Why are people so obsessed with this guy? Keep falling into the same trap of Cult of the Tech CEO
He’s the CEO of OpenAI, which is responsible for the most-discussed advancement in technology for the past year. So it’s not that unusual for this to be discussed on a technology-focused forum.
He’s also the centre of a massive firestorm, where extremely atypical corporate behaviour was very recently taking place. Again, highly relevant topic for a forum that deals with startups.
In short, it’s news, and specifically news of interest to people on this site. No need for cults or obsession.
The specific reason for the board shenanigans seems to be related to this tension on how AI will or won’t be handled by the management of the tech companies which create and manage them.
All of these feels very relevant to the general public.
This whole thing feels like Altman expected some back and forth here between him and the board, but in their inexperience they vastly overreacted to what was probably “standard” corporate maneuvering. He assumed there would be steady escalation, but they went right for the endgame well before passing the many opportunities for compromise that usually show up in fights between CEOs and their board.
Why do people follow movie stars?
Because we’re human, and we gossip and obsess over high performers.