If they were super-duper worried about how Sam was going to cause a global extinction event with AI, or even just that he was driving the company in too commercial of a direction, they should have said that to everyone!
The idea that they could fire the CEO with a super vague, one-paragraph statement, and then expect 800 employees who respect that CEO to just... be totally fine with that is absolutely fucking insane, regardless of the board's fiduciary responsibilities. They're board members, not gods.
I still believe in the theory that Altman was going hard after profits. Both McCauley and Toner are focused on the altruistic aspects of AGI and safety. Altman shouldn't be at OpenAI and neither should D’Angelo.
Sure, they don't have to. How did that work out?
Four CEOs in five days, their largest partner stepping in to try to stop the chaos, and almost the entirety of their employees threatening to leave for guaranteed jobs at that partner if the board didn't step down.
But why would anyone expect 800 people to risk their livelihoods and work without a little serious justification? This was an inevitable reaction.
If Altman was silent and/or said something like "people take some time off for Thanksgiving, in a week calmer minds will prevail" while negotiating behind the scenes, OpenAI would look a lot less dire in the last few days. Instead he launched a public pressure campaign, likely pressured Mira, got Satya to make some fake commitments, got Greg Bockman's wife to emotionally pressure Ilya, etc.
Masterful chess, clearly. But playing people like pieces nonetheless.
You could tell the same story about a rising sports team replacing their star coach, or a military sacking a general the day after he marched through the streets to fanfare after winning a battle.
Even without the money involved, a sudden change in leadership with no explanation, followed only by increasing uncertainty and cloudy communication, is not going to go well for those who are backing you.
Even in the most altruistic version of OpenAI's goals I'm fairly sure they need employees and funding to pay those employees and do the research.
Developer platform updates seem to be inline.
And in any case, the board also failed to specify how their action furthered the mission of the company.
From all appearances, it appeared to damage the mission of the company. (If for no other reason that it dissolve the company and gave everything to MSFT.)
1) Somebody with a competing phone product.
2) A think tanker who is trying to make it so that the government is more involved in phones, and seems to think phones probably shouldn’t exist at all.
3) A relative unknown who’s primarily claim to fame seems to be marrying an actor who was famous 15 years ago.
It’s clownish. OpenAI needs to completely free themselves of these people. The Microsoft plan seems like it would have been the best for literally everybody.
i know it is fun to deride people, but i suspect Tasha has done more and gone further in her life than you will, and your tone indicates anger at this
Well this sure seems unnecessary. I’m saying this because I googled her name when this happened, and the only articles I could find referenced her husband. I wasn’t seeing any of this work you’re talking about, at least not anything that would seem relevant. Can you link to some stuff?
Here’s a TechCrunch article that tries to go into the history of the OAI board, and doesn’t really have any information either: https://techcrunch.com/2023/11/21/a-brief-look-at-the-histor...
Btw, I think “university trained prior executive” describes not just me but almost every single person on HN. “Involved in a non profit related to their work” I suspect also describes me and probably >90% of people posting on HN.
And also; maybe you haven’t been involved in non profit boards? “Spouse of famous/rich/etc” person is an extremely common reason to put somebody on a board for a practical reason: it helps with fundraising and exposure.
like, you get me, the board of directors is not the only actual power within a company, and that was proven by the whole scandal of Sam being discarded/fired that was made by the developers themselves. they also have the right to exercise their right to just not work at this company without the leader they may had liked.
The board seemed to have the confidence of none of the groups they needed confidence from.
If you don't think there would be a shareholder revolt against the board, for simply exercising their most fundamental right to fire the CEO, I think you're missing part the picture.