Opinion | The OpenAI Coup Is Great for Microsoft. What Does It Mean for Us?

There was the coup that hit the headlines: the OpenAI board’s abrupt ousting of its co-founder and chief executive, Sam Altman. Now we are on the verge of a second, even more critical coup, one that cements control of one of the most powerful and promising technologies on the planet under one of this country’s tech titans.

Monday, it was announced that Microsoft was hiring Mr. Altman and another OpenAI co-founder, Greg Brockman. Microsoft had already invested more than $13 billion in OpenAI; its absorption of OpenAI leadership — and the likely hiring of hundreds of OpenAI staff members who signed a letter saying they would leave to join Microsoft unless the board resigned — effectively completes its takeover. OpenAI may find some way out of this self-induced disaster, but any solution would probably require satisfying its infuriated investors by making its board more accountable to their interests.

There’s no small irony that OpenAI’s board, which reportedly was worried about the safety of its hugely popular product, triggered events that will probably shift it to leaders more beholden to market pressures for fast growth. The likely outcome of this fracas is a nail in the coffin of the most prominent effort to build a noncommercial version of artificial intelligence that would serve the public at least as much as it sought profits.

OpenAI was founded in 2015 with the explicit mission of building an alternative to the for-profit A.I. models being developed elsewhere. It was established as a nonprofit, and its stated mission is to “ ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity .”