Two months ago, a long-abandoned RedditAn American social news and discussion website. It has 1.66 billion monthly users worldwide. account under the name "samaltman" winked back into life. Under a post on the subredditA message board or forum about a particular topic on the website Reddit. r/singularity, it commented: "AGIArtificial general intelligence. The intelligence of machines that allows them to comprehend, learn, and perform intellectual tasks much like humans. has been achieved internally". After a flurry of interest, it edited the comment, claiming it had all been a joke.

It was not long afterwards that Sam Altman, CEOThe Chief Executive Officer is the highest ranking person in a company. They are responsible for making decisions about the company's future. of OpenAIAn American artificial intelligence company. It says its mission is to "benefit all of humanity". , was suddenly ousted from his position by the company's board of directors, led by its chief scientist Ilya Sutskever. No explanation was given for the move and within days Altman was back in post, toppling the old board and installing a new team in its place.

Because so little is known about this brief power struggle, speculation abounds. Some are wondering if Altman's reddit comment holds the key to the mystery.

OpenAI has long been a curiosity in the world of AI. Its founders and backers were keenly aware of the dangers of this new technology, and feared the consequences if all AI research were conducted for profit.¹ As such, it was originally set up as a not-for-profit company relying on donations to pursue its research.

However, as time passed, some of its key figures decided there was simply no way of competing with the giants of the tech industry if the company did not make a profit.

The answer they came up with in 2019 was to split the firm in two. One part of it would start to make a profit, although this would be capped at 100 times total investment into the company.² The other part would remain not-for-profit and would have overall control.

After this change, OpenAI went from strength to strength. In 2021 it released the highly sophisticated image generation software DALL-E. The following year it turned its large-language model GPT into ChatGPT and made it publicly available for the first time. Over a million people signed up in the first five days.³ After that triumph, the company projected an eye-popping $1bn (£793m) in revenue in 2024.⁴

But beneath the surface, a rift was growing. Journalists with contacts in OpenAI say the board of directors was increasingly scared of what Altman was doing, and especially of what he was doing without telling them.⁵

That is why some think the real cause of this sudden palace coup was that Altman had secretly developed something much more powerful than the board could stomach: artificial general intelligence, as he announced on his reddit account.

The programme in question, called Q*, is thought to be a breakthrough towards an AI that would have human-like cognitive abilities but on a much greater scale. This is the threat that AI experts have been warning about.

One of those fuelling the speculation is Elon Musk, who said: "Something scared Ilya enough to want to fire Sam. What was it?"⁶

But the result of the coup, they say, is that the board has been purged of its cautious elements and the company is now fully under Altman's control. There are no more limits on his wish to go further and faster.

Yes: Although the story remains murky, all the signs here point to one thing: AGI is here and about to be unleashed. No-one knows what that means for the future, but it is likely bad news for humanity.

No: It is probably no coincidence Musk recently started his own competitor to OpenAI. He is capitalising on this crisis to discredit a rival. There is simply no evidence Altman has actually developed AGI.

Or... Altman was probably fired for more mundane reasons than this. But the debacle is a reminder that AI development is still largely unregulated. There is a storm brewing on the horizon.