The Altman Saga: Meet Key Winners and Losers

No one ever said that being Sam Altman is easy.

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.They didn’t specify why they made that decision, but the magnitude of its spread is nothing short of enormous.

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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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.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.