If Sam made a deal with MSFT that required board approval they would be mad, but not this mad. The board feels betrayed, and Sam being the secret owner of OpenAI through the foundation checks all the boxes.
Why would he accept to work under Satya?
Regardless of what, the longer OpenAI waits to explain, the more it could damage corporate and developer trust in using its AI.
It says he lied, explicitly, just with slightly nicer words. Whether he did or not, that is the definitive reason the board is giving.
[1] ChatGPT "lying is defined as intentionally making a false statement. If you are omitting details but not actually stating anything false, this may not strictly meet the definition of a lie."
No it doesn't. "Not being candid" does not explicitly mean lying. It's like the old tea towel joke where the people at the bottom say "it's shit" and the manager one rung up says "it's manure" and the next one says "it's fertilizer" and by the time it's reached the CEO they're saying "it promotes growth".
Pretty much nothing changed positively or significantly after Snowden revelations, Panama papers etc etc
I doubt anything can damage the almost religious belief in chatgpt today. The inertia is huge.
I'd say the opposite; given the way CEOs usually part with firms even after misconduct investigations, it needs to be very serious for the “not consistently candid with the board” to be made public (it needs to be mildly serious for it not be hidden under a veil of “resigned to spend more time with his family/pursue other interests/pet his llama" but instead openly be a dismissal where the board “no longer has confidence in his ability to continue leading”.)
I would think it is some kind of assets transferring, maybe the model, maybe the data, to party that is not disclosed to the board.
Other reasons, like you listed above, warrants an investigation and the board might have the incentive to bury it.
The details are anyone's guess. But if we're engaging in wild speculation, how about this weird coincidence: one day after Xi Jinping and Sam Altman are in the same place, Sam Altman is abruptly fired.
"review process by the board, which concluded that he was not consistently candid in his communications with the board"
OK, so they tell us he was lying, which is precisely what "not consistently candid in his communications" means.
Possible topics for lying:
* copyright issues to do with ingestion of training data
* some sort of technical failure of the OpenAI systems
* financial impropriety
* some sort of human resources issue - affair with employee
* other - some sort of political power play? Word from Satya Nadella - "get rid of him"?
Possibly the reason is something that the board members felt exposed them personally to some sort of legal liability, thus if they did not act then they would have to pay a legal price later.
It has to be pretty serious to not make it public.