They were because they had an extremely fragile coalition and only a brief window of opportunity.
They certainly did not have the power to tell Altman they were going to fire him in several weeks and expect that to stick. None of them, Sutskever included, have ever struck me as that suicidally naive. And it looks like they had good reason to expect that they had little time given the Slack comments Sutskever saw.
Also, remember that Altman has many, many options available to him. Since people seem to think that the board could’ve just dicked around and had the luxury of waiting a long time, I will highlight one specific tactic that the board should have been very worried about, which possibility did not permit any warning or hint to Altman, and which required moving as fast as possible once reality sank in & they decided to not cede control over OA to Altman: (WSJ)
Some OpenAI executives told her [Helen Toner] that everything relating to their company makes its way into the press.
That is, Altman (or those execs) had the ability to deniably manufacture a Toner scandal at any second by calling up a friendly reporter at, say, The Information, to highlight the (public) paper, which about an hour later (depending on local Pacific Time), would then ‘prove’ him right about it and provide grounds for an emergency board meeting that day to vote on expelling Toner if she was too stubborn to ‘resign’. After which, of course, they would need to immediately vote on new board members to fill out a far-too-small board with Toner gone, whether or not that had been on the official agenda, and this new board would, of course, have to approve of any prior major decisions like ‘firing the CEO’. Now, Altman hadn’t done this because Altman didn’t want the cost of a public scandal, however much of a tempest-in-a-teapot-nothingburger it would be, he was very busy with other things which seemed higher priority and had been neglecting the board, and he didn’t think he needed to pay that cost to get Toner off the board. But if he suddenly needed Toner off the board fast as his #1 priority...
The board did not have ‘a few weeks’. (After all, once that complex and overwhelmingly important sale was wrapped up… Altman would be less busy and turning his attention to wrapping up other unfinished business he’d neglected.) They did not have days. For all they knew, they could even have had negative hours if Altman had gotten impatient & leaked an hour ago & the scandal had started while they were still discussing what to do. Regardless of whether Toner realized the implied threat at the time (she may have but been unable to do anything about it), once they had Sutskever, they needed to move as fast as possible.
Even if they had decided to take the risk of delay, the only point would have been to do something that would not alert Altman at all, which would be… what, exactly? What sort of meaningful preparation demanded by the board’s critics could have been done under those constraints? (Giving Satya Nadella a heads-up? Altman would know within 10 minutes. Trying to recruit Brockman to stay on? 1 minute.)
So, they decided quickly to remove Altman and gave him roughly the minimum notice required by the bylaws of 48h*, without being able to do much besides talk to their lawyers and write the press release—and here we are.
* you may be tempted to reply ‘then Altman couldn’t’ve kicked Toner out that fast because he’d need that 48h notice too’; you are very clever, but note that the next section says they can all waive that required notice at the tap of a button, and if he called an ‘emergency meeting’ & they still believed in him, then they of course would do so—refusing to do so & insisting on 48h amounts to telling him that the jig is up. Whereas them sending him notice for an ‘ordinary’ meeting in 48h is completely normal and not suspicious, and he had no clue.
They were because they had an extremely fragile coalition and only a brief window of opportunity.
They certainly did not have the power to tell Altman they were going to fire him in several weeks and expect that to stick. None of them, Sutskever included, have ever struck me as that suicidally naive. And it looks like they had good reason to expect that they had little time given the Slack comments Sutskever saw.
Also, remember that Altman has many, many options available to him. Since people seem to think that the board could’ve just dicked around and had the luxury of waiting a long time, I will highlight one specific tactic that the board should have been very worried about, which possibility did not permit any warning or hint to Altman, and which required moving as fast as possible once reality sank in & they decided to not cede control over OA to Altman: (WSJ)
That is, Altman (or those execs) had the ability to deniably manufacture a Toner scandal at any second by calling up a friendly reporter at, say, The Information, to highlight the (public) paper, which about an hour later (depending on local Pacific Time), would then ‘prove’ him right about it and provide grounds for an emergency board meeting that day to vote on expelling Toner if she was too stubborn to ‘resign’. After which, of course, they would need to immediately vote on new board members to fill out a far-too-small board with Toner gone, whether or not that had been on the official agenda, and this new board would, of course, have to approve of any prior major decisions like ‘firing the CEO’. Now, Altman hadn’t done this because Altman didn’t want the cost of a public scandal, however much of a tempest-in-a-teapot-nothingburger it would be, he was very busy with other things which seemed higher priority and had been neglecting the board, and he didn’t think he needed to pay that cost to get Toner off the board. But if he suddenly needed Toner off the board fast as his #1 priority...
The board did not have ‘a few weeks’. (After all, once that complex and overwhelmingly important sale was wrapped up… Altman would be less busy and turning his attention to wrapping up other unfinished business he’d neglected.) They did not have days. For all they knew, they could even have had negative hours if Altman had gotten impatient & leaked an hour ago & the scandal had started while they were still discussing what to do. Regardless of whether Toner realized the implied threat at the time (she may have but been unable to do anything about it), once they had Sutskever, they needed to move as fast as possible.
Even if they had decided to take the risk of delay, the only point would have been to do something that would not alert Altman at all, which would be… what, exactly? What sort of meaningful preparation demanded by the board’s critics could have been done under those constraints? (Giving Satya Nadella a heads-up? Altman would know within 10 minutes. Trying to recruit Brockman to stay on? 1 minute.)
So, they decided quickly to remove Altman and gave him roughly the minimum notice required by the bylaws of 48h*, without being able to do much besides talk to their lawyers and write the press release—and here we are.
* you may be tempted to reply ‘then Altman couldn’t’ve kicked Toner out that fast because he’d need that 48h notice too’; you are very clever, but note that the next section says they can all waive that required notice at the tap of a button, and if he called an ‘emergency meeting’ & they still believed in him, then they of course would do so—refusing to do so & insisting on 48h amounts to telling him that the jig is up. Whereas them sending him notice for an ‘ordinary’ meeting in 48h is completely normal and not suspicious, and he had no clue.