OpenAI Trial Uncovers Mystery Around Sam Altman’s Firing

We are just a couple of weeks into the OpenAI trial, and already we’ve had Elon Musk saying that AI “Could kill us all.” Surely there can’t be any more revelations, right?

Well, turns out there’s one big mystery that needs solving, and that’s why Sam Altman was ousted from the company for just five days in November 2023, an event so notable it has its own Wikipedia page and an upcoming movie adaptation starring Andrew Garfield (no, really).

Someone who might know is the CEO of Microsoft, one of OpenAI’s largest backers. Satya Nadella, do you have any answers?

No…? Ok then, moving on.

As Nadella tells it, Microsoft was not given a heads-up regarding the coup and was hit with a 3% stock drop following the news. Nadella also says that he was only informed when he was pulled out of a meeting, then never given full “clarity” over Altman’s firing.

The Microsoft CEO claimed the reason he was given was that Sam Altman was not open and communicative with board members. Nadella didn’t think this was justified and speculated that “There may have been some jealousy… coming through.”

But there might be some truth to that weak excuse Nadella got. As OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever explained, he’d said Altman had a “consistent pattern of lying,” creating a toxic environment ill-suited to developing a safe AI.

However, Sutskever also called the firing “rushed” and was one of the many employees and investors who signed the successful petition calling for Altman’s reinstatement.

The plot thickens.

So what actually happened? And how does this affect the ongoing trial? Well, maybe we’ll never know the full details…

OR maybe we’ll find out EVERYTHING when Artificial starring Andrew Garfield as Sam Altman, Yura Borisov as Ilya Sutskever and Ike Barinholtz as Elon Musk comes to the big screen in 2027!