The Altman Saga: Meet Key Winners and Losers
No one ever said that being Sam Altman is easy.
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Netflix is too boring these days compared to the world of AI where friends and foes are fighting in what appears to be a new season of Game of Thrones or its business alter ego Succession.
Yes, we’re talking about Sam Altman, the former CEO of Y Combinator and the former/new CEO of OpenAI.
Though the scandal was hard to miss, its essence was that the board of directors took a rather unexpected decision to oust Sam Altman, just several weeks after the latest ChatGPT update took place.
They didn’t specify why they made that decision, but the magnitude of its spread is nothing short of enormous.
Let’s analyze who came out of this drama atop and who miscalculated.
Winner Sam Altman himself, naturally
It’s not nice to be ousted. Especially by your own group of friends and colleagues. But it’s also quite nice to immediately get a job at a behemoth company like Microsoft and see its stock reach record high as a result.
It’s equally nice to return to the top shortly after, eliminating his foes, who claimed that he was “not consistently candid in his communications” in the blink of an eye.
Winner Adam D’Angelo
You may know D’Angelo as the CEO of Quora, a platform for posing and answering questions and a tech veteran who also expressed concerns about the fast-paced development of the technology.
According to different sources, he not only managed to preserve his seat at the board, but also played a significant role in returning Altman to the helm.
Loser Ilya Sutskever
Ilya Sutskever is the co-founder of OpenAI and serves as its chief scientist. Though Altman and he are reportedly close, he preferred to side with the board members who wanted to oust him.What’s more, he was one of the first board members to sign the letter and publicly reiterated his support for the board on X.
It is thus no wonder that he lost his position after Altman’s return to the helm. However, he appears to have preserved his OpenAI OpenAI executive position.
Loser Helen Toner
Heln Toner is the researcher and director of strategy and foundational research grants at Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology. Her feud with Altman dates back to October when she authored a paper, criticizing Altman’s decision to launch ChatGPT – a move that purportedly is pushing other companies to “accelerate or circumvent internal safety and ethics review processes” while developing products.
Elon Musk-the-observer
For Musk any act that involves Altman – his-friend-turned-foe – is, naturally, of high interest. Especially since not that long ago he launched ChatGPT’s competitor Grok, which he believes is less woke than Altman and co’s creation.
While he didn’t comment extensively on the scandal, he did take to X shortly after Altman was reinstated, tweeting “What tangled webs we weave.”
There is doubt that Musk’s line should be perceived as a compliment. Especially since it’s a reference to Lord Walter Scott’s line that describes a situation when you lie or act dishonestly you are initiating problems and a domino structure of complications that eventually run out of control.
Bonus figure: Joshua Kushner
Now, you might be wondering who this guy is and why he appeared in the article. The reason is pretty simple. He heads VC firm Thrive Capital and is a major tech investor and reportedly led a funding round in October to buy OpenAI shares at a price that would value the company at $80 billion.
What’s even more peculiar is the family he belongs to. His brother Jared Kushner is the husband of Ivanka Trump, Donald Trump’s daughter. Jared was once poised to become the CEO of the then Twitter-now-X instead of Elon Musk. However, Linda Yaccarino eventually made it to the helm.
Meanwhile, his father Charles Kushner was pardoned by Trump in 2020 after pleading guilty to tax evasion and making illegal campaign donations.
While the new board has already been formed – you can find out more about it in this article – there is little doubt that this is not the end of the story. So, we highly advise that you stay tuned.
Previously, GNcrypto reported that Altman and Ive: A New AI-Integrated Device on the Horizon?
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