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Comment by tbrownaw | Hacker News Reader

> She said, "We were very careful, very deliberate about who we told, which was essentially almost no one in advance, other than obviously our legal team and so that's kind of what took us to to November 17."

Did they not at least have a briefing packet or something prepared to give to major investors (ie, Microsoft) day-of if they were so worried about leaks that they couldn't get the major investors (ie, their own bosses) on board ahead of time?

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Major investors aren't the board's boss in this case because OpenAI is a nonprofit. Microsoft is incentivized to act against the goals nonprofit's charter (and in fact they did in this case).

As much as on paper they aren't the board's boss, based on how events turned out they effectively were. They had leverage over the board to get what they want.

I think it's not as much that Microsoft is their boss or not, it's that no one considered the board to be the boss of OpenAI. That's why we saw so many employees wish to leave when they fired Sam Altman.

I agree that the board overestimated their own power, and underestimated the need to get their business partners on board with Altman's firing. However, I think calling Microsoft the board's boss implies that Microsoft has some sort of moral or legal high ground.

One way this debacle has been portrayed in the media is "an unaccountable board tried to destroy a profitable company". I think a more accurate portrayal is "Sam Altman and Microsoft worked together to deemphasize the company's scientific and humanitarian goals and emphasize building successful and profitable products". It's sort of depressing how Microsoft was able to "capture" a nonprofit.

“Non profit”

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