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The more relevant part is probably "OpenAI’s mission is to ensure that AGI ... benefits all of humanity".

The statement "it would be consistent with the company mission to destroy the company" is correct. The word "would be" rather than "is" implies some condition, it doesn't have to apply to the current circumstances.

A hypothesis is that Sam was attempting to gain full control of the board by getting the majority, and therefore the current board would be unable to hold him accountable to follow the mission in the future. Therefore, the board may have considered it necessary to stop him in order to fulfill the mission. There's no hard evidence of that revealed yet though.

It is a correct statement, not really "borderline narcissistic". The board's mission is to help humanity develop safe beneficial AGI. If the board thinks that the company is hindering this mission (e.g. doing unsafe things), then it's the board's duty to stop the company.

Of course, the employees want the company to continue, and weren't told much at this point so it is understandable that they didn't like the statement.

I thought so originally too, but when I thought about their perspective, I realized I would probably sign too. Imagine that your CEO and leadership has led your company to the top of the world, and you're about to get a big payday. Suddenly, without any real explanation, the board kicks out the CEO. The leadership almost all supports the CEO and signs the pledge, including your manager. What would you do at that point? Personally, I'd sign just so I didn't stand out, and stay on good terms with leadership.

The big thing for me is that the board didn't say anything in its defense, and the pledge isn't really binding anyway. I wouldn't actually be sure about supporting the CEO and that would bother me a bit morally, but that doesn't outweigh real world concerns.

According to this tweet thread[1], they negotiated hard for Sam to be off the board and Adam to stay on. That indicates, at least if we're being optimistic, that the current board is not in Sam's pocket (otherwise they wouldn't have bothered)

[1]:(https://twitter.com/emilychangtv/status/1727216818648134101)

I think it actually isn't that easy. Compared to your example, the difference is that OpenAI's for-profit is getting outside money from Microsoft, not money from non-profit OpenAI. Non-profit OpenAI is basically dealing with for-profit OpenAI as a external partner that happens to be aligned with their interests, paying the expensive bills and compute, while the non-profit can hold on to the IP.

You might be able to imagine a world where there was an external company that did the same thing as for-profit OpenAI, and OpenAI nonprofit partnered with them in order to get their AI ideas implemented (for free). OpenAI nonprofit is basically getting a good deal.

MSF could similarly create an external for-profit hospital, funded by external investors. The important thing is that the nonprofit (donated, tax-free) money doesn't flow into the forprofit section.

Of course, there's a lot of sketchiness in practice, which we can see in this situation with Microsoft influencing the direction of nonprofit OpenAI even though it shouldn't be. I think there would have been real legal issues if the Microsoft deal had continued.

One funny thing about this mess is that "Team Helen" has never mentioned anything about safety, and Emmett said "The board did not remove Sam over any specific disagreement on safety".

The reason everyone thinks it's about safety seems largely because a lot of e/acc people on Twitter keep bringing it up as a strawman.

Of course, it might end up that it really was about safety in the end, but for now I still haven't seen any evidence. The story about Sam trying to get board control and the board retaliating seems more plausible given what's actually happened.

They didn't actually leave, they just signed the pledge threatening to. Furthermore, they mostly signed after the details of the Microsoft offer were revealed.

Adam is likely still on the "decel" faction (although it's unclear whether this is an accurate representation of his beliefs) so I wouldn't really say they lost yet.

I'm not sure what faction Bret and Larry will be on. Sam will still have power by virtue of being CEO and aligned with the employees.

Not only that, consider the situation now, where Sam has returned as CEO. The ones who didn't sign will have some explaining to do.

The safest option was to sign the paper, once the snowball started rolling. There was nothing much to lose, and a lot to gain.

"Context on the negotiations to bring Sam back as CEO of OpenAI:

The biggest sticking point was Sam being on the board. Ultimately, he conceded to not being on the board, at least initially, to close the deal. The hope/expectation is that he will end up on the board eventually."

(https://twitter.com/emilychangtv/status/1727216818648134101)

Sam lost his board representation as a result of all this (though maybe that's temporary).

I believe the goal of the opposing faction was mainly to avoid Sam dominating board and they achieved that, which is why they've accepted the results.

After more opinions come out, I'm guessing Sam's side won't look as strong, and he'll become "fireable" again.

No one really knows who was responsible for what. But Sam agreed to this deal over the Microsoft alternative, so probably Adam isn't that bad.

Sounds like a compromise.

The previous board thought Sam was trying to get full control of the board, so they ousted him. But of course they weren't happy with OpenAI being destroyed either.

Now they agreed to a new board without Sam/Greg, hoping that that will avoid Sam ever getting full control of the board in the future.

I think the middle ground where several of the OpenAI board members were trying for is to "responsibly develop AGI", which means developing at a moderate pace while trying to avoid kicking off an investment gold rush through making heavily commercial use cases, and spending a substantial amount of resources on promising safety research (such as Ilya's work).

In my opinion, it was not a very strong position because the allure of money and trying to be the biggest is too strong (as we're seeing now), but I think it was at least coherent.

how having a GPT store makes AGI destroying the world easier

The argument in general is that the more commercial interest there is in AI, the more money gets invested and the faster the companies will try to move to capture that market. This increases the risk for AGI by speeding up development due to competition, and safety is seen as "decel".

Helen was considering the possibility of Altman-dominated OpenAI that continued to rapidly grow the overall market for AI, and made a statement that perhaps destroying OpenAI would be better for the mission (safe development of AGI).

It sounds like your argument is "Even if OpenAI did something bad, Helen should never write about it, because she is part of OpenAI".

Or, that she should write her paper in the first person: "We, OpenAI, are doing bad things." That would probably be seen as vastly more damaging to OpenAI, and also ridiculous since she doesn't have the right to represent OpenAI as "we".

I have no idea why you think that should be a rule, aside from wanting Helen to never be able to criticize OpenAI publicly. I think it's good for the public if a board member will report what they see as potentially harmful internal problems.

Also of note, this comment by Sam's verified reddit account describing the con as "child's play": (https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/3cs78i/comment/c...)

This sounds convincing, especially considering this story where Sam Altman was involved in a "long con" to seize board control of Reddit (https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/3cs78i/comment/c...).

I think Sam may have been angling to get control of the board for a long time, perhaps years, manipulating the board departures and signing deals with Microsoft. The board finally realized this when it was 3 v 3 (or perhaps 2 v 3 with 1 neutral). But Sam was still working on more funding deals and getting employee loyalty, and the board knew it was only a matter of time until he could force their hand.

It's important because right now everyone, OpenAI employees included, has no idea why Sam Altman was fired. And now we're being told that we may or may not hear the reason in 30 days.

What could the reason be that would justify this kind of wait?

I'll point out that Sam also doesn't seem to want to say the reason (possibly he's legally forbidden?). And all of the people following him out of OpenAI don't know, and are simply trusting him enough to be willing to leave without knowing.

If for-profits were so good, then they probably would've implemented the software you like and you would never need to use any nonprofit stuff.

Not to say that nonprofits are flawless, but they do seem to turn out stuff that's pretty important sometimes even when surrounded by for-profit competitors.

"that the process and communications around Sam’s removal has been handled very badly"

The communication was bad (sudden Friday message about not being candid) but he doesn't mention the reason is bad.

"Before I took the job, I checked on the reasoning behind the change. The board did not remove Sam over any specific disagreement on safety, their reasoning was completely different from that. I'm not crazy enough to take this job without board support for commercializing our awesome models."

He knows the reason, it's not safety, but he's not allowed to say what it is.

Given that, I think that the reason may not be petty, though it's still unclear what it is. It's interesting that he thinks it will take more than a month to figure things out, needing an investigator and interviews with many people. It sounds like perhaps there is a core dysfunction in the company that is part of the reason for the ouster.

He was powerful enough to get put on the board of OpenAI. But I agree that he wants to be a "great" person, above Steve Jobs and Musk and the rest, and he sees AGI as the path to get there. He's not really altruistic, but he's also not purely money-oriented as the original comment seemed to suggest.

I think that if Sam had followed the typical VC/Startup playbook (and he even wrote one), he never would have joined OpenAI, a nonprofit based on totally unproven tech at the time. He was already quite rich and powerful from YC, and decided to take a big risk on AI. I think there was at least some genuine idealism involved.

Being the guy who built AGI will alter the timeline the most, so I think he'll be much more interested in that than being CEO of Microsoft.

I imagine Sam's vision, both before and after this company change, is that he'll keep improving GPTs, while also setting up a thriving ecosystem through APIs, and AI will become a trillion dollar industry with him at the center.

From there, maybe someone will come up with the revolutionary advance necessary to reach AGI. It may not necessarily be under his company, but he'll be the super successful AI guy and in a pretty strong position to influence things anyway.

I think Sam's goal is to create AGI, same as most of the other founders of OpenAI. If he just wanted money and power, he probably would have continued with YC or some other startup instead of joining the nonprofit and unproven OpenAI at the time.

His opinion on the ideal path differs from Ilya's, but I'm guessing his goal remains the same. AGI is the most important thing to work on, and startups and corporations are just a means of getting there.

This is actually pretty surprising to me, since a financially motivated person would normally wait until a better deal, and just collect their paycheck in the meantime.

There's also no guarantee that Altman will really start a new company, or be able to collect funding to hire everyone quickly. I wonder if these people are just very loyal to Sam.

I think it's possible that Sam had some secret plans involving deals with external companies, that the board learned about. They can't reveal that information without potentially damaging other businesses and becoming liable.

I agree. People are making noise now, but in the end almost everyone just cares about money, and won't keep any persistent opinion against OpenAI.

Microsoft will fall in line and do what makes sense once the dust settles, and that probably means continuing to work with OpenAI for the foreseeable future. Most of the employees, even if they supported Sam, will probably also remain until a better option truly appears, and it remains to be seen whether Sam will really open up a competitor and try to hire everyone.

It might be because of AI safety, but I think it's more likely because Sam was executing plans without informing the board, such as making deals with outside companies, allocating funds to profit-oriented products and making announcements about them, and so on. Perhaps he also wanted to reduce investment in the alignment research that Ilya considered important. Hopefully we'll learn the truth soon, though I suspect that it involves confidential deals with other companies and that's why we haven't heard anything.