Expect it to get worse in the AI era because it comes with flattery as default.

When there is something genuinely acknowledged as being valuable - and a $900B company certainly qualifies - people are going to fight over it. Only natural, because in most cases the way to get power is to fight for things that will make you powerful. Just look at the history of Facebook or Twitter or Google Chauffeur/Waymo or Cisco or the U.S. presidency.

When you get wealth and power without fighting, it's usually because you managed to identify something that would eventually make you powerful without anyone else realizing that it's important, until you become too big to overthrow. This is the story of the Google founders or E-bay or Github or...I can't really think of others, it's a pretty rare path to success. Either that, or seem non-threatening and mild-mannered enough that nobody attacks you and then be the last one standing after all the combative types have destroyed each other, like how Sundar got to be CEO of Alphabet or Bran Stark won the Seven Kingdoms.

Much more likely: the two of them and POTUS launch and AGI NFT with Federal Reserve backing, pump it to the sky on their social media platforms, and ensure their genetic propagation programs can afford all the bunkers and colony ships they could ever want. Whee.

Satya Nadella's very public employment offer to Altman was obviously coordinated as one part of Altman and MSFT's strategy to force OpenAI's board to back down - and everyone knew this at the time. It was carefully timed to happen within hours of the vast majority of OpenAI's key personnel threatening to resign. The clear threat being that Microsoft would essentially rebuild OpenAI inside Microsoft with Altman recruiting the newly resigned employees, leaving OAI as a shell with products and patents but no key people.

This would certainly have nerfed the expected ~$150B valuation of the imminent OAI private placement, which was the only near-term path to liquidity for OAI's "paper multi-millionaire" employees. Over the prior 24 hours, Altman and Brockman had turned Altman's house into their 'war room' and had been working the phones non-stop convincing key employees that Altman remaining CEO and Microsoft's ongoing partnership were both essential to preserving the private placement. That's why so many key employees signed the resignation threat letter (and pressured other employees to sign).

And the MSFT threat couldn't be discounted as just bluster because MSFT was uniquely positioned due to having already secured long-term, non-exclusive access to OAI's products and IP. All they lacked was the people. While the OpenAI board was probably correct that removing Altman was part of their duty to preserve the non-profit's charter, they realized it too late and totally bungled the execution. For example, they should never have fired Altman but instead changed his role (which would have restricted his ability to coordinate with MSFT), appointed a credible new CEO the same day, and ensured that CEO was prepared to brief employees that the private placement was still on track without Altman.

If Musk's lawyers let Altman portray such obvious gun-to-the-head, hardball as him planning to "just take a research job at Microsoft", they're shockingly incompetent.

Yes.

You deny it see, but.. ah bugger.. I hadn't planned for this outcome..

How can you "lose steam" on an admission of one of your own arguments?

> his co-founder, Ilya Sutskever, testified he created a 52-page dossier documenting Altman’s “consistent pattern of lying.”

Oddly enough the article doesn't go into that any further, despite what would seem like extremely relevant information.