I just landed in Dayton, Ohio after a long overnight flight from SFO. While waiting in Denver during your layover, you checked your phone to see the news: After nearly a week of confusion and uncertainty, Sam Altman has been reinstated as CEO of OpenAI.
The good news is that the Slack workspace of the small tech startup you work at will stop being flooded with memes, and only some… Really good. Your colleagues may know how to code, but they don’t always have a sense of humor. As much as you feel good, living your dreams in Silicon Valley, it’s always good to come home and get back to basics.
Mother: “Oh, my only child! I’m so glad you made it home! San Francisco is so far away!”
You hug your mother and tell her how nice it is to be back. Your dad does that weird hug-your-sibling thing where you hold hands and then pat each other on the back, because even though it’s totally normal to say you love your dad — the guy who literally raised you and changed your diapers when you were a baby and coached your Little League team until… I realized that computer science was more interesting to you than baseball – you were socialized as a man and, therefore, unable to tell your father that you loved him.
Father: Busy week, huh? I saw that Sam Altman’s guy was back… What else happened there?
that is it. You really don’t want to talk about it – startup life is hard and demanding, and as much as you love what you do, you really want to take a few days away from it all.
“Oh, yeah, I’ll tell you later, just let me put my bags away!” You say.
You walk upstairs to your childhood bedroom. There’s a “Big Bang Theory” poster, which makes you feel so embarrassed, but you were in middle school when you bought it.
You come back downstairs and start chopping some vegetables to help your father, who has his hands covered in turkey guts. The doorbell rings, and suddenly, the whole family enters.
Uncle Steve: “Hey! Long time no see! Pretty good for us now that you work at Facebook?”
You do the hug-your-bros thing again, and then you explain that you don’t work at Facebook, and in fact the company is called Meta now anyway, but you’re actually very passionate about the B2B SaaS company you work for, and-
Uncle Steve: “Oh, yeah, Elon Musk, that’s really something, isn’t it? Changing Facebook’s name to Meta?”
I corrected him that Mark Zuckerberg is actually the CEO of Meta, but yeah, Elon Musk bought Twitter and changed its name to X, which was really crazy. Your college roommate, Pablo, got laid off last year and was pretty upset, and he finally found his footing, but at one point you even tried to get him a job at a B2B SaaS company, which is working on this really amazing thing —
Uncle Steve: “Right! That’s the Tesla guy! But that AI stuff, huh? What happened there?”
Here she comes. OpenAI Chat.
Fortunately, your aunt intervenes.
Aunt Carol: “Oh, Steve, it’s too early to talk about! How’s life over there? Do you have a girlfriend?”
Somehow, your Aunt Carol found the one topic she wanted to talk less about than OpenAI. Startup life is so busy, you’re pretty sure your Tinder is yours Elo points Low because you barely open the app, and maybe that’s why you don’t get many matches? Therefore, you are pivotal.
“Yes, the OpenAI stuff was really crazy. They randomly fired CEO Sam Altman out of nowhere, and no one knew why, and then the CEO quit, too. Investors were angry, because this company that was supposed to make them insanely rich, suddenly… In turmoil, and no one knew how long this whole ordeal would last.Microsoft has a large stake in OpenAI, so they offered jobs to Sam and Greg, but then almost everyone who worked at OpenAI said they would quit if Sam wasn’t reinstated, so “It was just a whirlwind… Oh, wait, right? Has the game started?”
You bring your aunt and uncle into the living room and turn on the TV. You don’t have a lot of soccer experience, but you know enough to get by. When you first got out of college and worked in consulting, you were studying football scores to have something to talk about at networking events, and that’s certainly what got you to your current job at this really cool B2B SaaS startup that actually –
Uncle Steve: “Go, Buckeyes!”
Your attention returns to the football. As you learned in your summer session at Wharton, the best way to guide a conversation is to ask people questions about things they like.
“I saw something about some takeovers at Texas A&M University, what happened there?”
Uncle Steve: “So, over the break, Texas A&M gets this huge check for $165 million from a donor, and the next day, guess what? They fire their coach Jimbo Fisher and give him $76 million to buy out his contract! Seems like something that’s going to happen In your world, huh? By the way, I still don’t get the whole OpenAI thing. They made that GTX chat, right?”
Oh no. Like many things you learned in the Wharton summer program, your knowledge backfired.
Your cousin Jennifer looks up from her phone and speaks for the first time.
Jennifer’s cousin: “No, Dad, it’s ChatGPT, and Kayla used it to write her college essays and she… Still He was able to get in.”
You excuse yourself to continue helping your parents prepare Thanksgiving dinner. As you’re peeling potatoes—being careful to move the peeler away from you, not toward you—the doorbell rings again. It’s your Aunt Pat, who works at a medical billing company in Cleveland.
As you greet her and take her into the family room, where the game is on, you try to make small talk.
Aunt Pat: “Everyone at work is talking about AI! We use Salesforce Einstein all the time. So, has OpenAI got a new CEO yet?
“Oh, Sam Altman is back now, but before that, they hired Emmett Shear, who founded Twitch. It’s a streaming platform that Amazon owns, and a lot of people use it to stream video games and stuff. Yeah, people like to watch other people play video games.
Jennifer’s cousin: “Yes, my friend is a VTuber.”
You desperately hope that your aunts and uncles will take the obvious bait and ask Jennifer who the hell this VTuber is. This would buy you some solid minutes of peace. And VTubers are much better than AI CEOs. But no one follows up on it. You’re about to wonder if Jennifer’s friend has a mocap machine, when —
Uncle Steve: “Wait, does anyone really know what Sam did wrong?”
“We still don’t know, but said Director of Operations Brad Lightcap Most of the management team had no idea, and that this was certainly not any kind of breach of security or financial standards. It’s possible that it all comes down to ideology. Some people think that Sam is too aggressive about developing smarter AI as quickly as possible, and in theory, OpenAI is supposed to build AI responsibly, and maybe he was going too fast to be responsible? But then there’s this other faction that thinks we can’t slow the inevitable, so everyone has been fighting online about it. The official reason given by the board was that he wasn’t being transparent with them, but that could really mean anything! Personally, I’m glad they got everything sorted out before Thanksgiving, so I… You can really relax and stop thinking about everything. “Oh, I have to go check if my mother needs help preparing the dish.”
They don’t take the hint.
Aunt Pat: “Don’t be silly, when we walked in, I saw the casserole was already out of the oven. So, what do you think about all this AI stuff? Sure it makes my job easier, but I don’t want it to take my job, if you know what I mean it!
“It’s hard to say at this point. Right now, I think it’s difficult for generative AI to replicate human creativity, but it can certainly automate tasks that would take humans longer to complete, which makes sense why it’s so useful to you at work. By the way, How is the work?”
Aunt Pat: “Oh, it’s the holidays, I don’t want to talk about work.” “I heard there have been a lot of layoffs in the Gulf. Do you think your job is safe?”
“Yes, actually, I think what my company is working on is very groundbreaking, and innovation is the best job security. We are a B2B SaaS startup and what makes us different is-”
Aunt Pat: “Wait, wasn’t there something in the board structure that made the whole thing very confusing? What happened with the OpenAI board again?
Smell the unmistakable aroma of turkey coming out of the oven. You piece it all together, knowing that in mere moments, your interrogation will be over.
“Uh, OpenAI is sort of a tax-exempt charity that’s wrapped around a holding company that owns a majority stake in OpenAI? It’s kind of confusing. But it’s sort of trying to be a charity and a for-profit tech giant at the same time, but the nonprofit arm has been controlling The for-profit arm, which made it possible to fire the CEO at random.This is really different from the way companies like Meta work, since Mark Zuckerberg owns such a large portion of the company that it is impossible for the board to fire him.
Father: “Dinner’s almost ready! Start making your way to the table!”
Oh boy, dinner time! You take your time bringing each dish to the table, minimizing the time you spend alone with your relatives, who simply won’t stop asking you about OpenAI. When everyone is devouring their plates, the conversation slows down, and eventually, you can enjoy the peace of going home.
Uncle Steve keeps making “aah” noises every time he sips his wine. You don’t think he can bother you in any way tonight, but this is family, isn’t it? Suddenly he raised his eyebrows as if he remembered something.
“So,” your uncle asks. “What’s the deal with this CZ guy?”