461–470 of 985 posts
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Feels like they want to be where Altman is.
Make them look like hypocrites. Being upset because the board hinders the company's mission, but threaten to join MS to kill the mission completely.
The board isn't merely hindering the mission, that's downplaying the extraordinary incompetence of the remaining OpenAI board.
The fact that these people aren't currently willing to "rewind the clock" about a week shows the dangers of human ego. Nothing permanent has been done that can't be undone fairly simply, if all parties agree to undo it. What we're watching now is the effect of ego momentum on decision making. Try it. It's not a crazy idea. Put everything back the way it was a week ago and then agree to move forward. It will be like h…
Yeah this happened recently. Some Russian guy almost started a civil war, but then just apologised and everything went back to normal. I can't remember what happened to him, but I'm sure he's OK...
But, a reconciliation is kinda doable even with that elephant in the room. Enough to kinda prepare for the 'next step'
> As I posted elsewhere, I think this is a conflict between Dustin Moskovitz and Sam Altman. Ilya may have been brought into this without his knowledge (which might explain why he retracted his position). Dustin Moskovitz was an early employee at FB, and the founder of Asana. He also created (along with plenty of MSFT bigwigs) a non-profit called Open Philanthropy, which was a early proponent of a form of Effective Altruism and also gave OpenAI their $30M grant. He is also one of the early investors in Anthropic.
> Most of the OpenAI board members are related to Dustin Moskovitz this way.
> - Adam D'Angelo is on the board of Asana and is a good friend to both Moskovitz and Altman
> - Helen Toner worked for Dustin Moskovitz at Open Philanthropy and managed their grant to OpenAI. She was also a member of the Centre for the Governance of AI when McCauley was a board member there. Shortly after Toner left, the Centre for the Governance of AI got a $1M grant from Open Philanthropy and McCauley joined the board of OpenAI
> - Tasha McCauley represents the Centre for the Governance of AI, which Dustin Moskovitz gave a $1M grant to via Open Philanthropy and McCauley ended up joining the board of OpenAI
> Over the past few months, Dustin Moskovitz has also been increasingly warning about AI Safety.
> In essense, it looks like a split between Sam Altman and Dustin Moskovitz
I will be very sad if there isn’t a documentary someday explaining what in the world happened. I’m not convinced even people smack in the middle of this even know what’s going on.
There will also be a Hollywood movie, for sure. My friend suggested Michael Cera as both Ilya and Altman
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Given 90%, including leadership, seems a bad career move for remaining people not to sign, even if you agreed with the board's action.
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The fact that these people aren't currently willing to "rewind the clock" about a week shows the dangers of human ego. Nothing permanent has been done that can't be undone fairly simply, if all parties agree to undo it. What we're watching now is the effect of ego momentum on decision making. Try it. It's not a crazy idea. Put everything back the way it was a week ago and then agree to move forward. It will be like h…
Small amount of residual consequences? The employees are asking for the board to resign. So their jobs are literally on the line. That's not really a small consequence for most people.
A few things come to mind: * Emmett Shear should have put in a strong golden parachute in his contract, easy money if so * Yesterday we had Satya the genius forcing the board to quit. This morning it was Satya the genius who acquired OpenAI for $0. Im sure there will be more if sama goes back. So if sama goes back - lets hear it, why is Satya a genius?
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Do they face any real consequences?
Good question. Potentially: Liability based on their decisions. If it turns out those were not ultimately motivated by actual concern for the good of the company then they have a lot of problems.
The boards duty is to to the charitable mission, not any other concept of the “good of the company”, and other than the government if they are doing something like pursuing their own private profit interest or acting as an agent for someone elses or some other specific public wrongs, the people able to make a claim are pretty narrow, because OpenAI isn't membership-based charity in which there are members to whom the board is accountable for pursuit of the mission.
People keep acting like the parent organization here is a normal corporation, and its not, and even the for-profit subsidiary had an operating agreement subordinating other interests to the charitable mission of the parent organization.
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Given 90%, including leadership, seems a bad career move for remaining people not to sign, even if you agreed with the board's action.
I think the board did the right thing, just waaaay too late for it to be effective. They’d been cut out long ago and just hadn’t realized it yet. … but I’d probably sign for exactly those good-career-move reasons, at this point. Going down with the ship isn’t even going to be noticed, let alone change anything.
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Point is he loses credibility if the board doesn't think he's actually going through with joining Microsoft and using it as a negotiating tactic to scare them. Because the whole "the entire company will quit and join Sam" depends on him actually going through with it and becoming an employee.
I see it the other way, Satya has clearly stated that he'd hire Sam and the rest of OpenAI anytime, but as soon as Sam is officially hired it might be seen as a door closing on any chance to revive OpenAI. Satya saying "Securing the talent" could be read as either them working for OpenAI, for microsoft or for a microsoft funded new startup. I'm pretty sure the board takes the threat seriously regardless.
The employees mass resigning depends entirely on whether Sam actually becomes a real employee or not. That hasn't happened yet.