A wild weekend of surprises and rumors ends with Sam Altman back where he started: on top.
In this episode:
- OpenAI CEO Sam Altman was abruptly removed by the board on Friday, blindsiding Altman, other executives like Chairman Greg Brockman, and even investor Microsoft.
- The board cited lack of candor from Altman, but reporting suggests there were ideological differences between "decelerators" worried about AI safety and those wanting to charge full speed ahead.
- In response, Brockman and 90% of employees threatened to resign if Altman wasn't reinstated, essentially backing the "king" over the board.
- Microsoft also stepped in to voice displeasure, with some speculation they used threats to take Altman for themselves as leverage to get him reinstated.
- Altman and Brockman have now been reinstated, OpenAI is getting a new board, and business continues mostly as usual, but major questions linger over cracks in governance.
- Separately, OpenAI has the very powerful GPT-5 on its roadmap now to move closer to artificial general intelligence (AGI).
- There are also brewing legal questions around training AI on copyrighted content without permission that some companies argue is "fair use" while critics disagree.
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