read what Reuters reports. Crabgrass only quotes closing paragraphs:
Researchers have also flagged work by an "AI scientist" team, the existence of which multiple sources confirmed. The group, formed by combining earlier "Code Gen" and "Math Gen" teams, was exploring how to optimize existing AI models to improve their reasoning and eventually perform scientific work, one of the people said.
Altman led efforts to make ChatGPT one of the fastest growing software applications in history and drew investment - and computing resources - necessary from Microsoft to get closer to AGI.
In addition to announcing a slew of new tools in a demonstration this month, Altman last week teased at a summit of world leaders in San Francisco that he believed major advances were in sight.
"Four times now in the history of OpenAI, the most recent time was just in the last couple weeks, I've gotten to be in the room, when we sort of push the veil of ignorance back and the frontier of discovery forward, and getting to do that is the professional honor of a lifetime," he said at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit.
A day later, the board fired Altman.
If you do not read an implication of cause and effect into those phrasing choices it is unfortunate, but with Altman back in the saddle, there is equal interest in aspects of the reinstatement as well as the initiation of the departure, where reinstatement cause and effect seems to have been two-fold, an OpenAI employee snit fit coupled with an even stronger snit fit from Nadella. And the specialized high tech media lighting up brighter than the northern lights with intrigue and mystery reporting factored into things. And beliefs about the firing possibly shaking the AI markets and the community to its roots made stakes seem higher.
Again, one hell of an artful video game could be based upon all of the related events and players. With a Dragnet disclaimer for certain, "Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental." Yeah. Sure. Such a game should sell.
UPDATE: A challenge to video game creators, integrate Q* and QAnon into a single more encompassing online game, and sell it to Nadella, where he might buy after the intregation of MS and Activision, boosting the product to make his board happier over the acquisition. But then again he might have reason to not do so.
FURTHER: Getting serious, the big money stakes today seems to be selling cloud services at the enterprise level where the big money resides and can be made to transfer, given how enterprises have their own core competencies and have moved to COTS instead of keeping large IT staffs producing content, as opposed to keeping smaller network maintenance and security staff attention. Not needing an in-house big server presence if the cloud seems secure enough that appears as something GE, Boeing or DoD might view as a better scenario than large spending on in-house ancillary content services distant from the main revenue streams. Where AI, in present or near term advanced form fits that, OpenAI seems to be an Azure customer, with its products for sale being Azure oriented. Other SSMs are proliferating, but with the OpenAI gaining major recent media attention, it stands to benefit from name recognition and conjecture of a potential $80 billion market cap, were it to go IPO with board and management on the same sell-it-now page.
Beyond all that, two years from now things might suggest other market moves, given how in four days a saga unfolded, and then folded back again. Time frame, your guess.
FURTHER: For all any outsiders know, Microsoft might favor OpenAI Nonprofit being a continuing nonprofit entity with an affiliated private and not publicly traded limited for-profit affiliated limited partnership - OpenAI LP. That might put Microsoft's spent billions in a better near driver's seat than if a firm were key to some of its business and answerable to a range of shareholders, where even a hostile takeover effort could arise. The business structure OpenAI has installed saw some recent media attention, but not criticism, and Microsoft, owning Azure, seems in a winning posture whatever way OpenAI business is constituted.
FURTHER: The ultimate situation for former Twitch CEO Emmett Shear to land into is either still in flux, or is being kept silent for reasons the public may not know. Given the costly Activision acquisition Microsoft recently closed, Shear might have a future in Redmond with his Twitch background. Microsoft did well with DEC people when DEC went through death throes. They value people for what they know and how they can help advance corporate well being. They find fits.
FURTHER: After seeing the Reuters item, search = Q*
FURTHER: The Q* thing has grown legs. There are videos, and now Guardian has a post and there already is a Wikipedia entry. Crabgrass likely needs to read more before posting more, so leave it at those two for now.
FURTHER: Here and a related archived letter here. Also, here. All for now.