Actually, I think every plot twist we’ve seen has been a surprise for them as they have consistently acted without 5 minutes of foresight.
And not just with the drama. For example, according to Stratechery, the clause in the contract saying Microsoft couldn’t use GPT-4 as a foundation for their own models was recently removed in a contract revision. If you don’t like your CEO, and Microsoft likes your CEO, and Microsoft has the rights to your models and code, it doesn’t take much to add up 2 + 2 + 2 = 6.
The current story is that the board scrambled to find unconvincing grounds when explaining themselves to employees instead https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38356534
Which is ironic considering how much they claim to be focused on long term risks :)