3 board members (joined with Ilya Sutskever, who is publicly defecting now) found themselves in a position to take over what used to be a 9-member board, and took full control of OpenAI and the subsidiary previously worth $90 billion.

Speculation is just on motivation, the facts are easy to establish.

> 3 board members (joined with Ilya Sutskever, who is publicly defecting now) found themselves in a position to take over what used to be a 9-member board, and took full control of OpenAI and the subsidiary previously worth $90 billion.

er...what does that even mean? how can a board "take full control" of the thing they are the board for? they already have full control.

the actual facts are that the board, by majority vote, sacked the CEO and kicked someone else off the board.

then a lot of other stuff happened that's still becoming clear.

I think the post is very clear.

The subject in that sentence that takes full control is “3 members" not "board".

The board has control, but who controls the board changes based on time and circumstances.

The post could be clearer.

It says 3 board members found themselves in a position to take over OpenAI.

Do they mean we've seen Sam Altman and allies making a bid to take over the entire of OpenAI, through its weird Charity+LLC+Holding company+LLC+Microsoft structure, eschewing its goals of openness and safety in pursuit of short-sighted riches.

Or do they mean we've seen The Board making a bid to take over the entire of OpenAI, by ousting Glorious Leader Sam Altman, while his team was going from strength to strength?

If Sam Altman runs a for-profit company underneath you, are you ever really "in full control"?

I mean, they were literally able to fire him... and they're still not looking like they have control. Quite the opposite.

I think anyone watching ChatGPT rise over the last year would see where the currents are flowing.

The board had 3 positions empty, people who left this year, leaving it as a 6-member board. Both Sam Altman and Greg Brockman were on the board; Ilya Sutskever's vote (which he now states he regrets) gave them the votes to remove both, and bring it down to a 4 member board controlled by 3 members that started the year as a small minority.

Those 3 board members can kick out Ilya Sutskever too!

tangentially, it’s an absolute disgrace that non-profits are allowed to have for-profit divisions in the first place

This was actually a pretty recent change from 2018. iirc it was actually Newman's Own that set the precedent for this:

https://nonprofitquarterly.org/newmans-philanthropic-excepti...

> Introduced in June of 2017, the act amends the Revenue Code to allow private foundations to take complete ownership of a for-profit corporation under certain circumstances:

    The business must be owned by the private foundation through 100 percent ownership of the voting stock.
    The business must be managed independently, meaning its board cannot be controlled by family members of the foundation’s founder or substantial donors to the foundation.
    All profits of the business must be distributed to the foundation.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding something, but didn't Mozilla Foundation do that a dozen or so years earlier with their wholly owned subsidiary, Mozilla Corporation? (...and I doubt that's the first instance; just the one that immediately popped into my head.)

The LDS church has owned for-profit entities for decades. Check out the "City Creek Center.

It begs the question: why was OpenAI structured this way? For what purposes besides potentially defrauding investors and the government exist for wrapping a for-profit business in a nonprofit? From a governance standpoint it makes no sense, because a nonprofit board doesn't have the same legal obligations to represent shareholders that a for-profit business does. And why did so many investors choose to seed a business that was playing such a cooky shell game?

the impression I got was that they started out with honest intentions and they were more or less infiltrated by Microsoft. this recent news fits that narrative

This was actually a pretty recent change from 2018. iirc it was actually Newman's Own that set the precedent for this:

https://nonprofitquarterly.org/newmans-philanthropic-excepti...

Absolutely agreed

This is the point where I've realized I just have to wait until history is written, rather than trying to follow this in real time.

The situation is too convoluted, and too many people are playing the media to try to advance their version of the narrative.

When there is enough distance from the situation for a proper historical retrospective to be written, I look forward to getting a better view of what actually happened.

Hah. I think you may be duped by history - the neat logical accounts are often fictions - they explain what was inexplicable with fabrications.

Studying revolutions is revealing - they are rarely the invevitable product of historical forces, executed to the plans of strategic minded players... instead they are often accidental and inexplicable. Those credited as their masterminds were trying to stop them. Rather than inevitible, there was often progress in the opposite direction making people feel the liklihood was decreasing. The confusing paradoxical mess of great events doesn't make for a good story to tell others though.

It's a pretty interesting point to think about. Post-hoc explanations are clean, neat, and may or may not have been prepared by someone with a particular interpretation of events. While real-time, there's too much happening, too quickly, for any one person to really have a firm grasp on the entire situation.

On our present stage there is no director, no stage manager; the set is on fire. There are multiple actors - with more showing up by the minute - some of whom were working off a script that not everyone has seen, and that is now being rewritten on the fly, while others don't have any kind of script at all. They were sent for; they have appeared to take their place in the proceedings with no real understanding of what those are, like Rosencranz and Guildenstern.

This is kind of what the end thesis of War and Peace was like - there's no possible way that Napoleon could actually have known what was happening everywhere on the battlefield - by the time he learned something had happened, events on the scene had already advanced well past it; and the local commanders had no good understanding of the overall situation, they could only play their bit parts. And in time, these threads of ignorance wove a tale of a Great Victory, won by the Great Man Himself.

Written history is usually a simplification that has lost a lot of the context and nuance from it.

I don't need to follow in real-time, but a lot of the context and nuance can be clearly understood at the moment and so it stills helps to follow along even if that means lagging on the input.

That's not how history works. What you read are the tellings of the people and those aren't all facts but how they perceived the situation in a retrospective. Read the biographies of different people telling the same event and you will notice that they are quite never the same, leaving the unfavourable bits usually out.

And for so-called tech influencers to rapidly blanket the field of discourse with their theories so they can say their theory was right later on, or making “emergency podcasts/blog posts/etc.” to get more attention and followers. It’s so exhausting.

I agree. Although the story is fascinating in the way that a car crash is fascinating, it's clear that it's going to be very difficult to get any kind of objective understanding in real-time.

This breathless real-time speculation may be fun, but now that social media amplifies the tiniest fart such that it has global reach, I feel like it just reinforces the general zeitgeist of "Oh, what the hell NOW? Everything is on fire." It's not like there's anything that we peasants can do to either influence the outcome, or adjust our own lives to accomodate the eventual reality.

I will say, though, that there is going to be an absolute banger of a book for Kara Swisher to write, once the dust has settled.

Everything on social media (and general news media) pointed to Ilya instigating the coup. Maybe Ilya was never the instigator, maybe it was Adam + Helen + Tasha, Greg backed Sam and was shown the door, and Ilya was on the fence, and perhaps against better judgment, due to his own ideological beliefs, or just from pure fear of losing something beautiful he helped create, under immense pressure, decided to back the board?

We can certainly believe Ilya wasn't behind it if he joins them at Microsoft. How about that? By his own admission was involved, and he's one of 4 people on the board. While he has called on the board to resign, he has seemingly not resigned which would be the one thing he could certainly control.

At this point, after almost 3 days of non-stop drama, and we still have no clue what has happened to a 700 employees company under million of people watching. Regardless the outcome, the art of keeping secrets at OpenAI is truly far beyond human capability!

This suggestion was already made on Saturday and again on Sunday. However, this approach does not enhance popcorn consumption... Show must go on ...

I wonder if AGI took over the humans and guided their actions.

It may well be that this is artificial and general, but I rather doubt it is intelligent.

Like the new tom cruise movie?

Makes sense in a conspiracy theory mindset. AGI takes over, crashed $MSFT, buys calls on $MSFT, then this morning the markets go up when Sam & co join MSFT and the AGI has tons of money to spend.

I agree. I'm already sick of reading through political hit pieces, exaggeration, biased speculations and unfounded bold claims. This all just turned into a kind of TV sports, where you pick a side and fight.

Likely Ilya and Adam swayed Helen and Tasha. Booted Sam out. Greg voluntarily resigned.

Ilya (at the urging of Satya and his colleagues including Mira) wanted to reinstate Sam, but the deal fell through with the Board outvoting Sustkever 3 to 1. With Mira deflecting, Adam got his mate Emmett to steady the ship but things went nuclear.

Is this your guess or do you have something to back it up?

Don't listen to him, he's an ignoramus.

Just made it 100% certain that the majority of AI staff is deluded and lacks judgment. Not a good look for AI safety.

Yes, also the whole 500 is probably inflated and makes for a better narrative/better leverage in negotiations.

Why are gaslighting me. I never did anything but click a link