A chaotic corporate mess that deserves a Hollywood movie

The past week's events at OpenAI unfolded like a dramatic script. It was fast and chaotic, like a trailer for a Hollywood blockbuster movie. If you are not up to speed, let me give you a refresher.

Sam Altman (OpenAI's CEO) was unexpectedly ousted by the board over a Google meeting last Friday, while CTO Mira Murati served as interim CEO for what appeared to be five minutes, as the board hastily appointed Emmett Shear, a Twitch executive, as an interim CEO. Meanwhile, there were rumours of negotiations for Altman's return on Sunday.

With the chaos unfolding, several top executives, including Greg Brockman, OpenAI's president and co-founder resigned, while over 700 of the company's 770 employees signed a letter threatening to leave.

By Monday, OpenAI backer, Microsoft had offered to hire Altman and Brockman to "lead a new advanced AI research team." By late Tuesday and early Wednesday morning, OpenAI had sacked its board members and recalled Sam Altman to resume his job. As the dust settled, the whole drama left us with many unanswered questions: What led the board to abruptly fire Altman? Why did this sequence of events unfold?

There have been many speculations, the most intriguing one suggesting that the entire event was engineered by a time traveller who came to alter OpenAI's involvement in a future AI takeover. I am not a conspiracy theorist, but it would make sense that the important decision that could have been made by the company in those five days could not happen and was enough to avert the future event – don't blame me, blame the Terminator movie.

Have a drama-free weekend,

– Emmanuel