Before Altman’s ouster, OpenAI’s board was divided and feuding

Re:Before Altman’s ouster, OpenAI’s board was divided and fe... by JCM9 on Tuesday November 21, 2023 @08:19PM (#38373299)

The challenge of all this is that while everything going on looks totally bonkers from any normal sense of business, it’s hard to argue that the board isn’t following their charter. IMHO the mistake was setting up the structure the way it is and expecting that to go well. Even with MSFT they are obviously annoyed but also they have shareholders too and one reasonable question here is what the heck was Microsoft’s leadership doing putting billions of capital at risk with this entity that has such a wacky structure and ultimately governed by this non-profit board with a bizarre doomsdayish charter. Seriously if you haven’t read it, read it.

This whole thing has been wildly mishandled but there’s an angle here where the nonprofit is doing exactly what they always said they would do and the ones that potentially look like fools are Microsoft and other investors that put their shareholder capital into this equation thinking that would go well.

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Re:Before Altman’s ouster, OpenAI’s board was divided and fe... by jacquesm on Tuesday November 21, 2023 @08:30PM (#38373393)

When Microsoft came on board the charter effectively went out the window. It's like Idefix thinking he's leading Obelix around on a leash.

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Re:Before Altman’s ouster, OpenAI’s board was divided and fe... by OccamsMirror on Tuesday November 21, 2023 @10:01PM (#38374199)

For anyone who is familiar with Obelix but has no idea who Idefix is, it's the original French name for Obelix' dog, Dogmatix. Idefix is a pun on the French expression idée fixe (fixed idea) meaning an obsession.

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Re:Before Altman’s ouster, OpenAI’s board was divided and fe... by hutzlibu on Tuesday November 21, 2023 @09:05PM (#38373695)

"It's like Idefix thinking he's leading Obelix around on a leash."

I don't think I have seen Idefix being on a leash ever .. he just runs around free. And there are indeed many dogs on a leash, who lead their "masters" who just follow behind.

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Re:Before Altman’s ouster, OpenAI’s board was divided and fe... by jacquesm on Tuesday November 21, 2023 @10:05PM (#38374233)

I picked them for their difference in relative size and strength, not to suggest that Idefix would ever accept a leash or because there are other dogs that lead their masters around.

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Re:Before Altman’s ouster, OpenAI’s board was divided and fe... by hutzlibu on Tuesday November 21, 2023 @10:48PM (#38374542)

Hm.. I would think it is here the board holding the leash, but being pushed forward in a direction they did not wanted to go..

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Re:Before Altman’s ouster, OpenAI’s board was divided and fe... by ryeights on Tuesday November 21, 2023 @08:39PM (#38373472)

Apparently not…

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Re:Before Altman’s ouster, OpenAI’s board was divided and fe... by traject_ on Tuesday November 21, 2023 @08:45PM (#38373519)

A lot of that billions of capital is simply Azure compute credits though.

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Re:Before Altman’s ouster, OpenAI’s board was divided and fe... by next_xibalba on Tuesday November 21, 2023 @08:47PM (#38373548)

Those credits equate to billions of $ in real compute expense for MSFT.

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Re:Before Altman’s ouster, OpenAI’s board was divided and fe... by baking on Tuesday November 21, 2023 @10:19PM (#38374326)

I would hope that a billion in credits would not represent a billion in expenses for Microsoft.

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Re:Before Altman’s ouster, OpenAI’s board was divided and fe... by crazygringo on Tuesday November 21, 2023 @10:36PM (#38374450)

They're giving up all the profits from whoever they would have been sold to otherwise.

So it adds up the same.

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Re:Before Altman’s ouster, OpenAI’s board was divided and fe... by baking on Tuesday November 21, 2023 @11:45PM (#38374820)

So when they give you $100 in free credits they are losing $100.

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Re:Before Altman’s ouster, OpenAI’s board was divided and fe... by tuwtuwtuwtuw on Wednesday November 22, 2023 @12:56AM (#38375203)

Microsoft giving these credits to OpenAI doesn't mean some other customer won't buy the Azure credits they planned on buying. So I don't see how what you write makes sense.

At least assuming Microsoft hasn't run out of capacity in their data centers. I know Azure sometimes have capacity issues but those issues are intermittent and not say 5 year long (or whatever the windoe is when it comes to consuming these credit)

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Re:Before Altman’s ouster, OpenAI’s board was divided and fe... by crazygringo on Wednesday November 22, 2023 @09:06AM (#38379285)

> doesn't mean some other customer won't buy the Azure credits they planned on buying

Yes it does, because we're taking about GPU availability that is absolutely highly constrained across the economy.

If we were talking about CPU credits instead, then you're right that Microsoft would be paying/losing merely cost.

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