> Though full reasoning for Altman’s initial firing is still unclear, one person familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters, pointed to Altman’s aggressive fundraising efforts for a chips venture with autocratic regimes in the Middle East, which raised concerns about the use of AI to facilitate state surveillance and human rights abuses.
That's a concern of mine from one year ago when ChatGPT exploded: Altman holds a feeble position as a zero-equity co-founder of a non-profit. He should be enabled to become a stinking rich SV mogul of some sort, or at least have his existence tied to substantial equity. Otherwise, having power but no (huge, absurd) money, or promises thereof, from his commitment to OpenAI will only boost these side gigs or even future coups. He's an ambitious and powerful leader and entrepreneur, he should be compensated accordingly so that OpenAI goals become aligned to his own.
Somehow the new board's powerful oversight goals should be leveraged with valuable equity for Altman (and other key people, employees) or equivalent. Create a path to a for-profit, consolidate the Incs and LLCs floating around - OpenAI has a complex structure for such a young enterprise. He has a comfortable upper hand right now (employees, Ilya, a resigning board, MSFT), so this is the moment to rewrite OpenAI's charter.