It seems incredible that the OpenAI board would hastily bring back someone whom they fired hastily fired just 24 hours prior, allegedly for serious ethical reasons, something tantamount to lying to the board.
What am I missing ?
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
#522Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
OpenAI hasn’t received much funding from Microsoft or other investors, and is profitable already with no lack of interested suitors for funding and partnership. Microsoft’s leverage is grossly overstated mostly because it suits Microsoft to appear important to OpenAI when it’s the other way around.
Re: OpenAI board in discussions with Sam Altman to return as CEO
#523Related: https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2023/11/18/openai-in...
(via https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38325611, but we merged those comments hither)
Re: OpenAI board in discussions with Sam Altman to return as CEO
#524A real power struggle! How exciting. It goes to show that no matter the structure, when it comes down to it the investors always have the last say.
Not here when the governance structure the way it is. The board has the last say. Now, there are obviously ways that investors can put pressure on the board and with literally billions at stake I can imagine that happening. Think serious espionage level drama.
Sure, that might be true on paper, but if you have the ability to turn off the money faucet you have a lot of leverage regardless of what the documents say. No espionage drama needed haha.
If you then imagine being dependent on that investor not only because your service runs on their infra but also your biggest enterprise customers use your service through their infra, you are even more incentivised to listen to them..
Re: OpenAI board in discussions with Sam Altman to return as CEO
#525Earlier quoted context omitted.
They are already the dumbest board in history (even dumber than Apple’s board firing Steve Jobs). So it’s not out of keeping with anything. Besides, those 2 independent board members (who couldn’t do fizz-buzz if their lives depended on it) won’t be staying long if Sam returns— nor are they likely to ever serve on any board ever again after their shenanigans.
Some of the board member choices are baffling. Like why is Joseph Gordon Levitt’s wife on the board? Her startup has under 10 employees and has a personal email address as the contact address on the homepage.
Any proof that makes her incompetent or ill-informed or are you simply speculating as such?
Re: OpenAI board in discussions with Sam Altman to return as CEO
#526It'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…
the point of a non-profit is that they are allowed to make investors unhappy in pursuit of the greater mission
A non-profit isn’t supposed to have investors. This structure should never have been allowed in the first place (nor IKEA.)
Re: OpenAI board in discussions with Sam Altman to return as CEO
#527It'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…
Welcome to The Verge. This is the same website that pasted “reporting by Alex Heath” on the original article - which was literally just regurgitating the board’s press release and pasting in some tweets. Reporting, huh?
Good job if you can get it.
Re: OpenAI board in discussions with Sam Altman to return as CEO
#528Microsoft is in a difficult position here.
With Altman gone and the direction of the board being to limit commercial growth, their investment is at risk, and their competitive edge will evaporate, especially if businesses switch to other LLMs as they surely will over time. Altman will also become a competitor.
If instead they are able to pull off a complete transformation of the nonprofit and oust Ilya, they will also lose a core technical leader and risk their investment while being left with the odd dynamic of a parent nonprofit.
Perhaps they could orchestrate some kind of purchase of the remaining portion of the subsidiary. Give Altman the CEO title and move forward while allowing the nonprofit to continue their operations with new funding. This doesn’t solve the Ilya problem but it would be cleaner to spin it off.
Re: OpenAI board in discussions with Sam Altman to return as CEO
#529This 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…
The staff calls the shots. The money will go wherever the talent is.
Re: OpenAI board in discussions with Sam Altman to return as CEO
#530RIP OpenAI, for real. And RIP @sama if he chooses to go back, no good could possibly come out of this.
Rarely does getting back together with an ex work out. You miss each other in the beginning thinking of only the good things, but very quickly you start to remember why you were exes to begin with.