How OpenAI's origins explain the Sam Altman drama
The company's non-profit board and for-profit arm have long been at odds. CEO Sam Altman's week-long ouster represents the culmination of that long-simmering tension.
OpenAI's board of directors' abruptly firing CEO Sam Altman then bringing him back days later did not come out of nowhere.
In fact, the boardroom drama represented the boiling over of tensions that have long simmered under the surface of the company.
Following days of upheaval, Altman is again leading the company and a newly-formed board of directors is charting the path ahead, but the chaos at OpenAI can be traced back to the unusual way the company was structured.
OpenAI was founded in 2015 by Altman, Elon Musk and others as a non-profit research lab. It was almost like an anti-Big Tech company; it would prioritize back then, develop AI tools that would "benefit humanity as a whole, unconstrained by a need to generate financial return."
