I'm sure that there are things they could have done better even with that context, but I think most of the confusion stems from people on here not understanding the motivations of these people.
Personally i saw the for-profit subsidiary as a pretty decent middle ground. Obviously this action took place because the current board felt the company moved too far in the for-profit direction. While they do have the technical right and ability to fire Sam and Greg, and it was the "right" thing to do to bring the company back to the non-profit roots, do you really think the employees saw it the same way? How many hours do the board minus Ilya actually contribute in a week to OpenAI? None of the board members minus Ilya were even around before the for-profit subsidy was created so can they truly align the new OpenAI with something they didnt experience?
Also an aspect i didn't really see anywhere but they had 3 board members leave in 2023. How would those board members have voted? I'd guess probably not to fire Sam but i have no clue. Also why did they not add more board members when those left? Did Sam and Greg want the board expanded again but the other 3 kept voting to not expand and to keep the power?
What if they feel like they shouldn’t be focused on selling a product?
In the 20 threads about this topic on HN over the last few days I’m really kind of blown away by the inability for people to see a different worldview than their own.
Wanting a stake in hot in demand super valuable tech company that’s growing rapidly is a value judgment. Not everyone wants that. Some people actively think companies like this are harming society.
Everything they do needs LOTS of compute. GPT-4 training alone took 100 million GPU hours to train. And they are constantly training new models. And even non-training research is VERY expensive[1]. Without compute that organization is as good as dead.
[1] https://openai.com/research/language-models-can-explain-neur...
The idea that Microsoft is somehow the one with the leverage here is fucking delusional yet I see it in every thread over this weekend.
They could get caught with a dumpster full of dead babies and there will still be a line around the block of people that want to partner with them.
> What if they feel like they shouldn’t be focused on selling a product?
Investor interest stems from focus on product. Having most valuable and in demand product in a generation doesn't matter if you bury it into the ground.
> The idea that Microsoft is somehow the one with the leverage here is fucking delusional yet I see it in every thread over this weekend.
If you think that anyone will give billions of dollars to organization that fucks their investors and is that much unstable, you are the one delusional.
If MS takes their ball and goes home because the OpenAI board made a decision they didn't like, it's better that that happen sooner rather than later, eh? The whole point of OpenAI is to put human values before the profit motive, no?
Why would they suddenly stop acting in the best interest of their business?
Imagine the headlines, "MS Guts OpenAI for Putting Ethics over Profit." That's how it would spin, eh?
Apologies.
look at it this way, pissing off a trillion dollar company for no good reason is an existential risk no matter what org structure you have.
They hold zero fiduciary duty to Microsoft or anyone else.
I must admit that my opinion/perspective has changed on this issue in the last 35 hours. I believe that when AGI is achieved it can help with serious societal, scientific, and environmental problems, so I am by nature ‘full speed ahead.’
However, I now think that the board performed its legal fiduciary responsibilities and acted correctly. I changed my mind late Friday night after reviewing the 501 charter. It is the board’s obligation to act.
I am also a big fan of Sam Altman and I can’t wait to see what he does next.
isn't the board pretty much hat-in-hand asking Sam to come back?
You can try a case in the court of public opinion but they have no actual influence here.
The only question is what Microsoft will do and how the board will respond.
Remember, Uber, over time, has been a net lose financially.
Microsoft should have looked at this and forced them to clean up their act before getting in bed with them. Now they're embroiled in the bush league shenanigans.
So it’s a charity.
> So we devised a structure to preserve our Nonprofit’s core mission, governance, and oversight while enabling us to raise the capital for our mission:
> The OpenAI Nonprofit would remain intact, with its board continuing as the overall governing body for all OpenAI activities.
> A new for-profit subsidiary would be formed, capable of issuing equity to raise capital and hire world class talent, but still at the direction of the Nonprofit. Employees working on for-profit initiatives were transitioned over to the new subsidiary.
> The for-profit would be legally bound to pursue the Nonprofit’s mission, and carry out that mission by engaging in research, development, commercialization and other core operations.