The nonprofit side of the venture actually was in worse shape before, because it was completely overwhelmed by for-profit operations. A better way to view this is the nonprofit side rebelled, has a much smaller footprint than the for-profit venture, and we're about to see if during the ascendency of the for-profit activities the nonprofit side retained enough rights to continue to be relevant in the AI conversation.

As for employees end masse acting publicly disloyal to their employer, usually not a good career move.

Exsept to many it looks like the board went insane and and started firing on themselves. Anyone fleeing that isnt going to be looked on poorly.

> As for employees end masse acting publicly disloyal to their employer, usually not a good career move.

Wut?

This is software, not law. The industry is notorious for people jumping ship every couple of years.

Still, doing so publicly still isn't a good idea, IMHO.

Disloyalty to the board due to overwhelming loyalty to the CEO isn't really an issue. I've interviewed for tech positions where a chat with the CEO is part of the interview process, I've never chatted with the board.

Is it? Who are the non-profit and for-profit sides? Sutskever initially got blames for ousting Altman, but now seemed to want him back. Is he changing sides only because he realises how many employees support Altman? Or were he and Altman always on the same side? And in that case, who is on the other side?

> Who are the non-profit and for-profit sides?

The only part left of the non-profit was the board, all the employees and operations are in the for-profit entity. Since employees now demand the board should resign there will be nothing left of the non-profit after this. Puppets that are aligned with for-profit interests will be installed instead and the for-profit can act like a regular for-profit without being tied to the old ideals.

Didn't they receive their original funding as donations? All those donations will now turn out to have been made to a for-profit entity.

This view is dated now, because now even Ilya Setskever, The head research scientist who instigated the firing in the first place, now regrets his actions and wants things back to normal! So it really looks like this comes down to the whims of a couple board members now. they don’t seem to have any true believers on their side anymore. It’s just them and almost nobody else.

Do we know that Ilya even wanted the firing? AFAIK we “know” this only from Altman, who is definitely not a credible source of such information.

Ilya, in his tweet, says he regrets the firing decision. You can't regret an act that you never committed.

The board committed it.

Ilya was/is on the board, and was present when the firing occurred. He had no obligation to be at that snap meeting if he wasn’t going along with it.

Besides, considering it was four against two, they would’ve needed him for the decisive vote anyway.

I’m not sure why you wouldn’t trust Sam Altman‘s account of what Ilya did and didn’t do considering Ilya himself is siding with Sam now.

Probably yeah.

Altman showed nothing why he would or wouldn’t lie. If he is really wanted to do things against the board, or the mission, or whatever, then it is in his interest to lie. However, we still don’t know anything, so we can’t exclude any possibilities. That means that interested parties’ statements’ value is almost nothing. It’s easy to lie in muddy waters.

There is no solid evidence that Setskever instigated the firing beyond speculation by friends who suggest that he had disagreements with Altman. It could just as well have been any of the other board members, or even a simple case of groupthink (the Asch conformity effect) run amok.

Furthermore, it's consistent with all available information that they would prefer to continue without Sam, but they would rather have Sam than lose the company, and now that Microsoft has put its foot down, they'd rather settle.