The OpenAI saga has come full circle. Sam Altman is back as CEO, though he now faces an internal investigation into his conduct leading up to his dismissal last Friday. The coup plotters are either out (board members Helen Toner and Tasha McCauley) or severely chastened (cofounder and now-former board member Ilya Sutskever). Cofounder Greg Brockman, who was briefly hired by Microsoft alongside Altman on Sunday evening, posted a selfie with jubilant OpenAI staffers, with the message: “We are so back.” And OpenAI just launched ChatGPT’s voice feature with a joke about the whole affair.
There’s a strong temptation—certainly for us tech journalists—to emit the finest expletives over five days of intense drama being followed by the appearance of everything going back right back to where it started. But of course, that’s not quite the case.
