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OpenAI board in discussions with Sam Altman to return as CEO

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Re: OpenAI board in discussions with Sam Altman to return as CEO

#481

Post by Infinitesimus »

fnordpiglet wrote: post #155
airstrike wrote: post #57

This makes sense. The board thinks they're calling the shots, but the reality is the people with the money are the ones calling the shots, always. Boards are just appointed by shareholders aka investors aka capital holders to do their bidding. The capped-profit / non-profit structure muddles that a little bit, but the reality is that entity can't survive without the funding that goes into the for-profit piece And if…

A non profit board absolutely calls the shots at a non profit, in so far as the CEO and their employment goes. Non profit boards are not beholden, structurally, to investors and there are no shareholders. No stakeholder would walk away from OpenAI for want of sam Altman. They don’t license OpenAI technology or provide funding for his contribution. They do it to get access to GPT4. There is no comparable competitor av…

> A non profit board absolutely calls the shots at a non profit, in so far as the CEO and their employment goes. Non profit boards are not beholden, structurally, to investors and there are no shareholders.

There is theory and there is reality. If someone is paying your bills by an outsized amount and they say jump, you will say how high.

The influence is rarely that explicit though. The board knowing that X investor provides 60% of their funding, for instance, means the board is incentivized to do things that keep X investor happy without X having to ask for it.

9 times out of 10, money drives decisions in a captilist environment

Re: OpenAI board in discussions with Sam Altman to return as CEO

#482

Post by kelsey9876543 »

ykonstant wrote: post #450
kelsey9876543 wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want more open research and development, you should be happy for a closed OpenAI. It's why we have Mistral. Let the org redefine itself and push new boundaries. If we didn't have commercial unix there would be no linux. Allow the path to be blazed by VC, it's not about open technology being first, it's about it even existing at all.

Uhh... sure; whatever.

Glad you see my point and agree with me. Happy to have helped change at least one mind. Enjoy your day!

Re: OpenAI board in discussions with Sam Altman to return as CEO

#483

Post by dehrmann »

crop_rotation wrote: post #60

The board seems truly incompetent here and looking at the member list it doesn't seem very surprising. A competent board should have asked for legal and professional advice before taking a drastic step like this. Instead the board thought it was a boxing match and tried to deliver a knockout punch before the market closes with blunt language. This might be the most incompetent board for an organisation of this size.

I wonder if any of this is related it to it being envisioned as a non-profit board, but in the past ~year, the for-profit part has outgrown what they were really ready to handle.

Re: OpenAI board in discussions with Sam Altman to return as CEO

#484

Post by dougmwne »

demosthenes714 wrote: post #108
harrisonjackson wrote: post #22

Now seems like the perfect time for him to go raise, bring over the team he wants, and retain ownership and control in a more effective way than a non-profit. Idk why he would go back without BOD capitulating a lot.

How much IP is captured at OpenAI though? Not to mention the hardware. I’m not super familiar with ML in practice but I have to imagine he would still be set back by a significant amount of time

The hardware is in the hands of Microsoft, Google and Amazon. The IP is in the heads of top AI researchers. Whether any of these methods are patentable is an open question since it’s all secret sauce and once the model weights are trained there’s no way to know which methods went into the training.

Re: OpenAI board in discussions with Sam Altman to return as CEO

#485

Post by sfink »

twoodfin wrote: post #46

This suggests a plausible explanation that Altman was attempting to engineer the board’s expansion or replacement: After the events of the last 48 hours, could you blame him? In this scenario, it was a pure power struggle. The board believed they’d win by showing Altman the door, but it didn’t take long to demonstrate that their actual power to do so was limited to the de jure end of the spectrum.

Why are people calling this already? There was a coup. The people on the losing end, which includes some large investors, counterattacked. That's where we are now (or were when the article was published). Of course they counterattacked! But did the counterattack land? I'm not sure why you're assuming it did. Personally, I don't know enough to guess. Given that the board was inspired to do this by the very mission that the non-profit was set up to safeguard, there's some level of legal coverage, but enough to cover their asses from a $10 billion assault? I for one can't call it.

Re: OpenAI board in discussions with Sam Altman to return as CEO

#487

Post by gumballindie »

lucubratory wrote: post #442

It's insane to me how easily Sam's side can spin the board firing him for violating the company's Charter and then not backtracking at all as "Within 24 hours the board has come crawling back, I- er Sam Altman might deign to return if they grovel hard enough and I'm given complete control." This is really, really clearly incestuous tech media stuff as part of a pressure campaign. Sam is the darlin of tech media and h…

> incestuous tech media stuff as part of a pressure campaign

The same media that promoted the skizoid idea that agi is around the corner and blew ai out of proportion.

The same media that would not hesitate to do character assassinations of people opposing altman.

The media is corrupt and incompetent. To be replaced soon by the monster they created.

Re: OpenAI board in discussions with Sam Altman to return as CEO

#488

Post by xigency »

dereg wrote: post #13

I don’t understand why and how they didn’t consider this sort of discussion before so unceremoniously firing him. The others on the board outside Ilya need to go. I don’t consider anybody beyond forgiveness and if Ilya takes a professional lesson from this and Sam learns to be more mindful of others’ concerns, I consider this a win for all. Starting over in a new entity sounds great but would be years of setback. I h…

Not seeing much set back here. There are plenty of free high-quality models to put to work from Day 1.

Re: OpenAI board in discussions with Sam Altman to return as CEO

#489

Post by asylteltine »

skygazer wrote: post #26

Man, the board already looked reckless and incompetent, but this solidifies the appearance. You can do crazy ill-advised things, but if you unwaveringly commit, we’ll always wonder if you’re secretly a genius. But when you immediately backtrack, we’ll know you were a fool all along.

You don’t know the actual reasons for them firing Sam and I don’t either. Everyone has an opinion on something they don’t understand. For all you know, he covered up a massive security breach or lied about some skunkworks projects

Re: OpenAI board in discussions with Sam Altman to return as CEO

#490

Post by pbadams »

fnordpiglet wrote: post #155
airstrike wrote: post #57

This makes sense. The board thinks they're calling the shots, but the reality is the people with the money are the ones calling the shots, always. Boards are just appointed by shareholders aka investors aka capital holders to do their bidding. The capped-profit / non-profit structure muddles that a little bit, but the reality is that entity can't survive without the funding that goes into the for-profit piece And if…

A non profit board absolutely calls the shots at a non profit, in so far as the CEO and their employment goes. Non profit boards are not beholden, structurally, to investors and there are no shareholders. No stakeholder would walk away from OpenAI for want of sam Altman. They don’t license OpenAI technology or provide funding for his contribution. They do it to get access to GPT4. There is no comparable competitor av…

Something I don't fully understand, from [1], Altman was an employee of the for-profit entity. So to fire him, wouldn't the non-profit board be acting in it's capacity as a director of the for-profit entity (and thus have a fiduciary duty to all shareholders of the for-profit entity)? Non-profit governance is traditionally lax, but would the other shareholders have a case against the members of the non-profit board for acting recklessly w/ respect to shareholder interests in their capacity as directors of the for-profit?

This corporate structure is so convoluted that it's difficult to figure out what the actual powers/obligations of the individual agents involved are.

[1] https://openai.com/our-structure

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