The Sudden Fall of Sam Altman

Earlier this year, I asked Sam Altman whether decisions made by OpenAI's leaders might one day lead to unemployment among the masses. "Jobs are definitely going to go away, full stop," he told me. He couldn't have known then that his would be among the first. In a blog post released this afternoon, OpenAI--the artificial-intelligence juggernaut for which Altman was the CEO--announced that he would be leaving, effective immediately, because, according to the statement, "he was not consistently candid in his communications with the board." The statement did not specify the nature of Altman's alleged misrepresentations, but they must have concerned serious matters to merit such a dramatic and public rebuke.