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> On Sunday, a person familiar with the board stood by the board’s explanation on Friday that cited candor. This person said there was no one precipitating inci

• voisin 3y ago
  > This person said there was no one precipitating incident but rather a mounting loss of trust over communications with Altman. Yet it was apparently so time sensitive that there was no time for discussion with key stakeholders. This board appears to have been run by the keystone kops.
  • medler 3y ago
    There are no key stakeholders other than the board itself
    • bmitc 3y ago
      And the board members aren't financial stakeholders. There's really nothing they have to gain from this, which implies that their decision was based on facts rather than some power play.
      • infecto 3y ago
        No it does not. Human emotions are the ultimate power play, not money.
        • murakamiiq84 3y ago
          Yeah even though I agree with the COI being a large concern and potentially a justifiable reason for firing him (especially if coupled with other instances of him withholding key information from the board), it's clear that the non-profit board might have emotional reasons aside from the common good. Even just the "you keep lying to us, bro" emotional motivation might be enough (not necessarily rational) motivation to fire; despite the person being otherwise qualified for the job, loved by employees and investors, etc.
        • bmitc 3y ago
          Only one of the dissenting board members was an employee/founder. The other board members are external. People do not seek out problems like this. Do you think the board members want all this attention on them? It's kind of crazy to me that everyone gives CEOs infinite credibility and benefit of the doubt when they make a decision, but then these board members, who don't have cult of personality surrounding them, make a decision within a decision space that is almost their sole job, people flip out and call it emotional, a coup, a power grab, etc. It doesn't make sense. To me, with the currently available information, it seems quite simple. Altman was constantly at odds with the charter of the non-profit OpenAI and continually was pushing against that charter and performing machinations for his own status and financial benefit that were not in line with the goals of the non-profit OpenAI. It seems quite clear that only one of those things could last. Either the non-profit OpenAI stays so and Altman leaves to go do whatever it is he really wants to do, or OpenAI ceases to be a non-profit and Altman gets to stay. Given it's seemingly the board's prerogative to maintain the non-profit OpenAI, it seems almost trivial as to how this situation has arisen. It's almost refreshing someone actually called the bluff of a Silicon Valley prophet. But it's not all that surprising everyone in Silicon Valley and their sycophants are doing all they can to try and undermine the credibility of that decision.
          • 3y ago
    • chelical 3y ago
      Did you forget about company providing 10+ billion dollars in funding or the potential 80 billion dollar deal with Thrive?
      • theptip 3y ago
        Irrelevant, they explicitly structured the for-profit as subservient to the non-profit and its goal of “safe AGI to benefit all humanity”. Investors knew that structure and charter when they invested. There will certainly be lawsuits of course.
        • chelical 3y ago
          Well, it appears that it was relevant. Sam Altman is CEO again.
        • voisin 3y ago
          I like to think if you invest $10s of billions, you get to at least have an opportunity to discuss major items like this, even if you don’t have legal veto.
          • theptip 3y ago
            It’s certainly polite to do so.
        • chelical 3y ago
          While we don't know the specifics of the arrangement (under what circumstances Microsoft can back out of the deal), I'm sure they can make it challenging for OpenAI to continue operating at scale when they're reliant on funding (most of the 10+ billion dollars hasn't been transferred yet) and access to unlimited compute. This makes them stakeholders even if they don't have seats on the non-profit's board. Microsoft obviously doesn't want to pull the plug on OpenAI, which is why they're pressuring the board to rehire Sam. If the board was truly independent and didn't answer to any other stakeholders, why would they even be talking to Sam right now?
    • deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  • bart_spoon 3y ago
    The only stakeholder here of note not on the board is Microsoft, who not only is a strong proponent for the kinds of commercialization and acceleration that the board is supposedly concerned with, but is also one of the single most powerful non-government organization on the planet. I’m not saying the board’s decision to remove Altman is or isn’t a good idea, but if they did decide it needed it to be done, running it by Microsoft ahead of time seems like one of the single dumbest things they could have done.
• jacquesm 3y ago
  It it wasn't one incident in particular then there was zero excuse for not bullet proofing it first.
  • himaraya 3y ago
    Bulletproofing how?
    • jacquesm 3y ago
      By making sure they had buy-in from all of the major stakeholders to ensure that it wouldn't cause blowback. I think they failed miserably at predicting the kind of shitstorm that this would cause and if they did predict it then they're even more stupid than they already look. Of course this was going to blow up. Note that two founders and shareholders in the non-profit were presumably there when this vote was taken and the fact that those two didn't see eye to eye with the board was waltzed over because it was just a headcount. That's naive, to put it mildly. A move like that takes weeks if not months to prepare and even then you have to be super careful. You don't do that by taking a snap poll and hoping nobody else will notice.
      • himaraya 3y ago
        The nonprofit the board oversees doesn't have any shareholders and only answers to its charter. Sam & Greg allegedly sidelined Ilya shortly before all this went down, so Ilya probably felt he had to take drastic action regardless of the blowback.
        • sigil 3y ago
          You seem to be confusing “stakeholders” with “shareholders.”
          • himaraya 3y ago
            Yes, I'll correct that.
• ahartmetz 3y ago
  Heh, "compete with Nvidia and TSMC". FT apparently having no idea what they're talking about, unless they were really planning to get into leading edge semiconductor manufacturing?!
  • hfjjbf 3y ago
    [dead]
  • terafo 3y ago
    I think they were really planning to do that. They wouldn't need $100B otherwise. Fabless chip company would cost 10-100x less, even if they order millions of chips right-away. You just wouldn't be able to spend THAT amount of money. Cutting-edge lithography on the other hand...
    • deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  • swatcoder 3y ago
    If you’re pitching a deal of epic scale (“AI is here and we’ll be at the center of its hardware”), you’d include roadmaps to complete independence and vertical integration. People want to see numbers for the big win before they place their bets. So you’re probably not launching there, but of course you use it as the first horizon you’ll try sailing towards.
• jimbob45 3y ago
  This person said there was no one precipitating incident but rather a mounting loss of trust over communications with Altman. This is the worst possible response. They tanked MS’ stock price for this? MS will have their heads.
  • timeon 3y ago
    Are they owned by MS?
    • polygamous_bat 3y ago
      Unfortunately, MS is not known for being the world champion in fair play, and this isn’t going to be the first time they try to sink others’ ships to hide their own incompetence (in this case, putting $10BN in a weird “capped profit” entity without understanding what may come of it.)
      • edgyquant 3y ago
        Yeah okay. People who, for some reason, simp for Sam Altman are expecting Microsoft to be their knight in shining armor who punishes the bad board for doing the right thing. Microsoft isn’t going to do shit but throw a little hissy fit over their obvious power play (which they staked the future of their company and resurgence of their brand on) going south. They have no legal recourse and OpenAI has brand recognition and market enthusiasm to weather any shit storm MS tried to throw at them. So no, if anything this is gonna bring attention to the Microsoft CEO from his own board wondering why exactly he put them in a position to look bad and lose shareholder value without actual ownership of this company.
        • chasd00 3y ago
          > throw a little hissy fit over their obvious power play Time will tell. I think some people just remember the depths Microsoft has descended to in the past as SOP let alone in response to a group of ideologues putting their stock price at risk.
• 4death4 3y ago
  How could you even expect any ROI on a 100B investment? It seems like there’s way too much money sloshing around. People have no idea what to do with it.
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  • qwertox 3y ago
    Well, it's of no value of them. They build a several km-long building in the desert just for the lulz. Why no give it away just to have a foot in the door, that tech could come in very handy one day.
  • acyou 3y ago
    How can you not make money, especially if you want to be in the business of making and selling chips? If you have that kind of $ you had better be getting returns. In fact, the more $ you have, the easier it should be to get returns. Such is capitalism. Main risk is on technical and execution, tough to bootstrap a chip maker.