7 ms·

Also raises deep concerns on governance structure. That the board took this action without consultation with key investors is madness. That they wrote up someth

by lumost 3y ago

Also raises deep concerns on governance structure. That the board took this action without consultation with key investors is madness. That they wrote up something which made it sound like a disaster internally further eroded trust that they actually know what they are doing. I’d expect a tough challenge ahead as msft/other stakeholders try to put guardrails in while dealing with the fact that whoever’s bright idea this coup was - is now in charge. What a mess.

CPLX 3y ago
Non profits don’t have investors.
mmcwilliams 3y ago
In a non-profit the role of a board is oversight, not appeasement of "investors" or stakeholders/donors. Why would going to them be required to determine if an executive had lied to the board?
- mlyle 3y ago
  In any board, the board's role is not strictly oversight but also working to preserve the health of the organization and to meet meet organizational goals. Pissing off all your stakeholders with a snap decision isn't great governance. Particularly egregious circumstances might make it necessary. Finding something wrong might require action, but a board's responsibility is also to make the corrective action in a responsible manner that is in the organization's interests.
  - Hadriel 3y ago
    Yes but they also Determine the organization's interests
    - dathinab 3y ago
      more likely I think they found that not letting him go isn't and option due to a breakdown of communication (a formulation which normally implies a fundamental break down of trust) but the trust of the board completely braking down doesn't mean that e.g. MS doesn't trust or want him anymore as in the end the interest the board have to defend and the ones which stake holder like MS have might be in conflict so even if it has negative consequences if it must be done it might be easier to get it done fast and then resolve the mess instead of giving other a chance to turn it into an even bigger mess
  - mike_d 3y ago
    > a board's responsibility is also to make the corrective action in a responsible manner that is in the organization's interests. That very well may have happened here. It is important to consider that this is effectively an HR matter and that the results of employee investigations cannot be made public.
  - mmcwilliams 3y ago
    There's a lot of speculation about this whole fiasco but strictly speaking the board would risk being in breach of fiduciary--as stewards of a charity--if they believed that an executive had misled them about the use of assets. It may piss off their donors because of a personal preference for the executive in question but it would be their responsibility to act accordingly.
    - mlyle 3y ago
      Yes... but my point is that this doesn't preclude them taking a couple of days to figure it out, let stakeholders know, avoid making a particularly dumb public statement, changing their mind because everyone is going to quit, etc. Here, there's been a statement that there's no malfeasance, too.
- blazespin 3y ago
  Yeah, the seed of this disaster was probably planted a long time ago, like when they created the hybrid, when they got money from MSFT. Maybe Ilya doesn't want to be at the forefront of AI building I guess. He probably thinks he can lead it better by not being at the table. Or who knows.
  - dathinab 3y ago
    the hybrid structure was intentional (and known by MS etc.) created to be able to do things like rain in (or fire) a CEO which is more representing the interests of the other minority stake holders then the interests of the non-profit. So depending on the exact non-public reasons for the communication breaking down it might not be a disaster but the hybrid doing exactly what it was intended to do. Now the real interesting question is how much MS must have been afraid to be technologically left behind to knowingly enter such a deal with such a huge investment?
- deeviant 3y ago
  The problem here is: Who watches the watchers? To my eyes, and to many others, it appears the board is power-tripping. Also, OpenAI's unique structure means they have no checks on the board that an investor class would normally give. It's difficult to envision a thriving future for OpenAI under these circumstances or a world in which they are a significant factor in AI policy. Their early market lead, still a considerable advantage, will not be sufficient to weather the storm brewed by the board's own actions. Losing their market leverage would mean ceding the influential role in shaping AI's future, potentially leaving the giants such as Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and others assuming control and steering the future course of AI, but without the creed to make AI "good."
  - jaybrendansmith 3y ago
    Put another way, as seen on X: "The AI industry would like to thank the board of OpenAI for giving all of us a chance to catch up"
  - mmcwilliams 3y ago
    In a legal sense the people who watch the board members of charities are the IRS and the state regulators in the jurisdiction it's established.
jldugger 3y ago
> That the board took this action without consultation with key investors is madness. It's a non-profit board, yea?
- layer8 3y ago
  They created the for-profit subsidiary for the express purpose of raising more investments.
  - potatopatch 3y ago
    But the CEO that was done under was not sufficiently candid with the board.. I think they realized they have some risk being only a technicality that does whatever the CEO and Microsoft tell them is aligned with their mission.
  - bmitc 3y ago
    The they in this sentence refers to the CEO the board just fired and not the board.
bink 3y ago
> That the board took this action without consultation with key investors is madness. Are you expecting them to reach out to Microsoft and ask "we're thinking of firing our CEO. How does that grab you?" I don't think this is the type of thing you can really do by consulting outside groups.
- jacquesm 3y ago
  OpenAI is privately held so there would be no reason for the board to announce this publicly before consulting with / informing the shareholders. Short of an impending media crisis that they needed to get ahead of this was mishandled. That doesn't mean it was mishandled, just that I don't see any evidence just yet of a valid reason to do this, they've done absolutely enormous damage to the OpenAI brand by doing this in this hamfisted way, you'd hope they at least had a good reason. Note that the non-profit doesn't have shareholders, but the effect is much the same because the two are linked closely together and you can't affect the non-profit in such a drastic way without also affecting the for-profit arm. So they just pointed the double barrelled shotgun at their feet and pulled the trigger, twice. It will take a massive effort to restore trust in the brand, both on the commercial side and on the side of the people working there.
  - bink 3y ago
    I don't disagree that this may have been ham-fisted or that it may have been a huge mistake. But I do think that talking to investors in the for-profit arm of the company about potentially removing the figure head has an even greater potential to backfire. There's absolutely zero chance that information wouldn't leak before they could make their move. And while it might be a nice gesture to Microsoft to inform them of their decision, the truth is that Microsoft has no stake in the non-profit OpenAI and did not have any right to know of these decisions as they were being made.
    - jacquesm 3y ago
      Yes, agreed this is also perilous. But in my opinion absent a very clear and very public reason doing it this way was a huge mistake.
woeirua 3y ago
I don’t see a world where MSFT invests more money into OpenAI with the current governance structure after this. The fact that MSFT didn’t have a board seat was unusual before this. Now it just makes MSFT look like fools.
- cedws 3y ago
  Hopefully MSFT just goes off and does their own thing. I find this holier-than-thou "we're non profit and we're going to save the world how we see fit" irritating. Talking about AGI like it's an animal ready to pounce when we're quite obviously nowhere near it. Machine learning development has been sluggish for the longest time and the moment it was commercialised, there was an explosion in possibilities and development. "AI safety" is a euphemism for "aligns with our interests." "Roko's basilisk" is nonsense science fiction babble.
  - SpicyLemonZest 3y ago
    Don't these events prove pretty conclusively that AI safety is not a euphemism for "aligns with our interests"? There's no way anyone at OpenAI could have expected to benefit professionally or financially from this.
    - cedws 3y ago
      It can also mean "does/doesn't do things as we see fit." They want to build a model without bias, but they've elected themselves as moderators.
      - SpicyLemonZest 3y ago
        This isn't about bias. Sutskever has recently been dedicated to what OpenAI calls "superalignment" (https://openai.com/blog/introducing-superalignment https://openai.com/blog/introducing-superalignment), the problem of future AI systems which don't do what humans want at all because they're too smart. You can dispute that research or its premises, but after it inspires a board coup at a billion dollar company, I don't think you can reasonably dispute that people believe it.
himaraya 3y ago
The board of the non-profit doesn't answer to Microsoft etc. The investors own stakes in the for-profit subsidiary.
- kelnos 3y ago
  MS may not have any legal sway over the non-profit, but I wouldn't be surprised that in most cases they'd at least be consulted or given a heads-up on something like this, since it affects the for-profit bits of the org as well.
  - himaraya 3y ago
    OpenAI's corporate structure doesn't fall under "most cases"—I assume the board wanted to demonstrate independence from investors.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - swalkergibson 3y ago
      And now I expect that we see this "board" dissolved. Frankly, as it should. If you are going to take $10B from another organization and you nuke the CEO during market hours and then later it turns out that it was just an ordinary disagreement, then you should answer for that action. On a Friday, no less. This is actually the kind of thing that can sink MSFT's apparent "first mover" advantage in the eyes of big money. OpenAI is now fractured, and whatever work they were going to be doing on tech is now going to be devoted to figuring out WTF to do with this mess the board just created all by themselves for no apparent reason.
      - davorak 3y ago
        > And now I expect that we see this "board" dissolved. The board has the power to dissolve itself, I am sure there(edit typo) are legal mechanisms for illegal acts, I think the IRS can revoke 501(c)(3) status but not dissolve, not sure if there are other mechanisms.
karmasimida 3y ago
Yup. OpenAI might just show the world how the naive ideal we are not driven by profit but spending billions every year is never a good idea. Those board has no stake in the company, on the other side means their have no accountability either. It is like they remote controlling the titanic, and who cares it crashes, because they are not on it. Regardless, they made very stupid decisions now sabotaging interests and the company itself, brutally beheaded itself.
- CPLX 3y ago
  > they made very stupid decisions now sabotaging interests and the company itself, brutally beheaded itself By firing the guy who founded Loopt? I’m genuinely mystified, where does this theory come from. What makes this guy essential?
  - karmasimida 3y ago
    > What makes this guy essential He elected himself to be the face of OpenAI That is why he is now essential. He is the hinge of trust, and people believed his vision of OpenAI, as a company. Ilya might be the science guy, but he 0 track record to run a company. And now he executes this badly planned coup, how would people trust him not to play such shticks in the future?
    - CPLX 3y ago
      It’s not a company it’s a non profit organization.
      - karmasimida 3y ago
        The world perceive the way how it wanted to and in this case legitimately so Arguing about semantics is useless
        CPLX 3y ago
        The world, or the HN comments section?
dathinab 3y ago
Honestly given all what I have heard about Sam Altman I wouldn't be surprised (i.e. speculative) if he did systematically manipulate and deceived the board (but subtle enough to not be legally "lying" or fraud) with the intention to forth through his goals no matter weather they agree or not. Assuming such situation happens in is noticed there is no reason to consult because it wouldn't change anything and just make things more complicated as the only action which can be taken is to fire the manipulator in power asap. Especially some recent actions where not so much in line with the mission the board is supposed to protect push for but very much in line with giving especially Microsoft a additional competitive advantage (i.e. additional to what Microsoft payed for). And I have seen many comments like but MS and other stake holder should have been part of the decisions and similar. But here is the think, with the specific structure of OpenAI MS and other knew from the get to go that it's a high risk investment where even through they in vest a ton of money they won't have _anything_ to say at all when it comes to decision done by the outer non-profit which is implicitly the majority owner of the for-profit OpenAI.
bmitc 3y ago
> Also raises deep concerns on governance structure. It's so strange to hear this regarding a CEO, a single person, effectively going rogue against a company's charter, but then layoffs of tens, hundreds, and thousands of workers, on the basis of zero fault of their own, by these CEOs and boards are considered good governance.
- btbuildem 3y ago
  Companies are by and large communist dictatorships - usually there is a Great Leader (CEO), at best there's the Central Committee (board of directors). Effectively, nobody else decides the direction of the company, or makes any impactful decisions. The rank-and-file serfs don't matter, they're expendable and interchangeable. When Dear Leadership is shaken up, it's newsworthy. When ten thousand labourers are let go, it's just a statistic.
  - junofan 3y ago
    I have to downvote. I don’t think this kind of agitprop belongs on this site.
    - PhasmaFelis 3y ago
      Do you feel the comparison is unfair to corporations, or to communism?
      - junofan 3y ago
        Neither. Unnecessarily politically combative language doesn’t contribute to the discussion here.
        asmithmd1 3y ago
        Tell me you have never worked in a publicly traded without saying it. This is EXACTLY what late stage "political" companies are like. There is no rational way to decide who gets the window office vs. the internal office. Everything is "political"
swalkergibson 3y ago
MSFT dropped over 1% in two minutes, and Monday is almost certainly going to feature more selling. If I am Vanguard, I am on the phone right now with Satya telling him to get control of this shitshow of a BOD before it nukes my positions.
- _lvbh 3y ago
  Why should Ilya care about Vanguard’s positions? The board he sits on is the non-profit one.
  - swalkergibson 3y ago
    Nothing happens in a vacuum. Professional boards of directors are supposed to be attentive to the risks to the organization as a whole, regardless of whatever weird ass governance structure exists. Blowing out your CEO on a Friday afternoon and then accusing him of lying is not the way to do this, and they are likely to find out why come Monday morning at about 9:30AM Eastern.
  - takinola 3y ago
    That's not how this works. OpenAI took investments for a reason. They benefit from the MSFT relationship. Harming that relationship will be bad for them (maybe not catastrophically bad, but significantly bad). I would be surprised if the relationship is not strained after this event since they have almost certainly created a major headache for MSFT (Satya is almost certainly fielding questions from his own board about this).
    - adastra22 3y ago
      I’m pretty sure it’s catastrophically bad. OpenAI’s deal with Microsoft happened when ChatGPT took off at insane rates and OpenAI experienced scaling troubles. There was literally no one except a handful of cloud operators—Google, Amazon, Microsoft, etc. who could provide enough GPUs to keep things running. Microsoft basically stepped in and said “we’ll provide the GPUs and pay the hosting bill for half the profits.” OpenAI now runs everything, from ChatGPT inference to GitHub copilot to GPT-5 training on Azure GPU instances. If Satya is as pissed as it sounds like he is, and if Ilya et al double down on their madness, Microsoft could back out and shut that all off tomorrow. OpenAI would be dead in the water, with no running product and no path to recovery.
andkenneth 3y ago
It's non-standard but I'd argue that the weird structure was designed to enable this exact type of decision to be made by the board. The non-profit board is a peer of investors like microsoft, not answerable to them like a normal company.
no_wizard 3y ago
Maybe those key investors aren’t as meaningful as they thought. It’s not per se something investors need to know about. This needs to shake out. Sam Altman was clearly not the best fit anymore. Thats the moral of the story. Why are executives special? They aren’t. It’s a damn myth

by lumost 3y ago

CPLX 3y ago

Non profits don’t have investors.

mmcwilliams 3y ago

In a non-profit the role of a board is oversight, not appeasement of "investors" or stakeholders/donors. Why would going to them be required to determine if an executive had lied to the board?

mlyle 3y ago
In any board, the board's role is not strictly oversight but also working to preserve the health of the organization and to meet meet organizational goals. Pissing off all your stakeholders with a snap decision isn't great governance. Particularly egregious circumstances might make it necessary. Finding something wrong might require action, but a board's responsibility is also to make the corrective action in a responsible manner that is in the organization's interests.
- Hadriel 3y ago
  Yes but they also Determine the organization's interests
  - dathinab 3y ago
    more likely I think they found that not letting him go isn't and option due to a breakdown of communication (a formulation which normally implies a fundamental break down of trust) but the trust of the board completely braking down doesn't mean that e.g. MS doesn't trust or want him anymore as in the end the interest the board have to defend and the ones which stake holder like MS have might be in conflict so even if it has negative consequences if it must be done it might be easier to get it done fast and then resolve the mess instead of giving other a chance to turn it into an even bigger mess
- mike_d 3y ago
  > a board's responsibility is also to make the corrective action in a responsible manner that is in the organization's interests. That very well may have happened here. It is important to consider that this is effectively an HR matter and that the results of employee investigations cannot be made public.
- mmcwilliams 3y ago
  There's a lot of speculation about this whole fiasco but strictly speaking the board would risk being in breach of fiduciary--as stewards of a charity--if they believed that an executive had misled them about the use of assets. It may piss off their donors because of a personal preference for the executive in question but it would be their responsibility to act accordingly.
  - mlyle 3y ago
    Yes... but my point is that this doesn't preclude them taking a couple of days to figure it out, let stakeholders know, avoid making a particularly dumb public statement, changing their mind because everyone is going to quit, etc. Here, there's been a statement that there's no malfeasance, too.
blazespin 3y ago
Yeah, the seed of this disaster was probably planted a long time ago, like when they created the hybrid, when they got money from MSFT. Maybe Ilya doesn't want to be at the forefront of AI building I guess. He probably thinks he can lead it better by not being at the table. Or who knows.
- dathinab 3y ago
  the hybrid structure was intentional (and known by MS etc.) created to be able to do things like rain in (or fire) a CEO which is more representing the interests of the other minority stake holders then the interests of the non-profit. So depending on the exact non-public reasons for the communication breaking down it might not be a disaster but the hybrid doing exactly what it was intended to do. Now the real interesting question is how much MS must have been afraid to be technologically left behind to knowingly enter such a deal with such a huge investment?
deeviant 3y ago
The problem here is: Who watches the watchers? To my eyes, and to many others, it appears the board is power-tripping. Also, OpenAI's unique structure means they have no checks on the board that an investor class would normally give. It's difficult to envision a thriving future for OpenAI under these circumstances or a world in which they are a significant factor in AI policy. Their early market lead, still a considerable advantage, will not be sufficient to weather the storm brewed by the board's own actions. Losing their market leverage would mean ceding the influential role in shaping AI's future, potentially leaving the giants such as Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and others assuming control and steering the future course of AI, but without the creed to make AI "good."
- jaybrendansmith 3y ago
  Put another way, as seen on X: "The AI industry would like to thank the board of OpenAI for giving all of us a chance to catch up"
- mmcwilliams 3y ago
  In a legal sense the people who watch the board members of charities are the IRS and the state regulators in the jurisdiction it's established.

jldugger 3y ago

> That the board took this action without consultation with key investors is madness. It's a non-profit board, yea?

layer8 3y ago
They created the for-profit subsidiary for the express purpose of raising more investments.
- potatopatch 3y ago
  But the CEO that was done under was not sufficiently candid with the board.. I think they realized they have some risk being only a technicality that does whatever the CEO and Microsoft tell them is aligned with their mission.
- bmitc 3y ago
  The they in this sentence refers to the CEO the board just fired and not the board.

bink 3y ago

> That the board took this action without consultation with key investors is madness. Are you expecting them to reach out to Microsoft and ask "we're thinking of firing our CEO. How does that grab you?" I don't think this is the type of thing you can really do by consulting outside groups.

jacquesm 3y ago
OpenAI is privately held so there would be no reason for the board to announce this publicly before consulting with / informing the shareholders. Short of an impending media crisis that they needed to get ahead of this was mishandled. That doesn't mean it was mishandled, just that I don't see any evidence just yet of a valid reason to do this, they've done absolutely enormous damage to the OpenAI brand by doing this in this hamfisted way, you'd hope they at least had a good reason. Note that the non-profit doesn't have shareholders, but the effect is much the same because the two are linked closely together and you can't affect the non-profit in such a drastic way without also affecting the for-profit arm. So they just pointed the double barrelled shotgun at their feet and pulled the trigger, twice. It will take a massive effort to restore trust in the brand, both on the commercial side and on the side of the people working there.
- bink 3y ago
  I don't disagree that this may have been ham-fisted or that it may have been a huge mistake. But I do think that talking to investors in the for-profit arm of the company about potentially removing the figure head has an even greater potential to backfire. There's absolutely zero chance that information wouldn't leak before they could make their move. And while it might be a nice gesture to Microsoft to inform them of their decision, the truth is that Microsoft has no stake in the non-profit OpenAI and did not have any right to know of these decisions as they were being made.
  - jacquesm 3y ago
    Yes, agreed this is also perilous. But in my opinion absent a very clear and very public reason doing it this way was a huge mistake.

woeirua 3y ago

I don’t see a world where MSFT invests more money into OpenAI with the current governance structure after this. The fact that MSFT didn’t have a board seat was unusual before this. Now it just makes MSFT look like fools.

cedws 3y ago
Hopefully MSFT just goes off and does their own thing. I find this holier-than-thou "we're non profit and we're going to save the world how we see fit" irritating. Talking about AGI like it's an animal ready to pounce when we're quite obviously nowhere near it. Machine learning development has been sluggish for the longest time and the moment it was commercialised, there was an explosion in possibilities and development. "AI safety" is a euphemism for "aligns with our interests." "Roko's basilisk" is nonsense science fiction babble.
- SpicyLemonZest 3y ago
  Don't these events prove pretty conclusively that AI safety is not a euphemism for "aligns with our interests"? There's no way anyone at OpenAI could have expected to benefit professionally or financially from this.
  - cedws 3y ago
    It can also mean "does/doesn't do things as we see fit." They want to build a model without bias, but they've elected themselves as moderators.
    - SpicyLemonZest 3y ago
      This isn't about bias. Sutskever has recently been dedicated to what OpenAI calls "superalignment" (https://openai.com/blog/introducing-superalignment https://openai.com/blog/introducing-superalignment), the problem of future AI systems which don't do what humans want at all because they're too smart. You can dispute that research or its premises, but after it inspires a board coup at a billion dollar company, I don't think you can reasonably dispute that people believe it.

himaraya 3y ago

The board of the non-profit doesn't answer to Microsoft etc. The investors own stakes in the for-profit subsidiary.

kelnos 3y ago
MS may not have any legal sway over the non-profit, but I wouldn't be surprised that in most cases they'd at least be consulted or given a heads-up on something like this, since it affects the for-profit bits of the org as well.
- himaraya 3y ago
  OpenAI's corporate structure doesn't fall under "most cases"—I assume the board wanted to demonstrate independence from investors.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - swalkergibson 3y ago
    And now I expect that we see this "board" dissolved. Frankly, as it should. If you are going to take $10B from another organization and you nuke the CEO during market hours and then later it turns out that it was just an ordinary disagreement, then you should answer for that action. On a Friday, no less. This is actually the kind of thing that can sink MSFT's apparent "first mover" advantage in the eyes of big money. OpenAI is now fractured, and whatever work they were going to be doing on tech is now going to be devoted to figuring out WTF to do with this mess the board just created all by themselves for no apparent reason.
    - davorak 3y ago
      > And now I expect that we see this "board" dissolved. The board has the power to dissolve itself, I am sure there(edit typo) are legal mechanisms for illegal acts, I think the IRS can revoke 501(c)(3) status but not dissolve, not sure if there are other mechanisms.

karmasimida 3y ago

Yup. OpenAI might just show the world how the naive ideal we are not driven by profit but spending billions every year is never a good idea. Those board has no stake in the company, on the other side means their have no accountability either. It is like they remote controlling the titanic, and who cares it crashes, because they are not on it. Regardless, they made very stupid decisions now sabotaging interests and the company itself, brutally beheaded itself.

CPLX 3y ago
> they made very stupid decisions now sabotaging interests and the company itself, brutally beheaded itself By firing the guy who founded Loopt? I’m genuinely mystified, where does this theory come from. What makes this guy essential?
- karmasimida 3y ago
  > What makes this guy essential He elected himself to be the face of OpenAI That is why he is now essential. He is the hinge of trust, and people believed his vision of OpenAI, as a company. Ilya might be the science guy, but he 0 track record to run a company. And now he executes this badly planned coup, how would people trust him not to play such shticks in the future?
  - CPLX 3y ago
    It’s not a company it’s a non profit organization.
    - karmasimida 3y ago
      The world perceive the way how it wanted to and in this case legitimately so Arguing about semantics is useless
      - CPLX 3y ago
        The world, or the HN comments section?

dathinab 3y ago

Honestly given all what I have heard about Sam Altman I wouldn't be surprised (i.e. speculative) if he did systematically manipulate and deceived the board (but subtle enough to not be legally "lying" or fraud) with the intention to forth through his goals no matter weather they agree or not. Assuming such situation happens in is noticed there is no reason to consult because it wouldn't change anything and just make things more complicated as the only action which can be taken is to fire the manipulator in power asap. Especially some recent actions where not so much in line with the mission the board is supposed to protect push for but very much in line with giving especially Microsoft a additional competitive advantage (i.e. additional to what Microsoft payed for). And I have seen many comments like but MS and other stake holder should have been part of the decisions and similar. But here is the think, with the specific structure of OpenAI MS and other knew from the get to go that it's a high risk investment where even through they in vest a ton of money they won't have _anything_ to say at all when it comes to decision done by the outer non-profit which is implicitly the majority owner of the for-profit OpenAI.

bmitc 3y ago

> Also raises deep concerns on governance structure. It's so strange to hear this regarding a CEO, a single person, effectively going rogue against a company's charter, but then layoffs of tens, hundreds, and thousands of workers, on the basis of zero fault of their own, by these CEOs and boards are considered good governance.

btbuildem 3y ago
Companies are by and large communist dictatorships - usually there is a Great Leader (CEO), at best there's the Central Committee (board of directors). Effectively, nobody else decides the direction of the company, or makes any impactful decisions. The rank-and-file serfs don't matter, they're expendable and interchangeable. When Dear Leadership is shaken up, it's newsworthy. When ten thousand labourers are let go, it's just a statistic.
- junofan 3y ago
  I have to downvote. I don’t think this kind of agitprop belongs on this site.
  - PhasmaFelis 3y ago
    Do you feel the comparison is unfair to corporations, or to communism?
    - junofan 3y ago
      Neither. Unnecessarily politically combative language doesn’t contribute to the discussion here.
      - asmithmd1 3y ago
        Tell me you have never worked in a publicly traded without saying it. This is EXACTLY what late stage "political" companies are like. There is no rational way to decide who gets the window office vs. the internal office. Everything is "political"

swalkergibson 3y ago

MSFT dropped over 1% in two minutes, and Monday is almost certainly going to feature more selling. If I am Vanguard, I am on the phone right now with Satya telling him to get control of this shitshow of a BOD before it nukes my positions.

_lvbh 3y ago
Why should Ilya care about Vanguard’s positions? The board he sits on is the non-profit one.
- swalkergibson 3y ago
  Nothing happens in a vacuum. Professional boards of directors are supposed to be attentive to the risks to the organization as a whole, regardless of whatever weird ass governance structure exists. Blowing out your CEO on a Friday afternoon and then accusing him of lying is not the way to do this, and they are likely to find out why come Monday morning at about 9:30AM Eastern.
- takinola 3y ago
  That's not how this works. OpenAI took investments for a reason. They benefit from the MSFT relationship. Harming that relationship will be bad for them (maybe not catastrophically bad, but significantly bad). I would be surprised if the relationship is not strained after this event since they have almost certainly created a major headache for MSFT (Satya is almost certainly fielding questions from his own board about this).
  - adastra22 3y ago
    I’m pretty sure it’s catastrophically bad. OpenAI’s deal with Microsoft happened when ChatGPT took off at insane rates and OpenAI experienced scaling troubles. There was literally no one except a handful of cloud operators—Google, Amazon, Microsoft, etc. who could provide enough GPUs to keep things running. Microsoft basically stepped in and said “we’ll provide the GPUs and pay the hosting bill for half the profits.” OpenAI now runs everything, from ChatGPT inference to GitHub copilot to GPT-5 training on Azure GPU instances. If Satya is as pissed as it sounds like he is, and if Ilya et al double down on their madness, Microsoft could back out and shut that all off tomorrow. OpenAI would be dead in the water, with no running product and no path to recovery.

andkenneth 3y ago

It's non-standard but I'd argue that the weird structure was designed to enable this exact type of decision to be made by the board. The non-profit board is a peer of investors like microsoft, not answerable to them like a normal company.

no_wizard 3y ago

Maybe those key investors aren’t as meaningful as they thought. It’s not per se something investors need to know about. This needs to shake out. Sam Altman was clearly not the best fit anymore. Thats the moral of the story. Why are executives special? They aren’t. It’s a damn myth