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.
>> A competent board should have asked for legal and professional advice...
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…
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.
I don't mind the Verge, I don't agree with everything they've written but I generally like their coverage. My criticism is specific to this situation and the cult of personality in tech media around Sam Altman.
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…
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.)
Which is why investors that signed on got a giant warning saying that the Board could choose to be unprofitable if they wanted and that the mission came first, so they should view their investment as a donation.
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.
"To be replaced soon by the monster they created."
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…
For what it’s worth (nothing!) I don’t believe that a rehire offer is really happening.
On the tech side, I think work will split on two tracks: 1) building great applications with small and medium fine tuned models like Mistral, etc. Within a year or two great models will run on the edge because of continuous technical improvements. 2) some players will go for the long game of real AGI and maybe they will get there in much less than a decade.
On the business side, I have no idea how the current situation is going to shake out.
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.
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... Doesn't look like it right now in this case.
Because of a news article saying a prior VC firm is pushing to reinstate sam or fund his new venture and didn’t care which way it goes? That’s not a lot to hang your hat on. They legally have every right to do what they did and no one can force them to change their mind under any circumstance. They might choose to, but OpenAI has all the cards. Sam Altman is a talking head, and if they churn some senior folks, OpenAI has the technology and brand to replace them. If I were the OpenAI board, I would be sleeping like a baby, especially if sam were acting out of sync with the charter of the non profit. I imagine his antics caused a lot of stress the further they drifted from their mission and the more he acted autonomously.