If he's not, and literally all the other employees come back, its still a failure of the power structure that already happened. The threat of firing the CEO of the for-profit arm is supposed to be a unused threat, like a nuclear weapon.
Capitalism is the modern avenue for channeling greed but the greed and hubris part is universal to all of human history.
He gets fired. Thats the enforcement mechanism.
Hence if he comes back, that indicates the board essentially "agrees" with Altman's positions now, however much Altman and the board's positions have shifted.
He had certain positions, and pushed them just gradually enough for OpenAI to end up where it is today. A more zealous capitalist would have gotten fired unceremoniously long ago.
I think this is kind of what some people are more concerned about... The day greed doesn't prevail because greed killed us all.
Yes, but when you think about it that still does not mean that it's "human nature".
Just the opposite, it's really just inhuman nature still lingering since the dawn of man, who haven't quite made enough progress beyond the lower life forms. Yet.
Maybe a thinking machine will teach us a thing or two, back in 1969 this was dramatized in the movie 2001 where the computer was not as humane as it could have been since it was too much like some real people.