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Comment by rvz | Hacker News Reader

Given that Ilya switched sides now, it leaves with 3 BOD members that are at the helm.

The one that is really overlooked in this case is the CEO of Quora, Adam D'Angelo, who has a competing interest with Poe and Quora that he sunk his own money into it which ChatGPT and GPTs makes his platform irrelevant.

So why isn't anyone here talking about the conflict of interest with Adam D'Angelo as one of the board members who is the one who is trying to drag OpenAI down in order to save Quora from irrelevancy?

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Oh, people are talking about it, just not as loud. But I think you are dead on: that's the main burning issue at the moment and D'Angelo may well be reviewing his options with his lawyer by his side. Because admitting fault would open him up to liability immediately but there aren't that many ways to exit stage left without doing just that. He's in a world of trouble and I suspect that this is the only thing that has caused him to hold on to that board seat: to have at least a fig leaf of coverage to make it seem as if his acts are all in line with his conscience instead of his wallet.

If it turns out he was the instigator his goose is cooked.

If we assume bad faith on D'Angelo's part (which we don't know for sure), it would obviously be unethical, but is it illegal? It seems like it would be impossible to prove what his motivations were even if it looks obvious to everyone in the peanut gallery. Seems like there's very little recourse against a corrupt board in a situation like this as long as a majority of them are sticking together.

It's not illegal but it is actionable. You don't go to jail for that but you can be sued into the poorhouse.

Unless D'angelo has some expensive eight figure lifestyle, he's not going to a poorhouse anytime soon.

> He was chief technology officer of Facebook, and also served as its vice president of engineering, until 2008.

> D'Angelo was an advisor to and investor in Instagram before its acquisition by Facebook in 2012.

That depends on the amount of damage you cause.

You think he could be personally liable for eight figure plus damages?

Where is the precedent for this?

There is no precedent for this because it is utterly unprecedented. No board in the history of boards has - as far as I know it - acted in such a way that they ended up outright annihilating the thing they were supposed to be governing with total disregard for the consequences. That's not normal behavior, it is so far outside of the norms and rules of conduct for board members that it may well shape those rules and create new legislation.

Because that would be a conflict of interest between the for-profit OpenAI corporation and Adam. How does that conflict impact his ability to make decisions on behalf of the non-profit corporation? Basically what about his ownership of poe constitutes a conflict of interest with the non-profit corporation OpenAI?

Personally, this is the only thing so far that makes sense to me in the middle of all this mess. But who knows…

Is that conflict of interest larger or smaller than the conflict of interest created when your CEO tries to found a business that would be a critical supplier to OpenAI?

I've seen it mentioned several times here, over the course of the weekend.

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