Sam Altman Says He Celebrated Returning To OpenAI After Brief Ouster With Four Heavy Entrees And Two Milkshakes 'Just For Me'

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman earlier this week revealed that he marked his return to the company with a lavish meal after a tumultuous period that saw him ousted and then reinstated.

What Happened: Last year in November, Altman was fired from OpenAI and then subsequently rehired. This was a surreal experience for Altman, who described the four-and-a-half day following his ousting as “insane” and “superjammed” on “The Logan Bartlett Show.”

The OpenAI CEO said he was in an “adrenaline-charged state” during this period, and received numerous texts from world leaders, which he found “very normal” at the time.

Once he secured his return as OpenAI CEO, Altman said he stopped at a diner en route to Napa the day before Thanksgiving and realized he had gone without food for several days. So, he decided to indulge in four heavy entrees and “two milkshakes just for me.”

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Altman reflected on the situation, noting that it didn’t hit him until he received a text from a president who expressed happiness at the resolution. This made him realize the adaptability of humans to any circumstance.

“My takeaway is human adaptability to almost anything is just like much more remarkably strong than we realize and you can get used to anything as the new normal, good or bad, pretty fast,” he stated.

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Why It Matters:  While Altman has spoken up about the OpenAI saga before, this gives a closer glimpse into what he was going through when it happened. He has previously equated this incident to the trauma following his father’s death.

After Altman’s brief ouster, he's now back at the top of the company with a revamped board of directors. Helen Toner, another board member, was part of Ilya Sutskever's bid to remove Altman. Toner and Sutskever are out of the company.

In another podcast, Altman revealed he was “in a hotel room in Vegas for F1 weekend,” when he got fired from the company over a Google Meet call. “Everything went crazy. My phone was like, unusable. It was just a non-stop vibrating thing of like text messages, calls.”

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This content was partially produced with the help of Benzinga Neuro and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors.

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