The Optimist by Keach Hagey On November 30, 2022, OpenAI released ChatGPT, a chatbot that captivated the world with its uncanny ability to hold humanlike conversations. Not even a year later, on November 17, 2023, Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, was summarily fired on a video call by the company’s board. The firing made headlines around the globe: OpenAI is the leader in the race to build AGI—artificial general intelligence, or AI that can think like a human being—and Altman is the most prominent figure in the field. Yet it was mere days before Altman was back running the company he had co-founded, with most of the directors who voted to fire him themselves removed from the board.