Microsoft is the top investor in OpenAI and offered to hire Mr Altman before he was reinstated at the firm last week. During the drama, a spotlight was cast on how commercial competition is shaping the development of AI systems and the pace at which the technology is moving.Mr Altman was a co-founder of OpenAI and became the face of its ground-breaking chatbot ChatGPT after it launched last year. After Mr Altman’s sacking by the OpenAI board, Microsoft then offered him a job leading a new advanced AI research team. The recent chaos at artificial intelligence (AI) company OpenAI was not due to a disagreement over safety, the president of Microsoft has said. Was firing Mr Altman a colossal mistake?