A few days before Thanksgiving last year, Helen Toner and three of her peers on the board of OpenAI — the world’s best-known artificial intelligence company — fired its chief executive Sam Altman in a surprise coup.
The reason they gave was Altman’s lack of candour in his dealings with the board, but details were minimal. In the days that followed, Toner, a director at Georgetown University’s AI think-tank, the Center for Security and Emerging Technology, swirled at the centre of a crisis that threatened to tear the $86bn company apart. She became a symbolic figure of opposition to Altman, a legendary and canny Silicon Valley operator.
The coup lasted five days, amid intense pressure from the start-up’s powerful investors, supporters and employees to reinstate Altman. One of Toner’s co-directors defected back to Altman, the management team rushed to his defence and, by the end of the long weekend, Altman was back in place as CEO. Toner was forced to resign.