The Money Always Wins

It's been four full days since Sam Altman's shocking dismissal from OpenAI, and we still have no idea where he's going to land. There are suggestions that Altman, one of the most powerful figures in AI, could return to the company if the board changes significantly--talks are reportedly under way. But there is also an offer on the table from Microsoft to start a new AI research group there, which would be a cruelly ironic outcome for OpenAI, which was founded as a nonprofit with the goal of drawing talent away from Silicon Valley's biggest companies and developing AI safely. How Altman got to this moment is telling. In the days after his firing, he managed to prove that he is far more than a figurehead, winning over a majority of OpenAI employees (including Ilya Sutskever, the company's chief scientist and the reported architect of his dismissal--it's, uh, complicated) and some of the tech industry's biggest luminaries.