Sam Altman's Second Coming Sparks New Fears of the AI Apocalypse?

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.