What Kind of New World Is Being Born? According to the Gospel of Luke, the Virgin Mary first learns that she'll soon give birth to Christ when she gets an unsolicited visit from an angel. Nice messenger service if you can get it. But before trusty Gabriel can dispense the good news upon which Christmas depends he has to calm the girl down. "Fear not," he says, and, in a way, this sombre reassurance is the Yuletide message in drastic miniature.

The singer leaves behind two of the greatest albums of the century--and generations of artists still struggling to keep up. Great artists who are the opposite of prolific are always a thorny subject. Many of our most romantic ideas about creativity tend to view "genius" as a kind of vessel state, from which beauty and inspiration simply flow forth, effortlessly and boundlessly: It's deflating to be confronted with the reality that this isn't always how it works. And, of course, when such artists come to be the subjects of intense devotion and scrutiny, it often provokes a demand for more and more, faster and faster, which usually has the counterproductive effect of further pressurizing an already fraught creative process. And yet these artists are distinctively precious in their own way, necessary reminders (particularly in our age of pathological, parasocial standom) that even stars don't exist solely as objects for our consumption, that sharing a world with people who provide us with beautiful things is a privilege to be cherished and cared for, rather than an entitlement to be hoarded or otherwise fetishized.

This article was featured in the One Story to Read Today newsletter. Every day or two for the past seven months, I've received a "personalized" email containing a bunch of recent, user-generated questions from the website Quora. "I caught my son playing his Xbox at 12:00 in the morning on a school night. As a result, I broke his console and now he won't talk to me. How can I tell him that it is his fault?"

Microsoft will take a non-voting, observer position on OpenAI's board, CEO Sam Altman said in his first official missive after taking back the reins of the company on Wednesday. The observer position means Microsoft's representative can attend OpenAI's board meetings and access confidential information, but it does not have voting rights on matters including electing or choosing directors. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, who had recruited Altman to Microsoft after Altman's ouster from OpenAI, had said earlier that governance at the ChatGPT maker needs to change. OpenAI announced a new initial board last week that consists of former Salesforce co-CEO Bret Taylor as chair and Larry Summers, former US treasury secretary. Quora CEO Adam D'Angelo, who was part of the board who fired Altman, also stayed on.

Following Sam Altman's rollercoaster of a return as OpenAI's CEO, the company announced that it will now include Microsoft as a non-voting observer on its board. The question remains as to why the firm's largest investor wasn't on its board in the first place, but this seems to be somewhat addressed for now, at least. Altman is joined by co-founder Greg Brockman who resumes his role as President, whereas Mira Murati, who very briefly served as interim CEO throughout the drama, will return to her role as CTO. The announcement also confirms a new board consisting of former Salesforce CEO Bret Taylor (chair), former Clinton Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, and original member Adam D'Angelo, who is also Quora's co-founder and CEO. It was earlier rumored that Altman's exit was partly influenced by D'Angelo's seeming conflict of interest, as OpenAI was developing a potential competitor to Quora's Poe service -- the latter offers OpenAI's ChatGPT and GPT-4, along with several other text-generating AI models.

Earlier this month, OpenAI's board abruptly fired its popular CEO, Sam Altman. The ouster shocked the tech world and rankled Altman's loyal employees, the vast majority of whom threatened to quit unless their boss was reinstated. After a chaotic five-day exile, Altman got his old job back--with a reconfigured, all-male board overseeing him, led by ex-Salesforce CEO and former Twitter board chair Bret Taylor. Right now, only three people sit on this provisional OpenAI board. Immediately prior to the failed coup, there were six.

When Sam Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI, took to the stage in San Francisco nine days ago he hinted at another significant development in the world of artificial intelligence. "Four times now in the history of OpenAI, the most recent time was just in the last couple weeks, I've gotten to be in the room, when we sort of push the veil of ignorance back and the frontier of discovery forward, and getting to do that is the professional honour of a lifetime," he told the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) summit. Given that he leads the company behind ChatGPT – a chatbot that has transformed the debate around AI – this was a tantalising comment. And a major event in AI did occur the next day – Altman was fired. OpenAI's board announced on Friday 17 November that it had sacked the 38-year-old for failing to be "consistently candid in his communications" with its members, without giving further details about the alleged breaches of trust.

Folks, if you predicted on Friday that the closely watched OpenAI power struggle would end in the most pointless-seeming way possible … well, just look. Late Tuesday night, four days after CEO Sam Altman's shocking ouster from the A.I. company, we found ourselves (mostly) back where we started: Altman is returning to OpenAI as its CEO, albeit not to its board of directors; Greg Brockman is once again president of OpenAI, but also will not be a member of the board; Mira Murati, who briefly took the helm as interim CEO, is just regular ol' CTO again; the three researchers who'd stepped down Friday in solidarity with Altman and Brockman are either back at the company or requesting to return; Altman & co. will once again operate with the backing of Microsoft, not as direct employees of the Big Tech pioneer. When it comes to the Main Characters of this saga and their loyalists, it seems most everyone's pretty happy. "[W]e are so back," Brockman exclaimed, sharing a selfie with his smiling team (who celebrated, according to the Information's Erin Woo, by setting off a false fire alarm at OpenAI HQ). Twitch co-founder Emmett Shear is no longer interim CEO but is "deeply pleased by this result, after 72 very intense hours of work," and is "glad to have been a part of the solution."

Sam Altman is set to make a return as chief executive of OpenAI after the ChatGPT developer said it had "reached an agreement in principle" for his reinstatement. The San Francisco-based company made the announcement after days of corporate drama in the wake of Altman's surprise sacking on Friday. Nearly all of OpenAI's 750-strong workforce had threatened to quit unless the board overseeing the business brought back Altman and then quit immediately afterwards. As part of the agreement reached overnight, the deal includes a new-look board led by Bret Taylor, the former co-CEO of software firm Salesforce. It will include Larry Summers, the former US treasury secretary, and Adam D'Angelo, the tech entrepreneur and current board member who played a role in Altman's firing.

Sam Altman is returning to OpenAI as CEO after his firing five days ago launched the company onto one of the wildest rollercoaster rides in tech history, the company announced in post on X. Former president Greg Brockman, who resigned on Friday in protest, will also return, The Verge's sources say. The original board has been disbanded and replaced by a new, temporary three-man board with Bret Taylor (chair), Larry Summers and original board member Adam D'Angelo. The agreement has been struck "in principal," and must still be approved by all parties. The only job of the initial board will be to vet and appoint a permanent board with up to 9 members that will resent OpenAI's governance.