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Comment by maxglute | Hacker News Reader

I haven't followed the situation as closely as others, but it does seem like board structured to not have 7 figure cheques that could influence / undermine safety mission seemingly willing to let openAI burn out of dogma. Employees want their 7 figure cheques, their interests aligned with deeper pockets and larger powers with 10+ figures on the line. Reporting so far have felt biased accordingly. If this was about money/power for the board, they would have been easily bought off considering how much is on the line. IMO board serious about mission but got out maneuvered.

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Seems like the board's mission went off the rails long ago and it acted late. Some snippets from the OpenAI website...

"Investing in OpenAI Global, LLC is a high-risk investment"

"Investors could lose their capital contribution and not see any return"

"It would be wise to view any investment in OpenAI Global, LLC in the spirit of a donation, with the understanding that it may be difficult to know what role money will play in a post-AGI world"

These are some heavy statements. It's fine to accept money from private investors who really do believe in that mission. It seems like you can't continue with the same mission if you're taking billions from public companies which have investors who are very much interested in profit. It's like putting your head in the sand with your hand out.

One of the board members seemed to believe that destroying OpenAI could still be inline with the mission. If that's the case, then they should have accepted slow progress due to funding constraints and killed the idea of creating the for-profit.

Could it be possible that the board was just naive and believed that they would be able to control a capped-profit arm, but the inevitable mechanisms of capital eventually took over once they let them in?

I can't find these quotes (especially the post-AGI world quote) on their site.

Sorry, should have linked to it. You can find it in a purple box on this page...

https://openai.com/our-structure

>It seems like you can't continue with the same mission if you're taking billions from public companies which have investors who are very much interested in profit.

Why not? Public companies contribute to charities all the time.

If the stories from media and elsewhere were correct, then current and future investors (Microsoft, Thrive Capital) were pressuring OpenAI to bring back Sam. They wouldn't be doing that if they were giving to charity?

Not at the scale involved here.

>should have accepted slow progress

Sure, should have. I think indicators in the last year have pointed to the domain developing much faster than anticipated, with Ilya seemingly incredulous at how well models he spend his career developing, suddenly started working and scaling incredibly well. If they thought billions of "donations" would sustain development in commercial capabilities X within constraints of the mission, but got X^10 way outside constraints, and their explicit goal was to to make sure X^10 doesn't arrive without Y^10 in consideration for safety, it's reasonable for hard liners to reevaluate, and if forces behind the billions get in the way, to burn it all down.

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