It's a non-profit. It should have no value aside from the mission. The only reason the employees mobilized in their whining and support of a person, whose only skills seems to be raising money and cult of personality, seems to be so that Altman can complete the Trojan horse of the non-profit by getting rid of it now that it has completed the side quest of attracting investors and customers.
Which owns a for profit. They would have been left with no employees, no money, no credits, and crown-jewels already licensed to another company. On top of that spending life in minority shareholders lawsuits.
And you believe they could’ve achieved their mission with almost zero employees and presumably the board (well… who else?) having to do all the work themselves?
> non-profit by getting rid of it
So the solution of the board was to get rid of both the non-profit and for profit parts of the company?
There was nothing to bluff. The employees would've been hired by Microsoft and OpenAI the company would've had nothing but sourcecode and some infrastructure. They would've gone down quickly.
What would that have accomplished? The old board members would still be in charge of the same thing they are today: absolutely nothing. They overplayed their position. That's all there is to it.
That's one interpretation, and I'm sure it is the one they had. In my opinion they failed to enforce the charter. Had they been effective at enforcing the charter they would have not folded all of their power to someone they view does not enforce the charter. There is nothing they could have done to fail more.
>Had they been effective at enforcing the charter they would have not folded all of their power to someone they view does not enforce the charter. There is nothing they could have done to fail more.
How specifically do you suggest they should have "not folded all of their power"? Are you saying they should have stuck to their guns when it came to firing Sam?
In any case, it's not obvious to me that the board actually lost the showdown. Remember, they ignored multiple "deadlines" from OpenAI employees threatening to quit, and the new board doesn't have Sam or Greg on it -- it seems to be genuinely independent. Lots of people were speculating that Sam would gain complete control of the board as an outcome of this. I don't think that happened.
Some are saying that the new board has zero leverage to fire the CEO at this point, since Sam showed us what he can do. However, the new board says they are doing an independent investigation into this incident. So they have the power to issue a press release, at least. And that press release could make a big difference -- to the SEC and other federal regulators, for example.
I guess this might have seemed like their best option if a public statement would be a breach of NDA's. That said, I still wish they'd just have some backbone and issue a public statement, NDA's be damned, because the question of upholding a fiduciary duty to be beneficial to all of humanity is super important, and the penalties for a violation of an NDA would be a slap on the wrist compared to the boost in reputation they would have gotten for being seen to publicly stick to their principles.
>I guess this might have seemed like their best option if a public statement would be a breach of NDA's. That said, I still wish they'd just have some backbone and issue a public statement, NDA's be damned, because the question of upholding a fiduciary duty to be beneficial to all of humanity is super important, and the penalties for a violation of an NDA would be a slap on the wrist compared to the boost in reputation they would have gotten for being seen to publicly stick to their principles.
I see what you're saying, but unilateral disclosure of confidential information is not necessarily in humanity's best interest either. Especially if it sets a bad precedent, and creates a culture of mutual distrust among people who are trying to make AI go right.
Ultimately I think you have to accept that at least in principle, there are situations where doing the right thing just isn't going to make you popular, and you should do it anyways. I can't say for sure if this is one of those situations.
Well they might have as well announced that they are dissolving the company and the outcome would’ve been similar. If that’s not “overplaying your hand” I don’t know what is
There is literally no evidence to it. If it is about the charter they could directly say it was about the charter rather than using strong language when firing and going silent.
So no one, not even their new CEO they picked knows the reason of firing and this reason has been cited as truth by HN multiple times.
I wouldn't say overplayed as much as badly played because they underestimated
how much their CEO's had fortified his position. I find the situation pretty dire: we need more checks and watchmen on billionaire tech entrepreneurs, not less.
I wonder if they ACTUALLY would have landed at Microsoft. And then, would they actually have their TC post tender met there? And would they continue working on AI for some time, independent of reorgs, etc? All of them? A place like MSFT has a TON of process and red tape, the board could have called their bluff and kept at least 40%.
Please explain why you think they should have let them walk and what benefit to either OpenAI or any of it's partners / customers there would have been in doing so?
It feels like you are saying this out of spite rather than with a good reason - but I'm open to listen if you have one.
They could, or could they? Formally boards don't run companies. Would this scenario - besides ridiculous - be legal? Say they let 99% of the company walk. Who is qualified and responsible to do whatever needs to happened after that happens?
