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OpenAI just announced new plans and methods to push AI use on businesses and students
Part of their response to Anthropic getting more attention.
They're launching the OpenAI Deployment Company:
https://openai.com/index/openai-launches-the-deployment-company/
The OpenAI Deployment Company will extend OpenAI’s ability to embed engineers specialized in frontier AI deployment, known as Forward Deployed Engineers, or FDEs, into organizations working on complex problems in demanding environments. These FDEs will work closely with business leaders, operators, and frontline teams to identify where AI can make the biggest impact, redesign organizational infrastructure and critical workflows around it, and turn those gains into durable systems.
This sounds like a plan to put software engineers trained by OpenAI and loyal to OpenAI in as many businesses as possible.
The OpenAI Deployment Company FDEs will be able to build for where OpenAI’s frontier capabilities are headed, giving customers systems designed to improve as new models, tools, and deployment patterns come online. Customers can move faster from day one, spend capital on durable systems, and stay ahead of competitors by building around the capabilities that are coming next.
Which makes those engineers effectively salespeople as well, getting businesses to spend on OpenAI products based on "the capabilities that are coming next" - or supposedly coming next, since those predicted capabilities don't always materialize.
And software engineers coming to companies from OpenAI would, I think, be in ideal positions to excuse any failures and keep failures from being made public.
Not to mention having a lot of access to company data that OpenAI might be interested in.
And OpenAI also announced today that they want to partner "with student clubs across universities worldwide":
https://openai.com/index/openai-campus-network-student-club-interest-form/
They already have business partnerships with a lot of universities where admins are pushing AI use by students even if teachers and students don't think that's a good idea. But now OpenAI wants to go directly to student clubs, and around any teachers who might not be fans of AI.
Hey, if you can't trust CEO Sam Altman as he tries to ensure his company is the most powerful and influential AI company in the world...
Sam Altman May Control Our Future--Can He Be Trusted? (Ronan Farrow and Andrew Marantz, The New Yorker, 4/6)
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100221158209
After all, Sam told the Financial Times a year ago that he has the "coolest, most important job maybe in history."
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100220304330
So he needs as much influence over businesses and organizations and students as possible.
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