Even the best-run companies have occasional leadership crises. But if you asked ChatGPT to come up with a blockbuster boardroom-bloodbath movie scenario, I doubt it would propose anything as extreme as this week’s events in its own San Francisco-based parent company, OpenAI.

Chief executive and co-founder Sam Altman was fired last week for failing to be ‘consistently candid’ with OpenAI’s board, though no one was prepared to say what he had not been candid about. By Monday he had a new job leading AI research at Microsoft, OpenAI’s 49 per cent shareholder. One inside source claimed 743 of OpenAI’s 770 staff had signed a letter supporting him and many of them would follow him to Microsoft. But late on Tuesday, Altman and his ally Greg Brockman, who had resigned in sympathy, were reinstated at OpenAI – which also announced a new board of directors.

Underlying this drama are fears that Altman was driving too fast towards ‘advanced general intelligence’ applications beyond human control. Or it may be about money, which, as the book of Ecclesiastes told us, ‘answers all things’. OpenAI is structured as a non-profit parent with profit-making arms; its value before the crisis was put at $86 billion, of which all the key staff were expecting slices.

Then again, this may just be a clash of egos. The new OpenAI board includes a brace of Silicon Valley chiefs and the economist Larry Summers, big egos all. To bring them to order but maintain the company’s sci-fi tone, I’d propose a chairman with intergalactic experience – Spock the half-Vulcan officer from Star Trek, who said of humans, ‘I find their illogic and foolish emotions a constant irritant.’

Lucky inflation break

Over and over in this week’s debate around the Chancellor’s Autumn Statement, we’ll hear government claims to have ‘halved inflation’ – from 10.7 per cent a year ago to 4.6 per cent last month. But the government didn’t do that: for once, it simply got lucky.

Sharp falls in global gas prices, leading to cheaper electricity, are the single biggest factor. The Bank of England’s 14 rate rises since late 2021 kicked in eventually as a conventional anti-inflation weapon. Ministers contributed by holding public sector wage increases lower than they might have been and (though they don’t trumpet this one) suppressing consumer spending by stealth tax increases. But food inflation remains above 10 per cent – chiefly because half our food is imported at weak exchange rates which reflect low international confidence in our economy. Inflation halved? Yes, for now, if luck holds. Medals for Sunak and Hunt? I really don’t think so.

The sanctions myth

Is Vladimir Putin winning in Ukraine? And if he has been fiercely sanctioned by the West since he invaded Crimea in 2014, why isn’t he broke? Reports suggest that while world attention is distracted by Gaza, the Ukrainian counter-offensive has stalled and the Russian army still has ample materiel. In answer to the second question, it’s tempting to generalise that sanctions against aggressor nations rarely work as intended and often do more harm than good.

That’s my opinion, I should say, not the conclusion of a report from the British Foreign Policy Group titled ‘Sanctions and Patient Diplomacy’, which I commend as a guide. What it does tell us is how leaky sanctions against Russia have proved to be. Despite every effort to curtail oil and gas exports and exclude Putin’s regime from global financial markets and payment systems, ‘at the end of 2022, Russia exported as much in value terms as it did in January 2014’. Sales to the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia in particular have risen. Germany has stopped buying Russian oil but mystery attaches to its continuing sources of gas. And it’s possible that oil imported to the UK from India (our 11th largest supplier) ultimately originates in Russia.

Meanwhile, other sources say Russia’s GDP will grow by more than 2 per cent this year while the UK will be lucky to scrape 0.5 per cent. Whatever the outcome in Ukraine, the decade-long sanctions regime will not have halted Putin’s tanks or ambitions for a single day. But it will have helped build a rival trade bloc made up of Russia, China and client states in Africa and elsewhere, along with India, Turkey and Bulgaria (which still relies on Russian energy) and pariahs such as Iran and North Korea – a grouping that may soon have its own Chinese-led, non-dollar digital payments network.

If China moves on Taiwan, you may be sure there will be severe sanctions as a substitute for military response; sure also that they will do nothing to deter Beijing but will widen a global schism that’s the emergent theme of mid-21st-century geopolitics.

Amazonian cheek

Tesco won headlines for its first checkout-free ‘GetGo’ outlet, in High Holborn, using cameras and weight-sensors to track items picked by customers, then charging them via an app as they leave. My own reaction was first to ask whether robot warriors have been installed to tackle rampaging shoplifters; secondly, to wonder why our native supermarket giant has taken so long to follow Amazon, from whose prototype no-till store in Seattle I was forcibly ejected five years ago.

Readers may recall the anecdote: moments after I downloaded its Amazon Go app, the tech monster’s database apparently spotted me as an inquisitive journo and triggered a security alert. I wonder whether they’re still tracking me. In which case, a big hello to the boys and girls in the tax department to which access was also denied: will this be another year, like 2021 and 2022, of paying zero corporation tax in your main operating company here, Amazon UK Services, despite total two-year UK revenues of almost £48 billion?