You’re right - the board construction is remarkably bad. Seems like it was a classic case of centralizing power by stuffing the board with relative nobodies.
newsflash, most of society works exactly like this.
er...have you looked at the boards of most startups?
it's VCes and mates, not highly qualified people in implementing that particular product area.
"An AI researcher at Oxford" sounds pretty qualified!
For a board seat at a major company? That’s rather untypical. She wasn’t exactly a famous researcher in her field either when appointed.