Why would they take this huge decision extremely suddenly?
Why would they announce it without first consulting with the president of the board?
Why would they claim that Sam Altman had been lying to the board in the official announcement?
Why would they announce some very weak reasons for that claim of lying to employees, and nothing to anyone outside the company?
Why would they immediately start negotiations to bring Sam back?
Why would they hire a new CEO that then says he is very much for commercialization, and that commercialization was not the reason for firing Sam?
Why would they start a new round of negotiation to bring Sam back?
Why would one of the four members of the board who took this turn decide to undo it and become an advocate for bringing Sam back?
The whole thing makes no sense at all if the motivation was disagreements over commercialization of their tech - something that has already happened months ago.
Because their motivation was the fear Sam inspired them, they acted the way they did. Then, it's hard to justify actions based on suspicious.
If you really wanted to create "AGI for the benefit of all humanity", I can't imagine a better way to cut off your nose and then remove your brain to spite your face.
For example, as a paying user of OpenAI, I don't really care, as long as they continue to produce some of the best performing models, I'll keep paying.
It's pretty surprising what Microsoft did as well, like their deal with OpenAI is not invalidated by a CEO change. It's a pretty bold move of them to take that opportunity to poach the defunct CEO and the entire staff of OpenAI, and try and steal their intellectual property along the way.
I find it very likely they just didn't expect that to happen at all.
Yes, literally anyone with sufficient professional corporate experience would have. This was instantly front-page news everywhere.
> I mean, it could have just been that Sam is gone, a new CEO joins, and things move on.
This isn't about replacing a CEO. This is about 4 members secretly getting rid of 2 other board members, including the chair and CEO, in a secret board meeting, with zero transparency and zero public justification backed by evidence. None of that is business as normal, things move on. This is as disruptive and shocking as things get.
> I find it very likely they just didn't expect that to happen at all.
Which is precisely what's so troubling -- it shows their extreme incompetence. This isn't a toy $1M company for amateurs to play with, it's an ~$80B company. This is the big leagues. The board is expected to be able to understand the consequences of its actions.
Nor is it usual for outgoing execs' successors to immediately try to rehire them, the majority of a company's staff to demand a CEO's reinstatement... never mind one of the board members who voted to get rid of him u-turning and adding his own name to that statement. Microsoft being surprised and a bit pissed off would have been expected. Microsoft finding room for Sam isn't wildly surprising. Microsoft announcing that it will try to poach every single member of OpenAI staff unless the board does what they want is not the sort of consequence you'd predict.
It was obvious this was going to get a bit more attention than the average CEO firing and they certainly screwed up the communication by providing just as much information with their initial statement to fuel speculation and then no further comment, but boards firing CEOs is normal and the entire company dying on the hill of trying to bring him back isn't.
It is the end of the humanity as we know it, and the owner has ultimate power over the world, as the gains are exponential once you acquire it.
Ultimate reason why someone was clever enough to make OpenAI governance as it is, and why this drama is happening. And why Microsoft is involved so deeply.
Edit: I wonder what would have happened had Will Hurd not run for president and stayed on the board.
But what if the thinking about the non-profit company goal was shrinking over time (because of money)? The guys who are left, are the few idealists.
They fear taking new members, because finding idealists is hard. If you are not idealist, money and power will corrupt.
That's my take as well. They just underestimated the fanboy level of religious following that tech CEOs now possess and the scale of impact that would lead too.
From their point of view, it was just business as usual, or maybe they thought that the more vocal public voice would be that of those that are more concerned with AI and ethics and that also don't want to see AI fall pray to capital driven incentives, and are supportive of OpenAI specifically because of it's Non for profit arrangement.
For example, when Sam became CEO, it led to people leaving and starting Anthropic (now considered OpenAIs biggest competitor), and the reason for that split was because of Sam's increased move away from the core values of OpenAI.
It's very possible they assumed that more people felt that way, and would be happy about their firing of Sam.
By now they don't have full legitimacy.
To be fair, this was deliberately done. You don't want the person selling you the bombs to be the one deciding how many you use.
You’re describing an advisory board or oversight council. Like the one Facebook likes to ignore [1].
This was a board, and a non-profit board at that. They were designed to be the deciders. And they have no duty to inform anyone in their charter.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/06/technology/facebook-overs...
Not according to Sam Altman: "Development of superhuman machine intelligence is probably the greatest threat to the continued existence of humanity."
I think Terminator did it much better.
So "if OpenAI is killed," the board does not have "nothing to lose."
It is deeply ironic how much this forum complains about EA / lesswrong and yet I see hundreds of practically illiterate uninformed takes here a week. Practically all the tech CEO / VP types joke about it. This place likes to think of itself as high brow but it's closer to Reddit than academic circles.
Once they made that gigantic deal with Microsoft and became a closed, for-profit company "Open"AI created a direct conflict of interest with itself with a board whose mandate I guess was to prevent the inevitable pull toward resource accumulation.
The board is trying to exercise its mandate, and OpenAI the for-profit company is at odds with that mandate. Is that because of Sam Altman's leadership? Does that qualify as "wrongdoing"?