There has been no recent event on Planet Leadership as seismic as the sudden, startling sacking of Sam Altman.
Altman was more than the cofounder and CEO of OpenAI – the company at the forefront of artificial intelligence development. Altman personified AI. Altman was the ambassador of AI. Worldwide people – including people in positions of great power – depended on Altman to level with them. To tell them the truth about where in the big picture AI was, and where it was likely, at least in the near term, to go. Altman was King of AI – he embodied the technological development that is as potentially potent as any in our lifetimes.
And now he’s gone. Well, not gone really. Impossible to believe that he won’t resurface. But he was, so far as we know, pushed from his perch from one moment to the next by the board of the company that he appeared absolutely to lead.
What happened is unclear. A post on OpenAI’s website said only that the board “no longer has confidence” in Altman’s leadership because he was “not consistently candid in his communications with the board.” What is clear is that the internal turmoil will have an external effect. Altman was so singular a captain of his domain that inevitably his domain will be impacted by his shocking departure.