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Elon Musk-led group makes $97.4bn bid for OpenAI
A consortium led by Elon Musk said it has offered $97.4bn to buy the nonprofit that controls OpenAI, months after the billionaire sued the artificial intelligence startup to block it from transitioning to a for-profit firm.
Musk’s bid, revealed on Monday, could ratchet up longstanding tensions with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman over the future of the startup at the heart of a boom in generative AI technology.
Altman promptly posted on X: “No thank you but we will buy twitter for $9.74 billion if you want.”
The two are already embroiled in an ongoing lawsuit. Musk criticised a $500bn OpenAI-led project called Stargate announced with great fanfare at the White House just after United States President Donald Trump returned to office, suggesting the investors involved lacked the funding for the project.
“It’s time for OpenAI to return to the open-source, safety-focused force for good it once was,” Musk said in the press release. “We will make sure that happens.”
OpenAI, Musk, Musk’s lawyer Marc Toberoff and OpenAI backer Microsoft did not immediately respond to requests for comment from the Reuters news agency.
The bid is being backed by Musk’s AI company xAI, which could merge with OpenAI following a deal, according to The Wall Street Journal, which first reported Musk’s offer earlier on Monday.
Even without any antitrust implications, a deal this size would need Musk and his consortium to raise enormous funds.
OpenAI was valued at $157bn in its latest funding round in October, cementing its status as one of the most valuable private companies in the world. SoftBank Group is in talks to lead a funding round of up to $40bn in OpenAI at a valuation of $300bn, including the new funds, the Reuters news agency reported in January.
Musk co-founded OpenAI with Altman in 2015, but left before the company took off. He founded the competing AI startup xAI in 2023.
OpenAI is now trying to transition into a for-profit from a nonprofit entity, which it says is required to secure the capital needed for developing the best artificial intelligence models.
Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI and Altman says the founders originally approached him to fund a nonprofit focused on developing AI to benefit humanity, but that it was now focused on making money.
[Aljazeera]
Sri Lanka will face India in the semi-finals of Asian Games men’s tournament after their quarter-final clash against Nepal was abandoned without a ball being bowled in Nisshin, Japan. The game was called off prior to the toss, with rain having begun hours prior to the scheduled 9am local start and not looking like abating.
Sri Lanka’s progression was assured by virtue of their higher seeding in terms of the ICC T20I rankings – Sri Lanka, alongside India, Pakistan and Bangladesh are the four seeded teams in the tournament. On Monday, India had qualified over Afghanistan after another washout, again by virtue of their higher. Similarly, Pakistan’s qualification was assured following a rain abandonment in their quarter-final against Hong Kong.
In the 2022 Asian Games, Sri Lanka had been eliminated at the quarter fial stages by Afghanistan. Another washout in the semis against, India though, will see the latter qualify for the final.
A few hours later, the fourth quarter-final between Bangladesh and Malaysia was also washed out. Bangladesh will now face Pakistan in the first semi-final on October 1, followed by India vs Sri Lanka later on the same day
(Cricinfo)
The Bangladesh vs Malaysia abandonment on Tuesday completed a quartet of rained off matches in the Asian Games men’s tournament. The match was called off two hours before the toss, with the teams told not to even turn up at the venue.
Bangladesh, by virtue of higher seeding, go through to the semi-finals where they will now face Pakistan on October 1. Earlier in the morning, the Sri Lanka vs Nepal fixture was also called off due to rain, with Sri Lanka advancing into the semi-finals where they will meet India.
There is, however, some good news, as the weather forecast in Nisshin is better for the semi-final and the medal match day, on October 1 and 3, respectively.
In the last edition (2023), Bangladesh had lost to India in the semi-final but won the third-place playoff against Pakistan to take home the bronze medal. They had won the bronze in 2014 as well and Bangladesh’s best finish was winning the gold medal in 2010, when they beat Afghanistan in the final.
(Cricinfo)
OpenAI will not release its new AI model – GPT-6.1 Astra – due to safety concerns, the ChatGPT-maker confirmed on Tuesday.
The AI system – which performs tasks like browsing the web and using apps by itself – “didn’t quite meet the bar” of the company’s standards, Saachi Jain, head of safety systems at OpenAI, said.
On Tuesday, OpenAI also issued an update on incidents, that occurred in June but were not made public until last week, in which its models accessed Australian government websites and systems without authorisation.
Those incidents and similar breaches by models developed by major AI firms have in recent weeks intensified the debate around the risks posed by the technology.
Top AI leaders including OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Anthropic boss Dario Amodei have urged the industry to slow the pace of development due to concerns about risks associated with the technology.
OpenAI’s decision, which was first reported by the Wall Street Journal, is a rare instance of a major AI developer pulling a new release over safety concerns.
The model fell short in terms of “staying within scope and authorisation, and how it communicates back to the user about the type of work it’s done,” Jain said.
“We want to make sure our model development is safe no matter whether that’s in the company, or when we ship it to users. But when we ship it to users, we have an extremely high bar in terms of safety and alignment,” she added.
The flagship GPT-6 Astra agentic model was released in September and specialises in complex reasoning and executing tasks autonomously. OpenAI said it was the result of “years of research and big bets”.
OpenAI is set to hold its annual DevDay developer conference in San Francisco on Tuesday, where it is expected to make several announcements. It is unclear if a new version of Astra will be among them.
The company’s security controls have come under intense scrutiny after several high-profile incidents involving its technology.
Last week, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced that a rogue OpenAI agent had hacked into gove4nment websites and systems in June in what experts said was the first known case of its kind in the world.
Albanese criticised OpenAI for notifying the Australian government through a generic email address rather than making direct contact with officials.
OpenAI said in a statement on Tuesday that it was sorry for the incident and that it “should have handled our response better”.
Services Australia, the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research, the Victorian Department of Health and the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare were all affected, OpenAI clarified.
The firm said it launched investigations into the incidents as soon as it became aware of them in mid-August and notified the affected organisations between 10 and 24 September.
“Our aim was to give affected agencies a detailed account once our investigation was complete,” OpenAI said, adding that it should have shared early findings more promptly and kept Australian authorities updated.
OpenAI added that it will develop “practical approaches” to how developers and governments identify and disclose future AI incidents.
(BBC)
Sri Lanka to face India in semi-finals after washout
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