6 ms·

I mean it's not cool for board members to publicly criticize the company.

by abi 3y ago

kragen 3y ago
it's not cool for companies to try to shut down academic freedom of inquiry in scholarly publishing in order to improve their public image her independence from openai was the nominal reason she was asked to supervise it in the first place, wasn't it
- foota 3y ago
  I'm not sure you should get to have your cake and eat it too.
  - 15457345234 3y ago
    You seem to be fundamentally misunderstanding the role of non-executive board members. In many cases they're industry experts / academics and in many cases those academics continue to publish papers that look objectively at the actions of all companies in their sphere of influence, including the one they're on the board of. It's _expected_ for them to publish this type of material. It's literally their job. Cheerleading is for the C-suite.
    - foota 3y ago
      They've admitted that they think it would be better to destroy open AI than to continue on its path, but how can an organization uphold its goals if it doesn't exist? Imo you have to commit to working within an organization if you're on its board, you can't burn it down from within. I think it's less of an issue to try to remove the CEO if you don't agree with the direction they're taking, but this was obviously done in a sloppy manner in this case, and their willingness to destroy it makes me distrust them (not that my opinion matters per se).
      - 15457345234 3y ago
        > but this was obviously done in a sloppy manner I don't think it was done in a sloppy manner, I think there's a huge amount of spin and froth being generated to make it _look_ like it was done in a sloppy manner, but the reality is that the board took an executive action, released a discreet and concisely worded press release and then fell silent, which is 100% professional behaviour. To me it's the other side that are acting sloppily, they're thrashing around like maniacs, they're obviously calling in favours behind the scenes as supportive articles are popping up all over the place, apparently employees were calling other employees in the middle of the night urging them to sign the 'I'll quit unless' letter, employees have been fed a misleading narrative (two of them, actually) about why the action was taken in the first place which riled them up... I have to assume here that the board - as they're the ones acting professionally - similarly acted professionally before the firing and discussed the matter at great length and only resorted to this last minute firing because of exigent circumstances. The fact that a fired employee was able to cajole/bluff/whatever his way back into the office to prove some sort of point suggests that the board's action may have been necessary. What exactly was done during that time in the office, one might ask? Were systems accessed? Surely it was an unauthorised entry and a major security violation. You do see that that action (re-entering the office after being fired) gives off lunatic vibes, don't you? Maybe it really did come down to 'yeah you're technically my boss but I'm gonna do whatever the hell I want and there's nothing you can do about it because everyone loves me' to which the board's only possible course of action is to fire immediately.
        foota 3y ago
        I don't think Sam cajoled their way and talked to the employees, as I understand it Ilya talked with the staff and revealed what they claimed were the reasons for the firing.
        15457345234 3y ago
        In your opinion, was a crime committed when that person returned to the office? Either by himself or by the person that permitted him access knowing beyond any reasonable doubt that they were not authorized to be there? If systems were accessed, was another crime committed? If a person facilitated that access, has the boundary for 'conspiracy to commit...' been reached?
  - kragen 3y ago
    that does seem to be what altman was attempting: he wanted to have the cake of independent board members, but eat it by having them never express any opinions contrary to his own
- jxi 3y ago
  He wasn't shutting down her academic freedom. However, if you're going to diss what your own company is doing and praise competitors, you probably shouldn't be on the board. >During the call, Jason Kwon, OpenAI’s chief strategy officer, said the board was endangering the future of the company by pushing out Mr. Altman. This, he said, violated the members’ responsibilities. >Ms. Toner disagreed. The board’s mission is to ensure that the company creates artificial intelligence that “benefits all of humanity,” and if the company was destroyed, she said, that could be consistent with its mission. This person is too far gone. Life isn't a movie.
  - sudosysgen 3y ago
    This is a non-profit, not a for profit company. Nominally, she's on the board precisely to criticize.
    - random_cynic 3y ago
      [flagged]
      - comp_throw7 3y ago
        > A board member cannot sabotage their own company. Criticism (especially valid criticism) is not sabotage, and in any case the board's responsibility is to advance the charter, not to support the (non-profit) company regardless of what it's doing.
  - kragen 3y ago
    that would be true for a for-profit company where her fiduciary duty was to shareholders, but in this case, given the charter in question, not publicly criticizing the company would be more likely to be a breach of her fiduciary duty
  - jibal 3y ago
    > This person is too far gone. Life isn't a movie. This comment is a credibility killer. "This person", as a member of the board of a non-profit, has a duty to keep the non-profit on mission, and even to call for its dissolution if that isn't possible.
- ecshafer 3y ago
  There is a difference between independent from an organization, and someone that takes a public stand against a company. Reading that paper, which I am not really impressed with, they are taking a stance that openai's current trajectory is not as good as a competitor. I bet that if a Microsoft board member wrote a paper how Google search is better than Bing / AWS Better than Azure / OSX better than Windows they would be reprimanded also.
  - ralfd 3y ago
    But I bet if a Greenpeace-like-organization board member would write a paper how a different environmental group is greener, they would be praised.
  - abracadaniel 3y ago
    A comparison to another nonprofit would make more sense. A board member of the Komen Foundation being reprimanded for pointing out that other nonprofits are far more effective at helping cancer research would be a better comparison.
  - jibal 3y ago
    Non-profits and for-profits aren't comparable. The latter have a duty to make money. The former has a duty to its mission.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
15457345234 3y ago
It's a nonprofit board & it's absolutely the role of advisory board members to continue their work in the sector they're specialized in without bias.
- jxi 3y ago
  But she was biased. She seemed so biased against her own company that her intended course of action seems to be to destroy it.
  - 15457345234 3y ago
    If she has a justifiable reason for holding that position it isn't bias.
- kickopotomus 3y ago
  OpenAI does not have an advisory board. She is on the board of directors and has fiduciary responsibilities. It does not matter that the parent organization is a non-profit. The duty remains.
  - comp_throw7 3y ago
    Yes, those responsibilities are to advance the charter of the organization, which notably is totally compatible with publishing articles that contain mild criticism of the organization's behavior.
  - 15457345234 3y ago
    This has been argued here already and dissected thoroughly. It's basically restating 'her role is to cheerlead' but with more sophisticated wording. You haven't made an argument, you've just used longer words to restate your (incorrect) opinion. Also I never said they had an 'advisory' board. Board members ar either executive or non-executive members. If they're nonexec then their role is to advise the executive members. They're generally fairly independent and many nonexecutive board members serve on the boards of multiple companies, sometimes including ones that are nominally in competition with each other.
zucker42 3y ago
I think you're taking the intuition from a for-profit company and wrongly applying it to a non-profit company. When a board member criticizes a for-profit company, that's bad because the goal of the company is make a profit, and bad PR is bad for profit. A board member criticizing a non-profit doesn't have the same direct connection to a result opposite of the goals of the company. And if you actually read the page, it's an extremely mild criticism of OpenAI's decisions. This situation is simultaneously "reckless board makes ill-considered mistake to suddenly fire CEO with insufficient justification" and "non-profit CEO slowly changes the culture of a non-profit to turn it into profit-seeking enterprise that he has a large amount of control over".
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- Aunche 3y ago
  >A board member criticizing a non-profit doesn't have the same direct connection to a result opposite of the goals of the company. Even in a nonprofit, the board has an obligation to maintain a good working relationship with their organization. It's very rare for a board member to publicly criticized for their own organization. Also, this argument goes out the window because OpenAI is not just a nonprofit. When they started their for-profit subsidiary in 2019, they accepted a fiduciary duty to their investors.
  - sarchertech 3y ago
    That’s not how that works. You can argue that Ilya has a fiduciary responsibility to the investors as an officer of the company. Toner doesn’t. She is an independent board member on the board of the non-profit that owns a controlling share in the company, but she doesn’t personally own a majority share of the company. As an independent board member, she has no duty but to uphold the charter. She represents no shareholders. Majority shareholders may have some fiduciary responsibility to minority shareholders, so you might be able to make the argument that the board as a whole shouldn’t write disparaging remarks about the company. But even that argument is tenuous.
cycomanic 3y ago
What do you mean? Schmidt was on Apple's board for 3 years while he was CEO of Google. Do you think Google did not criticise Apple during that whole time (remember that the CEO is ultimately responsible for the company communications)? Even more in the case of OpenAI, the board member is on the board of a non-profit, those are typical much more independent and very often more critical of the decisions made by other board members. Just search for board members criticising medical/charity/government boards they are sitting on, there are plenty. That's not even considering if the article was in fact critical.
- selestify 3y ago
  Why was Schmidt on Apple’s board? Did he care about Apple’s mission or Apple shareholders?
- nvm0n2 3y ago
  FWIW that was a pretty strained relationship and iirc Eric had to frequently recuse himself during any discussion of the iPhone which eventually made his membership untenable.
murakamiiq84 3y ago
Is this even true for for-profit companies? Like if a professor is on the board of a for-profit (which I think is pretty common for deeptech? Maybe companies in general too? https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/fima.12069#:~:text=US%20corporations%20commonly%20elect%20professors,directors%20are%20drawn%20from%20academia https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/fima.12069#:....), is he/she banned from making a technical point about how a competitor's product or best practices is occasionally superior to the company's product?

I mean it's not cool for board members to publicly criticize the company.

by abi 3y ago

I mean it's not cool for board members to publicly criticize the company.

it's not cool for companies to try to shut down academic freedom of inquiry in scholarly publishing in order to improve their public image her independence from openai was the nominal reason she was asked to supervise it in the first place, wasn't it

foota 3y ago
I'm not sure you should get to have your cake and eat it too.
- 15457345234 3y ago
  You seem to be fundamentally misunderstanding the role of non-executive board members. In many cases they're industry experts / academics and in many cases those academics continue to publish papers that look objectively at the actions of all companies in their sphere of influence, including the one they're on the board of. It's _expected_ for them to publish this type of material. It's literally their job. Cheerleading is for the C-suite.
  - foota 3y ago
    They've admitted that they think it would be better to destroy open AI than to continue on its path, but how can an organization uphold its goals if it doesn't exist? Imo you have to commit to working within an organization if you're on its board, you can't burn it down from within. I think it's less of an issue to try to remove the CEO if you don't agree with the direction they're taking, but this was obviously done in a sloppy manner in this case, and their willingness to destroy it makes me distrust them (not that my opinion matters per se).
    - 15457345234 3y ago
      > but this was obviously done in a sloppy manner I don't think it was done in a sloppy manner, I think there's a huge amount of spin and froth being generated to make it _look_ like it was done in a sloppy manner, but the reality is that the board took an executive action, released a discreet and concisely worded press release and then fell silent, which is 100% professional behaviour. To me it's the other side that are acting sloppily, they're thrashing around like maniacs, they're obviously calling in favours behind the scenes as supportive articles are popping up all over the place, apparently employees were calling other employees in the middle of the night urging them to sign the 'I'll quit unless' letter, employees have been fed a misleading narrative (two of them, actually) about why the action was taken in the first place which riled them up... I have to assume here that the board - as they're the ones acting professionally - similarly acted professionally before the firing and discussed the matter at great length and only resorted to this last minute firing because of exigent circumstances. The fact that a fired employee was able to cajole/bluff/whatever his way back into the office to prove some sort of point suggests that the board's action may have been necessary. What exactly was done during that time in the office, one might ask? Were systems accessed? Surely it was an unauthorised entry and a major security violation. You do see that that action (re-entering the office after being fired) gives off lunatic vibes, don't you? Maybe it really did come down to 'yeah you're technically my boss but I'm gonna do whatever the hell I want and there's nothing you can do about it because everyone loves me' to which the board's only possible course of action is to fire immediately.
      - foota 3y ago
        I don't think Sam cajoled their way and talked to the employees, as I understand it Ilya talked with the staff and revealed what they claimed were the reasons for the firing.
        15457345234 3y ago
        In your opinion, was a crime committed when that person returned to the office? Either by himself or by the person that permitted him access knowing beyond any reasonable doubt that they were not authorized to be there? If systems were accessed, was another crime committed? If a person facilitated that access, has the boundary for 'conspiracy to commit...' been reached?
- kragen 3y ago
  that does seem to be what altman was attempting: he wanted to have the cake of independent board members, but eat it by having them never express any opinions contrary to his own
jxi 3y ago
He wasn't shutting down her academic freedom. However, if you're going to diss what your own company is doing and praise competitors, you probably shouldn't be on the board. >During the call, Jason Kwon, OpenAI’s chief strategy officer, said the board was endangering the future of the company by pushing out Mr. Altman. This, he said, violated the members’ responsibilities. >Ms. Toner disagreed. The board’s mission is to ensure that the company creates artificial intelligence that “benefits all of humanity,” and if the company was destroyed, she said, that could be consistent with its mission. This person is too far gone. Life isn't a movie.
- sudosysgen 3y ago
  This is a non-profit, not a for profit company. Nominally, she's on the board precisely to criticize.
  - random_cynic 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - comp_throw7 3y ago
      > A board member cannot sabotage their own company. Criticism (especially valid criticism) is not sabotage, and in any case the board's responsibility is to advance the charter, not to support the (non-profit) company regardless of what it's doing.
- kragen 3y ago
  that would be true for a for-profit company where her fiduciary duty was to shareholders, but in this case, given the charter in question, not publicly criticizing the company would be more likely to be a breach of her fiduciary duty
- jibal 3y ago
  > This person is too far gone. Life isn't a movie. This comment is a credibility killer. "This person", as a member of the board of a non-profit, has a duty to keep the non-profit on mission, and even to call for its dissolution if that isn't possible.
ecshafer 3y ago
There is a difference between independent from an organization, and someone that takes a public stand against a company. Reading that paper, which I am not really impressed with, they are taking a stance that openai's current trajectory is not as good as a competitor. I bet that if a Microsoft board member wrote a paper how Google search is better than Bing / AWS Better than Azure / OSX better than Windows they would be reprimanded also.
- ralfd 3y ago
  But I bet if a Greenpeace-like-organization board member would write a paper how a different environmental group is greener, they would be praised.
- abracadaniel 3y ago
  A comparison to another nonprofit would make more sense. A board member of the Komen Foundation being reprimanded for pointing out that other nonprofits are far more effective at helping cancer research would be a better comparison.
- jibal 3y ago
  Non-profits and for-profits aren't comparable. The latter have a duty to make money. The former has a duty to its mission.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

15457345234 3y ago

It's a nonprofit board & it's absolutely the role of advisory board members to continue their work in the sector they're specialized in without bias.

jxi 3y ago
But she was biased. She seemed so biased against her own company that her intended course of action seems to be to destroy it.
- 15457345234 3y ago
  If she has a justifiable reason for holding that position it isn't bias.
kickopotomus 3y ago
OpenAI does not have an advisory board. She is on the board of directors and has fiduciary responsibilities. It does not matter that the parent organization is a non-profit. The duty remains.
- comp_throw7 3y ago
  Yes, those responsibilities are to advance the charter of the organization, which notably is totally compatible with publishing articles that contain mild criticism of the organization's behavior.
- 15457345234 3y ago
  This has been argued here already and dissected thoroughly. It's basically restating 'her role is to cheerlead' but with more sophisticated wording. You haven't made an argument, you've just used longer words to restate your (incorrect) opinion. Also I never said they had an 'advisory' board. Board members ar either executive or non-executive members. If they're nonexec then their role is to advise the executive members. They're generally fairly independent and many nonexecutive board members serve on the boards of multiple companies, sometimes including ones that are nominally in competition with each other.

zucker42 3y ago

I think you're taking the intuition from a for-profit company and wrongly applying it to a non-profit company. When a board member criticizes a for-profit company, that's bad because the goal of the company is make a profit, and bad PR is bad for profit. A board member criticizing a non-profit doesn't have the same direct connection to a result opposite of the goals of the company. And if you actually read the page, it's an extremely mild criticism of OpenAI's decisions. This situation is simultaneously "reckless board makes ill-considered mistake to suddenly fire CEO with insufficient justification" and "non-profit CEO slowly changes the culture of a non-profit to turn it into profit-seeking enterprise that he has a large amount of control over".

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
Aunche 3y ago
>A board member criticizing a non-profit doesn't have the same direct connection to a result opposite of the goals of the company. Even in a nonprofit, the board has an obligation to maintain a good working relationship with their organization. It's very rare for a board member to publicly criticized for their own organization. Also, this argument goes out the window because OpenAI is not just a nonprofit. When they started their for-profit subsidiary in 2019, they accepted a fiduciary duty to their investors.
- sarchertech 3y ago
  That’s not how that works. You can argue that Ilya has a fiduciary responsibility to the investors as an officer of the company. Toner doesn’t. She is an independent board member on the board of the non-profit that owns a controlling share in the company, but she doesn’t personally own a majority share of the company. As an independent board member, she has no duty but to uphold the charter. She represents no shareholders. Majority shareholders may have some fiduciary responsibility to minority shareholders, so you might be able to make the argument that the board as a whole shouldn’t write disparaging remarks about the company. But even that argument is tenuous.

cycomanic 3y ago

What do you mean? Schmidt was on Apple's board for 3 years while he was CEO of Google. Do you think Google did not criticise Apple during that whole time (remember that the CEO is ultimately responsible for the company communications)? Even more in the case of OpenAI, the board member is on the board of a non-profit, those are typical much more independent and very often more critical of the decisions made by other board members. Just search for board members criticising medical/charity/government boards they are sitting on, there are plenty. That's not even considering if the article was in fact critical.

selestify 3y ago
Why was Schmidt on Apple’s board? Did he care about Apple’s mission or Apple shareholders?
nvm0n2 3y ago
FWIW that was a pretty strained relationship and iirc Eric had to frequently recuse himself during any discussion of the iPhone which eventually made his membership untenable.

murakamiiq84 3y ago

Is this even true for for-profit companies? Like if a professor is on the board of a for-profit (which I think is pretty common for deeptech? Maybe companies in general too? https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/fima.12069#:~:text=US%20corporations%20commonly%20elect%20professors,directors%20are%20drawn%20from%20academia https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/fima.12069#:....), is he/she banned from making a technical point about how a competitor's product or best practices is occasionally superior to the company's product?