Politics
OpenAI Survived A Board Coup And Elon Musk And Now Has Florida To Worry About
By Mor Michael, . BSN Network. Satire.
OpenAI, the artificial intelligence company that once managed to fire and un-fire its own CEO within 96 hours without technically collapsing, is facing a new threat that its previous crises did not prepare it for: the Florida Attorney General's office.
James Uthmeier, the state's attorney general and an ally of President Trump, filed a regulatory challenge this week aimed at restricting OpenAI's development, arguing that the company poses dangers serious enough to require legal intervention. The specific dangers were not enumerated with great precision, but the general feeling was that something very powerful is happening and Florida would like to be on record as having noticed.
The move came approximately forty-eight hours after President Trump told reporters that fears about artificial intelligence are a "hoax" and that Americans should relax. Uthmeier's office has not explained how these two positions coexist, and no reporter has been able to catch them in a room together to ask.
Trump, reached for comment at a campaign-style event in which he described ChatGPT as "frankly incredible, maybe the most incredible thing I have ever seen outside of my own buildings," said the AI panic was being driven by "radical left journalists who want America to fail." He did not address the fact that the person most recently trying to slow AI development is his own attorney general in his largest swing state.
OpenAI for its part has spent the last three years surviving things that should have killed it. The board fired Sam Altman in November 2023. Then the employees threatened to quit. Then the board rehired Altman. Then Elon Musk, a co-founder, sued the company for betraying its nonprofit mission. Then Musk started his own competing AI company called xAI, which he described as less corrupt, and which has since raised billions of dollars from the same investor class that funds OpenAI. The company absorbed all of this and is currently valued at roughly $300 billion.
It is now being asked to also absorb James Uthmeier.
Sam Altman, in a post on X, the platform owned by his most prominent antagonist, said he was "committed to working with all levels of government" and that OpenAI "takes safety more seriously than any organization in the history of technology." He did not mention Elon Musk. He almost never does.
Legal analysts said Uthmeier's challenge faces significant obstacles, primarily that regulating a private AI company's development falls outside a state attorney general's clear jurisdiction, and secondarily that no one has articulated what the regulations would actually require. One analyst described the filing as "a press release with a docket number."
Florida legislators, asked whether they supported the attorney general's push, largely said they supported American innovation and also had concerns, which is the legislative equivalent of nodding while reading something else.
The Biden administration had spent three years developing a federal AI regulatory framework. The Trump administration scrapped it in January on the grounds that it was anti-innovation. The current federal position is therefore that AI is a hoax concern and also that the previous safety guardrails were excessive and also that Florida is free to try whatever it wants.
OpenAI did not survive its own board to be regulated by Tallahassee, but here we are.
The story we are making fun of: https://www.newsweek.com/trump-ally-moves-halt-openai-growth-ai-backlash-12498761