OpenAI is like the BJP
The board of OpenAI is the RSS. OpenAI, the company, is the BJP, and Microsoft is the lure of electoral politics.
Whenever something interesting happens in the world of American business, finance or technology, one turns to Matt Levine's Money Stuff for an explanation. The newsletter can be relied upon to provide clarity to the most baffling of events. So it was with the shenanigans at OpenAI. Their CEO, Sam Altman got fired on a Friday, and in the early hours of Monday, Microsoft snapped him up. The board provided no explanation for the firing beyond insinuations that Altman was not fully candid with them. As a result, that Monday’s Money Stuff was the most awaited one of all time.
Levine did not disappoint. The newsletter of Monday, 20th November, contained this diagram that instantly made it clear:
There was also a more detailed clarifying explanation which to me was unnecessary, because the perfect metaphor had clicked in my mind. The board of OpenAI is the RSS. OpenAI, the company, is the BJP, and Microsoft is the lure of electoral politics.
The youth of today may not know this as it hasn’t been true for the past ten years that Modi has been in power, but there was a time when RSS was considered to be the parent organization, and the BJP was just the political arm of the RSS. The RSS billed itself as being dedicated to the social and cultural transformation of the nation, and while the BJP was given leave to participate in electoral politics, the expectation was that it would be kept on a tight leash so that it wouldn’t deviate too much from the path of ideological purity. In fact, there were many jibes from opposing parties about this - the BJP and Vajpayee were considered a मुखौटा, a front for the real programme of the RSS.
We all know what the current state is. The BJP has grown so much that it exists practically independent of the RSS. To the extent that the RSS exists, its only purpose is to provide a dedicated cadre to campaign for the BJP during the elections. The RSS no longer “controls” the BJP in any real sense. An intervention from them is brushed aside as the irrelevant ramblings of out-of-touch geriatrics.
This story has played itself out in so many different ways at different times in history. India’s communists had a similar internal conflict. Should they participate in electoral politics or should they stay out and work for the revolution? What is the real purpose of trades unionism? Is it to obtain short-term benefits for the workers by bargaining with the capitalists, or is it to enhance class-consciousness among the workers in preparation for the eventual revolution? On both the questions, the communists chose the former options as temporary compromises. The temporary compromise became the permanent settlement.
So often it occurs that there is some revolutionary insurgency that has some lofty goals. But it needs to fund itself, so it takes on short-term activities such as drug-dealing. Inevitably, a conflict economy develops and the branch of the insurgency responsible for funding it begins to control it. The original lofty purpose of the revolution stays on as a pretextual abstract idea that everyone subscribes to, while everyone knows what motivates the fighters on the ground.
What you think of the phenomenon in the specific instance depends on what you think of the original idea in the first place. In the case of OpenAI, I happen to believe that the fears of AI causing the end of the world are overblown, and that the way to address the risks of AI is to implement it, face the problems that will inevitably occur, and address them one by one. So I welcome the more commercial turn that it has taken1. I obviously do not support a communist revolution, so I suppose I should be happy that the communists took on the path of moderation and pursued electoral politics and more transactional trades unionism, but I am not. I believe that they did too much damage both as participants in electoral democracy and as trades union leaders, so I believe that it would have been better if they had stayed on the path of violence and had been inevitably crushed by the Indian State. As to the BJP and RSS, while the former has gained independence from its parent, it has stuck to the ideology. If you are an RSS purist, I am sure you would have some strong views on what happened, but if you are an opponent, you probably see no difference.
That said, if you are in the position of the OpenAI board, what would you do? If you want to set up an organization that sticks to the path you want it to follow, how would you structure it? The organization or movement will inevitably be run by people. The people will have short term goals, The organization will have to sustain itself in some way. How would you structure the organization so that these factors do not cause it to deviate from the path? No one has found an answer to this question.
In fact, these fears are so common that we have projected them on to AI as well. Our dystopian fantasies about Artificial Intelligence take the shape of the Frankenstein’s monster. But I believe that they are mistaken. Frankenstein imbued his monster with desires and emotions. Our creations will not. The things we have to worry about will be different.
More bizarre events took place after that Monday’s Money Stuff was published and eventually, Altman came back to OpenAI as its CEO. It was the board that got replaced. The tech world moves fast. The BJP took decades to achieve a similar goal.