OpenAI is on its third CEO in three days, after appointing Emmett Shear as interim CEO, less than 72 hours after its board ousted former CEO Sam Altman in a shock move on Friday Nov. 17, claiming he had not been "consistently candid in his communications with the board." The company said on Friday it was replacing Altman with chief technology officer Mira Murati but over the weekend, multiple publications reported that Altman was in talks with the OpenAI board to return as CEO. After the departures of Altman and chairman and president Greg Brockman, who resigned, the board comprises chief scientist Ilya Sutskever and three independent directors: Quora CEO Adam D'Angelo, tech entrepreneur Tasha McCauley, and Helen Toner of D.C.-based think tank the Center for Security and Emerging Technology. Bloomberg reported that Murati was negotiating for Altman and Brockman to return to OpenAI, and that Microsoft boss Satya Nadella was playing a central role in the talks. The negotiations ultimately came to nothing, and on Sunday evening Pacific time, reports emerged that OpenAI was appointing Shear as CEO.

The firing of Sam Altman as chief executive of OpenAI on Friday took the tech world by surprise and has triggered a Silicon Valley corporate drama. Altman is not just the CEO of the company behind the ChatGPT artificial intelligence chatbot. He is also the figurehead of a revolution in AI that has enthralled the public and investors but also alarmed industry insiders and experts. Here we answer some key questions about what's been going on and why it matters. OpenAI is the San Francisco-based company behind ChatGPT, a chatbot that has wowed users with its ability to produce highly convincing text responses to human prompts – from writing academic essays to creating recipes and summarising lengthy documents.

Hundreds of staff at leading artificial intelligence company OpenAI have threatened to quit and join Microsoft after the sudden firing of the company's co-founder Sam Altman. The OpenAI staff said they would follow Altman, who said he would be starting an artificial intelligence (AI) subsidiary at Microsoft after his surprise removal from the company that created the ChatGPT chatbot, which led to the rapid rise in AI tech. In a letter, some of OpenAI's most senior staff members threatened to leave the company if the board was not replaced. "The process through which you terminated Sam Altman and removed [co-founder and former president] Greg Brockman from the board has jeopardized all of this work and undermined our mission and company," the letter, first released to the technology news outlet Wired, reads. "Your conduct has made it clear you did not have the competence to oversee OpenAI". "Microsoft has assured us that there are positions for all OpenAI employees at this new subsidiary should we choose to join."

If you were offline this weekend, my colleague Will Douglas Heaven and I break down what you missed and what's next for the AI industry. Friday afternoon Sam Altman was summoned to a Google Meet meeting, where chief scientific officer Ilya Sutskever announced that OpenAI's board had decided Altman had been "not consistently candid in his communications" with them, and he was fired. OpenAI president and cofounder Greg Brockman and a string of senior researchers quit soon after, and CTO Mira Murati became the interim CEO. Saturday Murati made attempts to hire Altman and Brockman back, while the board was simultaneously looking for its own successor to Altman. Altman and OpenAI staffers pressured the board to quit and demanded that Altman be reinstated, giving the board a deadline, which was not met.

Altman's ouster highlights a major rift in the artificial intelligence world, where some people believe that the tech should be rushed forward with minimal government regulation to make money and provide helpful tools to people, while others are concerned that AI could quickly surpass human intelligence and turn on its creators. OpenAI was initially founded as a nonprofit to provide a counter to Big Tech's power in AI, but as the company took on more investment money and began developing consumer products, some in the industry said it had abandoned its mission.

The confounding saga of Sam Altman's sudden, shocking expulsion from OpenAI on Friday, followed by last-ditch attempts from investors and loyalists to reinstate him over the weekend, appears to have ended right where it started: with Altman and former OpenAI co-founder/president/board member Greg Brockman out for good. But there's a twist: Microsoft, which has been OpenAI's cash-and-infrastructure backer for years, announced early Monday morning that it was hiring Altman and Brockman "to lead a new advanced AI research team." In a follow-up tweet, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella declared that Altman would become chief executive of this team, which would take the shape of an "independent" entity within Microsoft, operating something like company subsidiaries GitHub and LinkedIn. Notably, per Brockman, this new entity will be led by himself, Altman, and the first three employees who'd quit OpenAI Friday night in protest of how those two had been treated. I'm super excited to have you join as CEO of this new group, Sam, setting a new pace for innovation.

But Microsoft, OpenAI's biggest investor, has decided not to take a chance on Mr Altman taking this tech elsewhere. He will be joining the Seattle-based tech giant, it has been announced, to lead a yet-to-be-created AI research team. His co-founder Greg Brockman goes with him, and judging from the number of staff members posting on X today, it looks like he'll be taking some of OpenAI's top talent too.

After a weekend of chaos at OpenAI, the company's board of directors appointed former Twitch boss Emmett Shear interim CEO late Sunday. It was just the latest in a string of tumultuous changes at the AI company following Friday's ouster of CEO Sam Altman, and it left many wondering what kind of CEO Shear would be, why the board had chosen him, and how much he would differ from Altman. Shear was one of four cofounders of Justin.tv, In June 2011, the site moved its gaming content to its new Twitch platform, which soon became the go-to place for video game streaming, with millions of monthly streamers. Amazon bought the company for $1 billion in 2014.

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Hundreds of OpenAI staff members have threatened to quit en masse if the board overseeing the ChatGPT developer does not reinstate its ousted chief executive Sam Altman and then step down. In an open letter, 550 of OpenAI's 700 employees demanded the resignation of the board and said they might walk out if Altman is not brought back. Altman was fired on Friday in a move that shocked Silicon Valley and angered most of the company's employees. The letter to OpenAI's four remaining board directors says: "Your actions have made it obvious that you are incapable of overseeing OpenAI. We are unable to work for or with people that lack competence, judgment and care for our mission and employees."