As I’m writing this, it’s been less than 24 hours since I did my best to provide as many relevant details of Sam Altman’s wild weekend, after being removed as CEO by OpenAI’s board on Friday.

The events that have happened since yesterday’s issue definitely merit another update…

If not their own novel.

To catch you up on the weekend’s drama…

• OpenAI’s board removed Altman over “a breakdown in communications”
• Mira Murati was named interim CEO
• Unhappy employees demanded that Altman be reinstated and for the board to resign
• Negotiations for Altman to return began
• Negotiations for Altman to return fell apart
• Emmett Sheer was named OpenAI’s third CEO of the weekend
• Altman joined Microsoft as head of their AI team

Also as of the end of the weekend, 700 of OpenAI’s 770 employees had signed a letter demanding the resignation of the entire board.

That number now stands at 745 of 770.

Possibly the biggest update from the last 24 hours is that Altman’s deal with Microsoft is not finalized and that there are still talks for him to return to OpenAI along with co-founder Greg Brockman.

With nearly the entire staff of the company willing to jump ship over their termination, it seems that the two former executives hold most of, if not all of the cards in any negotiations that may be taking place.

Also affecting the power balance is the shocking flip-flop of board member Ilya Sutskever, who was considered to be the orchestrator of Altman’s ousting. Sutskever voiced regret over his involvement in the move…

In the unenviable position of chief executive of a company whose entire workforce has prepared to jump ship is Emmett Sheer, who was the former CEO of Twitch.

Sheer, who posted his 30-day plan for OpenAI on Twitter/X, was reportedly not the first choice for Altman’s replacement. Reportedly the offer was first offered to CEO of Scale AI, Alexandr Wang, and former CEO of GitHub, Nat Friedmad, who both declined the role.

The new CEO has put OpenAI’s board even more on an island by announcing that he will quit if the board does not provide evidence for their decision to fire Altman.

This seems to just be the beginning of this wild saga…

So What?

If you’re here for the technology and not the drama, why should you care about the personal infighting at OpenAI?

Well, you probably shouldn’t.

The tech world, not even generative AI chatbot apps hinge on the fate of any of these people.

OpenAI did a lot to bring AI to the public’s attention, but if their employees followed through on their promise to leave the company then it probably wouldn’t affect your life at all.

Worst case scenario, if you’re a regular user of ChatGPT or DALL-E then you may have to switch one of the many equally powerful and useful alternatives that are also available for free. But most likely the rights to OpenAI’s applications would be bought quickly.

AI is bigger than OpenAI, it’s even bigger than Microsoft.

Neither of these companies control the future of this powerful new technology.

But that doesn’t mean this soap opera can’t have a substantial negative effect.

The timing of these events are unfortunate in their proximity to the conviction of FTX’s founder Sam Bankman-Fried on all charges relating to one of the largest fraud cases in history. The fall of SBF and FTX was the worst moment in cryptocurrency’s 2022, which was plagued by the opportunism of bad actors seemingly the whole year.

With understanding of the technology lagging behind the potential profits in AI, it makes it a prime target for opportunists. Just slap “AI” on something cheap and put a gaudy price tag on it. It’s not like anyone will be able to call you out on it…

This was a pitfall of crypto, of which it just now seems to be climbing out.

And it’s a danger for AI that people will assume the same for any new technology.

It’s almost guaranteed that jockeying and backstabbing will occur among the personalities that want to be the King of AI Hill and take the largest share of the enormous new market that artificial intelligence is becoming.

But that doesn’t mean the tech itself has anything to do with it…

Just like how Bankman-Fried’s fraud was not a “crypto scam”, it was just a classic Madoff-style fraud.

It’s important to separate whatever drama is happening behind the doors at OpenAI, no matter who may or may not be at fault, from the potential benefits AI can offer.

With that, we’d like to hear your thoughts. Does the drama at OpenAI concern you? Do you care at all? How do you think it will end? Write to us about this, or anything at feedback@technologyprofits.com.