The OpenAI farce has moved at such speed in the past week that it is easy to forget that nobody has yet said in clear terms why Sam Altman – the returning chief executive and all-round genius, according to his vocal fanclub – was fired in the first place. Since we are constantly told, not least by Altman himself, that the worst outcome from the adoption of artificial general intelligence could be "lights out for all of us", somebody needs to find a voice here. If the old board judged, for example, that Altman was unfit for the job because he was taking OpenAI down a reckless path, lights-wise, there would plainly be an obligation to speak up. Or, if the fear is unfounded, the architects of the failed boardroom coup could do everybody a favour and say so. Saying nothing useful, especially when your previous stance has been that transparency and safety go hand in hand, is indefensible.

OpenAI's messy firing and re-hiring of its powerful chief executive this week shocked the tech world. But the power struggle has implications beyond the company's boardroom, AI experts said. It throws into relief the greenness of the AI industry and the strong desire in Silicon Valley to be first, and raises urgent questions about the safety of the technology. "The AI that we're looking at now is immature. There are no standards, no professional body, no certifications. Everybody figures out how to do it, figures out their own internal norms," said Rayid Ghani, a professor of machine learning and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University.

OpenAI was reportedly working on an advanced system before Sam Altman's sacking that was so powerful it caused safety concerns among staff at the company. The artificial intelligence model triggered such alarm with some OpenAI researchers that they wrote to the board of directors before Altman's dismissal warning it could threaten humanity, Reuters reported. The model, called Q* – and pronounced as "Q-Star" – was able to solve basic maths problems it had not seen before, according to the tech news site the Information, which added that the pace of development behind the system had alarmed some safety researchers. The ability to solve maths problems would be viewed as a significant development in AI. The reports followed days of turmoil at San Francisco-based OpenAI, whose board sacked Altman last Friday but then reinstated him on Tuesday night after nearly all the company's 750 staff threatened to resign if he was not brought back.

Google has updated its Bard AI chatbot, so you can use it to parse YouTube videos. In its most recent experiment update log, the company has announced it has expanded the capabilities of Bard's YouTube extension, so when it's enabled, the generative AI can "understand some video content." For example, Google said you'd be able to ask Bard how many eggs were used in a video for an olive oil cake recipe. Bard first gained the ability to pull data from YouTube in September after an update integrated it with other Google products, including Docs, Maps, Lens, Flights and Hotels. Google claims people have been asking for "deeper engagement with YouTube videos" -- but I guess that entails watching them less.

The American tech industry has long paid reverence to its monolithic slate of founders and visionaries: Meta's Mark Zuckerberg; Google's Larry Page and Sergey Brin; Apple's Steve Jobs and Tim Cook. But where the other firms sold phones and search engines, Musk and Altman championed their work as a public mission for protecting mankind, with a for-profit business attached. It is notable that as private companies, they don't have to report to federal regulators or to shareholders, who can vote down proposals or push back against their work.

Sam Altman is back at the helm of OpenAI, days after the board abruptly ousted him. Almost everything else is still in flux. The deal struck Tuesday night to restore Altman as CEO is a long way from the ultimate goal he wanted to achieve heading into a weekend of intense negotiations. He had lobbied for an entirely new slate of directors--built on the ashes of the directors who fired him--and wanted to rejoin the board again himself, according to people familiar with the matter.

This week, Emily Bazelon, John Dickerson, and David Plotz discuss the problems with issue polling and issues with political journalism; the chaos and conflict of Sam Altman and OpenAI; and the failure of the Oslo Accords and perpetual struggle between Israel and Palestine. Send us your Conundrums: submit them at slate.com/conundrum. And join us in-person or online with our special guest – The Late Show's Steven Colbert – for Gabfest Live: The Conundrums Edition! December 7 at The 92nd Street Y, New York City. Here are some notes and references from this week's show: Nate Cohn for The New York Times: The Crisis in Issue Polling, and What We're Doing About It and We Did an Experiment to See How Much Democracy and Abortion Matter to Voters Eli Saslow for The New York Times: A Jan. 6 Defendant Pleads His Case to the Son Who Turned Him In John Dickerson and Jo Ling Kent for CBS News Prime Time: What Sam Altman's ouster from OpenAI could mean for the tech world Emily Bazelon for The New York Times Magazine: Was Peace Ever Possible? Ezra Klein for The New York Times's The Ezra Klein Show podcast: The Best Primer I've Heard on Israeli-Palestinian Peace Efforts John Dickerson for CBS Mornings: Former President Jimmy Carter: "America will learn from its mistakes" Here are this week's chatters: John: Julia Simon for NPR: 'It feels like I'm not crazy.'

Ahead of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman's four days in exile, several staff researchers wrote a letter to the board of directors warning of a powerful artificial intelligence discovery that they said could threaten humanity, two people familiar with the matter said. The previously unreported letter and AI algorithm were key developments before the board's ouster of Altman, the poster child of generative AI, the two sources said. Prior to his triumphant return late Tuesday, more than 700 employees had threatened to quit and join backer Microsoft in solidarity with their fired leader. The sources cited the letter as one factor among a longer list of grievances by the board leading to Altman's firing, among which were concerns over commercializing advances before understanding the consequences. A copy of the letter was unable to be reviewed for this report.

Telecom giant Nippon Telegraph and Telephone will launch a business-use generative artificial intelligence platform in March, in an effort to catch up with foreign rivals in the fast-expanding market. The AI platform has higher Japanese language processing capabilities than ChatGPT, a widely used AI chatbot developed by U.S.-based OpenAI, NTT said earlier in the month. The new AI model, called tsuzumi, named after a Japanese hand drum used in traditional events, can read documents containing charts and diagrams. NTT said it aims for annual sales of over ¥100 billion ($670 million) in this AI platform business by 2027. "The market size will grow bigger and bigger as many companies compete with each other," NTT President Akira Shimada said during a news conference in early November.

Sam Altman is returning to lead OpenAI less than five days after his surprise dismissal, which kicked off a tug of war for his talent, left the company in disarray and laid bare deep board divisions over the mission of one of the world's most valuable startups. OpenAI's new interim board, which won't include Altman at the outset, will be led by Bret Taylor, a former co-CEO of Salesforce. The other directors are Larry Summers, the former U.S. treasury secretary, and existing member Adam D'Angelo, the co-founder and CEO of Quora. Altman had been fired Friday after clashing with the board over his drive to transform OpenAI from a nonprofit organization focused on the scientific exploration of artificial intelligence into a business that builds products, attracts customers and lines up the funding needed to power AI tools. Members of the former board harbored concerns about the potential harms done by powerful, unchecked AI.