Europe Director Max von Thun is quoted in Digiday coverage of the OpenAI-Microsoft partnership following the firing and then reinstatement of OpenAI’s Sam Altman.

OpenAI’s current mercurial state is prompting plenty of questions about what the fallout might mean for the future of generative AI…

OpenAI’s sudden shakeup could bolster the case for new AI regulations, according to Max von Thun, Europe director for the Open Markets Institute. He said individual companies are “too fickle and unstable to regulate themselves” and that foundation model providers should be held to standards like the one proposed in the EU AI Act.

Von Thun also noted that it’s worth questioning Microsoft’s relationship with OpenAI — especially if Altman ends up joining the giant. Would the move deepen the relationship between the two companies or give Altman more incentive to undermine it?

“We can’t accept that a company’s approach to safety will drastically change every time they get a new CEO,” von Thun said. “The fact that OpenAI’s board were able to fire Altman despite knowing the backlash they would face is actually a good thing; most tech companies are far too beholden to their founders, even though this has often had terrible consequences.”

The chaos could also prompt companies to consider diversifying the large language models they use and potentially fuel interest in open-source AI models. 

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