Not exactly. Ilya allegedly disliked Sam fundraising side hustles off his profile at OpenAI. It sounds like a confluence of factors precipitated the ousting.
I've always had similar questions about folks like Musk and Dorsey. Is it simply lack of proper governance? Is it something written into their contacts? Is this just a Silicon Valley thing? I can only imagine that a lot of people would like to work on many side projects, but their employment agreements forbid it.
Folks like Musk and Dorsey have a lot more leverage when they're negotiating their contracts but when it comes to public companies, they get sued all the time over their decisions. The lawsuits are just very drawn out, boring affairs that normally get settled during discovery, before any details actually become public so we don't often hear much about them from the media.
Musk was sued by tons of people over self dealing when Tesla bought SolarCity, for example.
That's good, then he probably won't mind not being there.
You can get away with a lot when you’re effective.
Investors buy shares (or similar), and maybe some other rights or benefits with money. They do this with a contract, like any other business deal. There is nothing unethical that I can see about any action vis-a-vis the investors as long as the contracts are honoured (and the action is not otherwise unethical).
Directors and board members do have certain (e.g. fiduciary) duties which my require conflicts of interest to be disclosed and approved, but in the case of Musk and (it seems) at least this particular Sam, investors and others to whom they have this duties can be quite willing to make such approvals.
P.S. for what it's worth, not all companies forbid other work or side projects (I know this because we don't, unless you're planning on simultaneously working for a direct competitor).
If I'm a government official, then it's a conflict of interest if I own a construction company and increase budget for specific constructions to give my company a boost. This obviously happens in our government today, but it doesn't not make it a major problem.
The other perspective is one of grifting. It's similar to con men, who just move from thing to thing gathering up chips at the table. These investors and so-called entrepreneurs are just like that. They are interested in upping their profile at all costs. Their investments and companies are just a means.
I have worked in jobs where I need to report stock holdings more than a certain amount. Imagine a scenario where a low-level worker could affect billion dollar companies' stock enough to benefit from by buying their products on the job. Such a scenario doesn't exist, but the conflicts of interest are still tracked. It is much easier for high profile executives to affect price movements, amd that's why it's more, not less, important for high-level employees.
For companies, if you have investors, employees, and (implicitly, because they continue to do business with you) customers all supportive of someone remaining in their position in spite of real or potential conflicts of interest then I think it's reasonable to say those are acceptable — and certainly not unethical — conflicts of interest.
The board deserves and has the right to a say, of course, but the extent to which it can justify a position that goes against those other groups is at best debatable even if they are not wholly comfortable with said conflicts. After all, the board should serve the company (customers, employees, shareholders/investors) and not itself. This [1] timeline of OpenAI board changes also seems to suggest some level of opportunism, and the possibility that at other times, or had departing members been replaced, it may not have been possible to get board consensus for firing Sam, either.
[1] https://loeber.substack.com/p/a-timeline-of-the-openai-board
If it's not a violation of an agreement you've made, it seems ethically fine. Impractical perhaps, but not an ethical issue.
The real question is whether overly-broad IP assignment clauses are ethical.
Half of the current 4-member board is also involved with GovAI, which is dedicated to AI safety research and advocating regulation. Aren't they more likely to think that OpenAI has been extremely reckless in publicly releasing models and research like they have?