Altman Is More Powerful Than Ever; Trump’s TikTok Reversal

If you’re one of those people who was obsessed with last November’s OpenAI drama, you can wipe it from your memory. The ChatGPT creator put CEO Sam Altman back on its board late Friday, we scooped (the company later confirmed the details in this blog post). You may remember, unless you’ve already erased your memory, that Altman lost his board seat when he was fired in mid-November, triggering a dayslong saga that ended when OpenAI reinstated him as CEO, without his board seat, and replaced most of the board. Also Friday, OpenAI announced that the investigation into the events surrounding Altman’s firing had ended with his complete exoneration. The law firm doing the inquiry, WilmerHale, concluded that the episode resulted from a “loss of trust between the prior board and Mr Altman.” That’s what you call a crack team of investigators. Anyone reading the media reports back in November could have told you that! 

The inquiry also found that the old board acted too quickly. Again, that was evident from the exhaustive coverage of the drama. Perhaps the lawyers could have just talked to the reporters who covered the story instead of spending four months and reviewing “30,000 documents” to arrive at these conclusions. Based on the investigation, the board “expressed its full confidence” in Altman. Yes, nothing to see here—move along. Altman is, if anything, more powerful than ever. And that’s saying something, given that he was plenty powerful before.