OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and his husband Oliver Mulherin have just joined the likes of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett in pledging to give away half their fortune, which is nice, because Altman’s reputation is otherwise taking a real battering right now.
Remember the chaos last November when OpenAI’s board abruptly fired Altman, and he got hired by Microsoft for the blink of an eye before returning to OpenAI, as the board members behind his brief defenestration had to leave the building instead? At the time, the lack of clear reasoning behind the ouster—Altman had been “not consistently candid in his communications with the board”—painted a picture where Altman has been wronged by a bunch of clumsy amateurs for no good reason.
