Oh for sure. Boards make mistakes All the time. The only difference here is that it is very public and very visible and board members rarely admit they make mistakes.
I’m probably in the minority, but of everyone in this fiasco, the only one that I am confident is not full machivalean is Ilya.
We really have no idea what games everyone else is playing. We only know Ilya isn’t playing them, at least not anymore.
Sorry, but I don’t agree.
There are plenty of AI experts outside of Open AI.
It’s just (was) a good brand that had a lot of momentum.
Massive respect to Ilya for this retraction. It takes a big heart and a working conscience to do, something we see too little of in world leaders.
I think passion can make people do some crazy things sometimes. I also think a lot of people tend to take advantage of passionate people.
I completely concur with your commendation of Ilya, it does indeed take considerable courage and integrity to retract, a virtue rarely showcased by many leaders currently. Looking closely at the bigger picture, it appears Ilya’s actions might signify a pivotal change in OpenAI’s trajectory.
Could it be that Ilya anticipates breakthroughs in AGI and is pre-emptively pushing OpenAI towards a headspace that values thoughtful choices over relentless technological advances? An environment that encourages pondering, rather than continuously racing to broaden token limits?
Those directly involved with OpenAI would likely feel the initial impact of such a shift. If so, their reasons to undertake such transformations must indeed be compelling.
Perhaps as a community largely unaffected by OpenAI’s pecuniary dynamics, we should acknowledge and support such initiatives. Consider this: Maybe their intention is to foster stronger collaborations with global researchers like Lucan or Hinton, rather than subscribe to a closed-off mentality?
Could OpenAI’s new direction be an attempt to differentiate from the traditional paths of tech giants like Microsoft or Google and instead, navigate towards a more interconnected future? Acting now might well pave the way for a healthier paradigm in this swiftly evolving industry.
Maybe Ilya was the one who agreed with you on this?
Since the definition of “conspiracy theory” is simply that multiple people are working to achieve a common goal, while keeping some details secret, that’s precisely what’s happening here.
If Microsoft ends up owning all the OpenAI employees, that’s essentially taking ownership of the 51% share that the other investors owned, for zero dollars. I don’t think it’s out of the question for those investors to ask “what really happened here”.
I don’t think we are going to see the reason behind this until the board admits wrongdoing and retracts what appears to be one of the biggest defamatory firings of a billionaire (with all the resources required to rain legal hellfire). They basically called Altman a liar and a cheat.
Lawyers are holding this whole mess up and likely trying to position the board for maximum damage control.
The true reason behind this debacle is likely far less exotic than we all think.
The weak explanations they have come up with will probably be sufficient.
The root problem is amateur board members with nothing but legal authority (except Ilya) overthinking their roles combined with a very weird governance structure.
Yeah, I don’t think this definition holds.
But let’s not get bogged down by semantics and focus on what’s ahead instead.
The first word of that definition references “probabilities” judgements.
I find it highly improbable that the board did this “rug-pull” last Friday, without understand the likely consequences.
EDIT: Helen Toner is especially talented at strategy and known for that. She didn’t just suddenly decide on Friday to ouster Sam so quickly she didn’t even have time to call Satya. Not with billions at stake. That scenario is the “low probability” one.
Yeah i agree on that, but at the same time this can be the outcome of bad play from others sides
we have to consider that there are others like Google , X , Meta and …
they must know this and if this is this bad they must prevent it !
if not i think this is safe to consider that there are other plays here because they can’t be that bad!
and i just can’t consider that most of the board just suddenly decided to not have Sam without considering these as they all are not new players in these games and not forget they have better AI for themselves
i think that main request from us should be to gather enough voices to make them know that they must talk and this is not another Google, if so i happily admit that i prefer to OpenAI go bankrupt and dismantle.
Irrationality of the moment while it must have been impossible to be so impulsive and irrational makes me worried about the real reasons here and i think they must be seriously open about this because honestly i don’t care much about Sam being there or not we have so many brilliant people and i hate everything is about Sam.
uhhhh… no. Not dialing in Satya was profoundly the most amateurish thing imaginable. The only other explanation for not dialing in Satya is they wanted to burn OpenAI to the ground.
IMHO there are two possibilities:
(a) - they rushed it because they wanted to make it happen before Ilya changed his mind / Sam / Satya talked him out of it
(b) - there is some bad thing beneath all this we don’t know about yet.
(a) is most probable, but i don’t discount (b)
Please don’t post blatant misinformation, it doesn’t help the conversation 
(It’s a rickroll)
Sam back on the board as they negotiate over replacements?
Smart move at least. It would calm things down a bunch. Nice to see folks thinking at least with more sophistication, even if not yet quite productive.
Might be a bit of a trap for Sam though, unless he can get gdb on the board as well.
Can’t we just give any credit that it was at least a solid rick roll?
(I won’t do it again 
)
We’re no strangers to that web link.
But c’mon. You know the rules and so do I.
Thanks for the update.
creating the frankly unprecedented situation where (1) the interim CEO who replaced (2) the interim CEO who replaced Sam and who (3) got replaced for trying to get Sam back is now (4) deeply involved in a new effort to get Sam back. Read it through a few times, it’s fine. It doesn’t make any sense to anyone else either.
LOL
