AI Talks: HBJ discusses Sam Altman, potential changes to employment with AI integration

AI Talks” is a new series from the Huntsville Business Journal on Artificial Intelligence and its applicability to the world of business. Each month, HBJ plans on bringing you interesting topics led by our new contributing expert writer, Carl Holden.

This series will also introduce another new “writer” to our journal: Artificial Intelligence itself. Using Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer (ChatGPT), we plan on bringing our readers an “article” written directly by AI.

While AI cannot currently write a news article with fully original sources, this series hopefully will introduce our readers to the nuances of Artificial Intelligence in the modern age of business. The first article in this series is written from our contributing expert writer, Carl Holden. One the next page, you can find an article using ChatGPT. 

Fired and Rehired in a Week – Only in AI

Have you worked for any company in which your CEO was fired and brought back in the same week and you had no idea why? This kind of event in business simply doesn’t happen. If you haven’t heard, the board at OpenAI fired its CEO, Sam Altman, through an incredibly tight-lipped and vague coup. Instead of getting their way, some of the board was removed and Sam Altman was placed back on top, albeit with a few limitations placed on him this time.

It’s being compared to the “Steve Jobs” moment for AI. That was different. In 1985, Jobs couldn’t get along with the CEO and several others in the company. The board did not remove him but eliminated some of his pull within specific departments. Lots of employees didn’t like Jobs. He then left afterward, not to return for almost a decade. It probably took that long just for things to smooth over.

Instead, this is a “Sam Altman” moment for AI. The infamous statement from the board is as follows: “Mr. Altman’s departure follows a deliberative review process by the board, which concluded that he was not consistently candid in his communications with the board, hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities… The board no longer has confidence in his ability to continue leading OpenAI.” 

In a swirl of drama, over 90% of the OpenAI staff said they would leave if Altman were permanently removed. Then, offers for everyone, Altman included, were made by Microsoft to bring the whole company over. Rumors began to swirl that maybe OpenAI had cracked Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) and the world, especially the board, wasn’t ready.

As quickly as he was fired, Sam Altman was reinstated and a new board was placed at OpenAI. It was all so weird and unusual that I can’t shake the possibility that it might have all been an incredibly genius PR stunt to pump up the value of OpenAI. I know of no CEOs that have ever had almost all of their employees willing to fall on the sword for them. Steve Jobs is a beloved name in tech but apparently a less-than-desirable boss.

There’s so much more to this story that is still unfolding, but rather than chase the drama, I’d like to talk about the bigger picture of next year instead.

There are forces at play here that are reaching critical mass. Techopedia reports that 25% of all startup investment was in AI companies. The rules we are used to are being rewritten every single day. The reason for Sam Altman’s removal may remain a mystery for some time. The reality is that one of the world’s most viral companies is being very opaque.

AI will be a bigger deal next year, even more than last year. This is just the beginning. As mentioned in my previous article, the Executive Order on AI shows that even the government knows it needs to be using it. Will Alabama seize the day, or will we again show up on the back half of a potential VentureBeat article titled “Which States are Capitalizing on the New AI Economy?”

Regardless of our state’s adoption in 2024, you are going to start hearing people say, “AI took some of my work.” Or worse, their job may be eliminated. Translation, data entry and content writers seem to be the first jobs being adversely affected at scale.

The craziness of what we’ve seen this past year will likely be even crazier this year. It’s an election year and only the second full year of AI as a consumer product. Seeing a high-profile CEO fired and rehired in a week may pale in comparison to the AI events of the next 12 months. Buckle in, folks; it’s about to get weird!

Note on cover image: The featured images of these articles are generated by prompts Carl gave to Midjourney, a popular generative AI that creates unique images in less than a minute.