As of 10am PT, 700 of 770 employees have signed the call for board resignation. [1] [1] https://twitter.com/joannejang/status/1726667504133808242
what does this even mean? what does signing this letter means? quit if you don't agree and vote with your feet.
Sam Altman is still trying to return as OpenAI CEO
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Re: Sam Altman is still trying to return as OpenAI CEO
#622Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Board members are supposed to exercise diligence and prudence in their decisions. Yes, and if they fail to do so in regards to the things they are legally obligated to care for , like the charitable mission, people who have a legally-cognizable interest in the thing they failed to pursue with diligence and prudence have a claim. But whose legally cognizable interest (and what specific such interest) do you think is…
We're going around in circles I think but to me it is evident that a somewhat competent board that intends to fire the CEO of the company they are supposed to be governing will have a handy set of items ready: a valid reason, minutes of the meeting where all of this was decided where they gravely discuss all of the evidence and reluctantly decide to have to fire the CEO (handkerchiefs are passed around at this point,…
I think the difference here is that I am fine with your belief that this is what a competent board should have, but I don't think this opinion is the same as actually establishing a legal duty.
> The charitable mission is not a legal entity and so it will never sue, but it isn't a get-out-of-jail-free card for a board that wants to decide whatever it is that they've set their mind to.
The charitable mission is the legal basis for the existence of the corporation and its charity status, and the basis for legal duties and obligations on which both the government (in some cases), and other interested parties (donors, and, for orgs that have them, members) can sue.
> For one: Microsoft has a substantial but still minority stake in the for-profit, there are certain expectations attached to that and the same goes for all of the employees both of the for-profit and the non-profit whose total compensation was tied to the stock of OpenAI, the for profit
Given the public information concerbing the terms of the operating agreement (the legal basis for the existence and operation of the LLC), unless one of those parties has a non-public agreement with radically contradictory terms (which would be problematic for other reasons), I don't think there can be any case that the OpenAI, Inc., board has a legal duty to any of those parties to see to the profitability of OpenAI Global LLC.
Re: Sam Altman is still trying to return as OpenAI CEO
#623Earlier quoted context omitted.
His sister is clearly mentally ill. Allegations are impossible to prove or deny. They should simply be ignored like the unhinged rantings of mentally ill people in general.
Mental illness is the norm for child abuse victims. It's not like she has a demonstrated pattern of doing this with other people, and she has appeared internally consistent over the course of years, so it should at least be addressed instead of hand waved away.
Re: Sam Altman is still trying to return as OpenAI CEO
#624Earlier quoted context omitted.
I question that framing of a growing Altman influence. Altman predates every other board member and was part of their selection. As an alternative faming, Maybe this is the best opportunity the cautious/antripic faction would ever get and a "moment of weakness" for the Altman faction. With the departure of Hoffman, Zilis, and Hurd, the current board was down 3 members, so the voting power of D’Angelo, Toner, McCauley…
That may very well have been the case but then they have a new problem: this smacks of carelessness.
I wonder if there were challenges and disagreements about filling the board seats. Is it normal for seats to remain empty for almost a year for a company of this side? Maybe there was an inability to compromise that spiraled as the board shrank, until it was small enough to enable an action like this.
Just a hypothesis. Obviously this couldnt have happened if there was a 9 person board stacked with Altman allies. What I dont know is the inclinations of the departed members.
Re: Sam Altman is still trying to return as OpenAI CEO
#625Earlier quoted context omitted.
True, but then the board would have been able to get rid of the controversy on the spot by spelling out their reasoning. Nobody would fault them. But that didn't happen, and even one of the people that voted for Altmans' removal has backtracked. So this is all extremely murky and suspicious. If they had a valid reason they should spell it out. But my guess is that reason, assuming it exists, will just open them up to…
> the board would have been able to get rid of the controversy on the spot by spelling out their reasoning I don't think they have an obligation to do this publicly. > even one of the people that voted for Altmans' removal has backtracked I don't have a great explanation for this part of it. > Shareholders and employees of the for-profit were all directly affected by this decision, the insulating properties of a non-…
What I think is happening is that the reason they had sucks, that the documents they have create more liability and that they have a real problem in that one of the gang of four is now a defector so there is a fair chance this will all come out. It would not surprise me if the remaining board members end up in court if Altman decides to fight his dismissal, which he - just as surprising - so far has not done.
So there is enough of a mess to go around for everybody but what stands out to me is that I don't see anything from the board that would suggest that they acted with the kind of forethought and diligence required of a board. And that alone might be enough to get them into trouble: you don't sit on a board because you're going off half-cocked, you sit on a board because you're a responsible individual that tries to weigh the various interests and outcomes and you pick the one that makes the most sense to you and you are willing to defend that decision.
So far they seem to believe they are beyond accountability. That - unfortunately for them - isn't the case but it may well be they escape the dance because nobody feels like suing them. But I would not be surprised at all if that happened and if it does I hope they have their house in order, board liability is a thing.
Re: Sam Altman is still trying to return as OpenAI CEO
#626EA is a national security risk
Re: Sam Altman is still trying to return as OpenAI CEO
#627Earlier quoted context omitted.
That isnt relevant to the question. Sam was on the board prior to all of these other directors, and responsible for selecting them. The post asks how/why Sam ended up with a board full of directors so far out of alignment with his vision. I think a big part of that is that the board was down several members, from 9 to 6. Perhaps the problem started with not replacing departing board members and this spiraled out of c…
Actually, you're rephrasing the question - it was specifically about "control", not "alignment". Even if we substitute "alignment" the problem is that the suggestion is still that Sam would have been "better protected" in some way. A 501(c)3 is just not supposed to function like that, and good corporate governance absolutely demands that the board be independent of the CEO and be aligned to the company goals not the…
Re: Sam Altman is still trying to return as OpenAI CEO
#628This is bonkers. Usually there is a sense of "all sales are final" when companies make such impactful statements. Yet we have: * OpenAI fires Sam Altman hinting at impropriety. * OpenAI is trying to get Sam back over the weekend. Then we have: * Microsoft CEO Satya personally announces Sam will CEO up a new.. business?, under Microsoft. * We hear Sam is still trying to get back in at OpenAI?! Never seen anything like…
Re: Sam Altman is still trying to return as OpenAI CEO
#629As 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 Alt…
The EA community includes a lot of AI folks, as well as philanthropists like Dustin. That doesn't mean this is this kind of conspiracy
Re: Sam Altman is still trying to return as OpenAI CEO
#630Earlier quoted context omitted.
More confusion - Emmett Shear is a close friend of Sam Altman. He was part of the original 2005 YCombinator class alongside Altman, part of the justin.tv mafia, and later a part-time partner at YCombinator. I don't think he has any such close ties to Dustin Moskovitz. Why would the Dustin-leaning OpenAI board install him as interim CEO? This whole thing still seems to have the air of a pageant to me, where they're ma…
He's part of the EA community which Moskovitz funded. He was even named in Yudkowsky's warcrime of a Harry Potter fanfic [0][1] [0] - https://www.404media.co/new-openai-ceo-emmett-shear-was-mino... [1] - https://hpmor.com/chapter/104?ref=404media.co