The secret to Space X rocket explosion revealed, Altman backs down and a woman leading Open AI?
The news cycle sometimes appears to be speeding up and not just around the beltway. This week made for a tough choice on topics to write about. This week a story broke about Space X and their rocket explosions. According to Ars Technica, in 2016, Musk and Space X went to great lengths to prove that their rockets are exploding because of illegal sabotage, going so far as to push the FBI and the FAA to investigate. Finally, the details of those investigations have been made public: they found no evidence of unfriendly fire on the rocket failures. What they did find is that a process for rapid refueling destabilized the helium tanks leading to volatility. This aligns with some of the trouble we identify in our podcast on digital transformation, where the obsession with speed in emerging technology leads to compromised quality, rushed decisions, safety concerns, burnout and stress, and hubris.
In other news, Sam Altman has backed down on his flip from for profit to nonprofit and announced a new CEO, the former CEO of Instacart Fidji Simo. Many in the industry are watchful as Altman has a history of alienating top leadership and Simo will be reporting into Altman who retains control of the nonprofit. OpenAI was valued at $300 billion by Softbank in it's most recent funding round. Simo arrived at Instacart from Meta where she was the highest paid female in leadership below COO Sheryl Sandberg. Her success is well-known as she maintained profits for "pandemic-darling" Instacart beyond the pandemic and built a lasting company with solid financial health. It's an excellent profile for Open AI who has been stuck in its effort to scale under founder Altman. There is no stated strategy for a way forward and many remain skeptical. Especially Elon Musk who's on going suit against the conversion remains in full blast, as he calls this decision to remain in the "public interest" a dodge of the legal and contractual transgressions Altman's previous for-profit tragedy incurred.
Overall skeptics have good reason to remain dubious: costs are overwhelming, the achievement was attained through tremendous complexity and questionable legal ambiguity, and investors will expect some return on their $64 billion investment, despite it remaining a nonprofit. So far, the cost of this pressure has been public safety and controversial ethics sacrificed in the name of...you guessed it. Speed. Can Simo succeed where Altman and the string of departed leaders failed? We will be following the story going forward. Stay tuned!
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