I genuinely can't believe the board didn't see this coming. I think they could have won in the court of public opinion if their press release said they loved Sam but felt like his skills and ambitions diverged from their mission. But instead, they tried to skewer him, and it backfired completely.
I hope Sam comes back. He'll make a lot more money if he doesn't, but I trust Sam a lot more than whomever they ultimately replace him with. I just hope that if he does come back, he doesn't use it as a chance to consolidate power – he's said in the past it's a good thing the board can fire him, and I hope he finds better board members rather than eschewing a board altogether.
EDIT: Yup, Satya is involved https://twitter.com/emilychangtv/status/1726025717077688662
Why? We would have more diversity in this space if he leaves, which would get us another AI startup with huge funding and know how from OpenAI, while OpenAI would become less Sam Altman like.
I think him staying is bad for the field overall compared to OpenAI splitting in two.
But this is a bad argument. No one is saying ChatGPT is going to turn evil and start killing people. The argument is that an AGI is so far beyond anything we have experience with and that there are arguments to be made that such an entity would be dangerous. And of course no one has been able to demonstrate this unsafe AGI - we don't have AGI to begin with.