Open AI's new boss is the same as the old boss. But the company--and the artificial intelligence industry--may have been profoundly changed by the past five days of high-stakes soap opera. Sam Altman, OpenAI's CEO, cofounder and figurehead, was removed by the board of directors on Friday. By Tuesday night, after a mass protest by the majority of the startup's staff, Altman was on his way back, and most of the existing board was gone. But that board, mostly independent of OpenAI's operations, bound to a "for the good of humanity" mission statement, was critical to the company's uniqueness.

This article is from Big Technology, a newsletter by Alex Kantrowitz. Improbably and dramatically, the ex-OpenAI CEO returned as CEO late Tuesday. Altman's counter-coup swept out three board members who sparked his firing and included an agreement to investigate what went down this past weekend. The new board--which now includes Larry Summers and Bret Taylor--will expand to up to nine members and likely include someone from Microsoft. The A.I. field will not go back to "normal" after this. OpenAI was already vulnerable coming into the chaos and will now have to work harder to maintain its lead while facing inspired competition.

Sam Altman's firing showed the influence of effective altruism and its view that AI development must slow down; his return marked its limits

Folks, if you predicted on Friday that the closely watched OpenAI power struggle would end in the most pointless-seeming way possible … well, just look. Late Tuesday night, four days after CEO Sam Altman's shocking ouster from the A.I. company, we found ourselves (mostly) back where we started: Altman is returning to OpenAI as its CEO, albeit not to its board of directors; Greg Brockman is once again president of OpenAI, but also will not be a member of the board; Mira Murati, who briefly took the helm as interim CEO, is just regular ol' CTO again; the three researchers who'd stepped down Friday in solidarity with Altman and Brockman are either back at the company or requesting to return; Altman & co. will once again operate with the backing of Microsoft, not as direct employees of the Big Tech pioneer. When it comes to the Main Characters of this saga and their loyalists, it seems most everyone's pretty happy. "[W]e are so back," Brockman exclaimed, sharing a selfie with his smiling team (who celebrated, according to the Information's Erin Woo, by setting off a false fire alarm at OpenAI HQ). Twitch co-founder Emmett Shear is no longer interim CEO but is "deeply pleased by this result, after 72 very intense hours of work," and is "glad to have been a part of the solution."

The turmoil at OpenAI over the past five days has captivated the tech industry and kept entrepreneurs, journalists, and anyone who still has an X account glued to their timelines for the latest emoji updates and lower-case missives. In the meantime, some of the most prominent AI companies--including OpenAI--continued to do what Silicon Valley is known for: Drop new products. The unexpected firing of Sam Altman, OpenAI's CEO, was followed by an avalanche of new AI features from competitors, including Anthropic and Stable Diffusion. On Tuesday afternoon, in the midst of turmoil, OpenAI rolled out ChatGPT with voice capabilities for free to all users. OpenAI had pre-released this in late September, but only for paid users.

Sam Altman, chief executive officer of OpenAI, during a fireside chat at University College London (UCL) in London, UK, on Wednesday, May 24, 2023. Altman said part of the reason for his current tour of European cities is to discover a suitable location for a new office. ALTMAN RETURNS: OpenAI brings back former CEO, establishes new board days after ouster. EGG ON FACE: OpenAI board's days numbered as $90B company plunges into chaos. NO OVERSIGHT: Tech CEO's ouster demonstrates need for better regulation.

Over five chaotic days that transfixed Silicon Valley and beyond, the world's leading artificial intelligence company, OpenAI, appeared to be on the verge of imploding in a power struggle. The maker of ChatGPT, the sensational chatbot, had a mission to safely develop smarter-than-human AI. But that mission looked in jeopardy on Friday when OpenAI's non-profit board of directors fired Altman, suggesting he had been dishonest in his communications with them. To many spectators, the future of not just AI but also humanity hung in the balance. Finally late on Tuesday night, after three CEO changes and a full-court press by Microsoft, the board gave Altman his old job back.

"OpenAI is nothing without its people" was posted on X by many workers, including Mira Murati who was at the time the interim CEO. There were also lots of coloured hearts being shared. The whole thing had the vibes of last year's big Silicon Valley meltdown: the shake-up at Twitter (now X) following Elon Musk's takeover. Laid-off Twitter staff sent a coded message then too: the emoji giving a salute.

As Sam Altman looks to steer OpenAI through choppy waters following the turmoil of his ouster and return as chief executive, he will be working with an initial board of directors consisting of two new faces--and one holdover from the previous board that fired him. The two joiners are seasoned tech veteran Bret Taylor, who was formerly co-CEO of Salesforce and chairman of Twitter, and Larry Summers, the onetime Treasury secretary and Harvard University president whose appointment surprised some observers. Remaining on the board is Adam D'Angelo, a former Facebook executive and the founder of the question-and-answer website Quora, a potential sign that Altman may not have everything his own way after his dramatic reinstatement late Tuesday.

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