“Completely exchangeable” Obviously people are not fungible, replacing one person with another will never provide the exact same results. The question in each case then is how different would the results be, and would the replacement be better or worse? For a very simple job, perhaps pressing a single button, the results may only be subtly different. But what happens when it’s a complex job with no right and wrong answers, where work input is affected by output (like a chaotic system), spanning multiple areas of influence? The work output of the individual changes drastically, and just like in a chaotic system, the results to the organization vary increasingly over time. Nobody is fungible, but of all people, decision makers like politicians, CEOs etc are the butterfly wings flapping in New York that causes a cyclone in Japan. The only real way to evaluate if their impact is likely to be positive is looking at previous results. Due to rarity of top performers and importance to systems, they have negotiation power.
Dependable leaders really do have that much value to their organizations. This is similar to why in critical areas like medicine, old-and-dependable things are valued over new and shiny. The older things have lower risk, and a strong track record. That added dependability is more important than being the newer “better” but riskier option. Back to this topic, how many CEOs with track records managing 80 billion revenue AI organizations are ready to replace Altman? Because Open AI is well ahead in the field, they don’t need big risky changes, they need to reliably stay the course.