OpenAI negotiations to reinstate Altman hit snag over board role

Post by ioulaum » Sun, Nov 19, 2023, 10:29 PM UTC

siva7 wrote: post #104

breadwinner wrote: post #57

The key question in my mind is not who is going to be on the new board, but whether Ilya Sutskever will stay if Altman comes back. I worry that OpenAI without Ilya is not going to produce groundbreaking innovations at the same pace. Hopefully Sam Altman and Ilya Sutskever can patch things up. That's more important than who they add or remove to the board.

Ilya will do just fine after openai but there is zero chance that he will stay there as too many bridges are burned.

Post by Davidzheng » Sun, Nov 19, 2023, 10:30 PM UTC

cwillu wrote: post #87

jmckib wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does the board not have final control? Why have they agreed (in principle) to step down? I wish more of the reporting around this was specific about who has the power to do what.

My understanding is that, fundamentally, the only power the board _has_ is to fire the CEO. The CEO, not wanting to be fired, is therefore incentivized to manage the board's expectations, which looks a lot like being willing to take direction from the board if you squint a bit. The problem comes when the situations starts to resemble the line about how, if you owe a bank a billion dollars, you own the bank: if the di…

Post by shrimpx » Sun, Nov 19, 2023, 10:30 PM UTC

itchy_spider44 wrote: post #16

brookst wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems clear that there weren’t specific reasons, just a kind of final straw in the product announcements that made the board realize how far from the original mission the company had drifted. Turning it into an emergency and surprise coup with innuendo of wrongdoing looks to have been a huge mistake, and may result in total loss of control where a more measured course correction could have succeeded.

Ilya is the stereotypical genius mind that is extremely passionate yet disconnected from the real world. He got way too worked up about abstract issues, failed to see the bigger picture and had a meltdown that other board members took seriously because he's a cofounder. He is instrumental in the research but he shouldn't be running the business.

Post by Davidzheng » Sun, Nov 19, 2023, 10:31 PM UTC

bossyTeacher wrote: post #85

hotnfresh wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Purely outside perspective, but people’ve been complaining for quite a while that OpenAI seems to have bailed on their original mission. Sure looks like Altman was capitalism’ing the whole thing—maybe not on purpose, but because it’s just the only way he knows to operate—and had kinda half-sold it to Microsoft, which sure is corroborated by folks posting on here expecting MS to now be in a position to forcibly overri…

OpenAI was ideologically dead when when they sold it to MS imo

Post by Davidzheng » Sun, Nov 19, 2023, 10:33 PM UTC

tempnow987 wrote: post #111

hotnfresh wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If he wins in this, it’ll mean he’d maneuvered himself into a position of controlling the whole thing—in fact, if not on paper—some time back. The “coup” people’ve been writing about will have been his actions over the last year or so, not the board’s. Big money on the line. Insane, life-changing payouts in the cards. Altman and MS on the side of those, the board on the side of the mission. Money’s likely to win.

If the board has the support of all the staff the board will be absolutely fine. That said, not clear to me that board is supported by the staff. So if Sam goes, and many of the key staff go... will be interesting. And the boards style in all this, if that is the "mission" - is wild. You have partners, staff, businesses - doing a VC round and you blow it all up without it sounds like even talking to your board presid…