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Comment by blueyes | Hacker News Reader

Any board member who believes it is her duty to destroy the organization she pledged to serve should simply step down.

The folks who argue that it is a CEO's duty to serve the board do not understand governance or power.

Open AI would have wallowed in irrelevance had Altman not raised the billions from Microsoft to fund its research. Because he was able to do that, and built the relationship with Nadella, he had and has power. Toner's behavior seems naive in that context. But naiveté among academics does not surprise me.

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My reading: They weren't picked for their ethics, they were picked for being malleable, to serve as a fig-leaf and to be able to mislead regulators. To Sam's surprise some of them took their job serious, so he tried to get rid of them because he saw the confrontation as inevitable. That backfired, he got terminated, and then that backfired so the boardmembers got the choice to jump on command or vacate the premises.

You can be fairly certain that the board will be stocked with 'yes-men' (and women) beholden to Altman. He will not make that same mistake twice.

He might have been the one to build the relationship but this hardly gives him “power.” He did a sales job basically. Sales people get replaced all the time.

Reminds me of the The Iron Law of Bureaucracy:

"Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people: those who work to further the actual goals of the organization, and those who work for the organization itself. Examples in education would be teachers who work and sacrifice to teach children, vs. union representative who work to protect any teacher including the most incompetent. The Iron Law states that in all cases, the second type of person will always gain control of the organization, and will always write the rules under which the organization functions."

> organization she pledged to serve

First there is no pledge, second I think she served the Open AI Charter.

Your argument is "might makes right".

No, my argument is: if you do not know how to navigate power, you have no business on a board that purports to govern a fast-growing, prominent and critical organization. This board does not exist to serve itself, its abstractions or its ungrounded anxieties. It exists to practically guide a real organization employing many hundreds of people and serving many millions. There is no room for naiveté.

I mean, it's totally fine for a non-profit to "wallow in irrelevance"? I think the fundamental issue here is that a tax-exempt non-profit organization like these board members are leading _shouldn't_ necessarily be chasing fame/fortune. By definition they've put mission above profits (with tax writeoffs as a benefit). The naivety seems to be that the company is trying to be altruistically mission driven while also acting like a typical ambitious/profit seeking startup. Startups are great! Just weird to wrap one in a non-profit which brings different incentives

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