An overreaction by members of the board that wanted to keep AI development slow and “safe”. Sudden news that there was a major advancement toward AGI (which they believe will destroy humanity, there’s a seriously a whole cult around this in AI research circles right now) that they hadn’t been told about sent them off the deep end. Those board members thought they could fire Altman and throw the brakes on, not anticipating that 700 employees would side against them and potentially migrate to Microsoft where the “AI ethics” would have no influence at all.

They shot their shot and lost massively, for themselves and their fellow believers. That attitude toward AI is now being labeled a business liability in the minds of every decision maker in the whole AI world.