One of the year's most breakneck technology stories was OpenAI's CEO and co-founder Sam Altman being fired by the company's board, then being reinstated after a few days of will-they-or-won't-they back-and-forth. Over those days Altman was the subject of considerable professional backingfrom OpenAI investor Microsoft (which straight-up offered him a job) and OpenAI's own staff, the vast majority of whom signed an open letter calling for his reinstatement. The firing was announced on the afternoon of Friday 17 November: Altman was back in the role by the following Wednesday.
The big mystery is why Altman was fired in the first place. Speculation abounds, and given this is all about AI, can get somewhat lurid. Dark rumours swirled of an advanced piece of software codenamed Q* (pronounced "Q-Star", apparently) capable of solving simple math problems: a potential breakthrough in the search for a general artificial intelligence, and something the board was reportedly told of shortly before Altman was fired. More prosaically, some noted a potential clash between OpenAI's not-for-profit mission and Altman's desire to push the commercial side of its software (OpenAI has a for-profit subsidiary). But no one knows exactly what went down, or at least no one's talking.
