On the first random page Keltham opened to, the author was saying what some ‘Duke’ (high-level Government official) was thinking while ordering the east gates to be sealed, which, like, what, how would the historian know what somebody was thinking, at best you get somebody else’s autobiographical account of what they claim they were thinking, and then the writer is supposed to say that what was observed was the claim, and mark separately any inferences from the observation, because one distinguishes observations from inferences.
This post generally does well on this point (obviously written by a bayesian, Zvi’s coverage is generally superior), except for the claim “Altman started it”. We don’t know who started it, and most of the major players might not even know who started it. According to Alex A:
Smart people who have an objective of accumulating and keeping control—who are skilled at persuasion and manipulation —will often leave little trace of wrongdoing. They’re optimizing for alibis and plausible deniability. Being around them and trying to collaborate with them is frustrating. If you’re self-aware enough, you can recognize that your contributions are being twisted, that your voice is going unheard, and that critical information is being withheld from you, but it’s not easy. And when you try to bring up concerns, they are very good at convincing you that those concerns are actually your fault.
We do know that Microsoft is a giant startup-eating machine with incredible influence in the US government and military, and also globally (e.g. possibly better at planting OS backdoors than the NSA and undoubtedly irreplaceable in that process for most computers in the world), and has been planting roots into Altman himself for almost a year now.
Microsoft has >50 Altman-types for every Altman at OpenAI (I couldn’t find any publicly available information about the correct number of executives at Microsoft). Investors are also savvy, and the number of consultants consulted is not knowable. A friend characterized this basically as “acquiring a ~$50B dollar company for free”.
The obvious outcome where the giant powerful tech company ultimately ends up on top is telling (although the gauche affirmation of allegiance to Microsoft in the wake of the conflict is a weak update since that’s a reasonable thing for Microsoft to expect due to its vulnerability to FUD) because Microsoft is a Usual Suspect, even if purely internal conflict is generally a better explanation and somewhat more likely to be what happened here.
I was actually surprised that the new board ended up with members who might reasonably be expected, under the right circumstances, to resist something Microsoft wanted. I wouldn’t have been surprised if it had ended up all Microsoft employees and obvious Microsoft proxies.
Probably that was a concession in return for the old board agreeing to the whole thing. But it’s also convenient for Altman. It doesn’t matter if he pledges allegiance. The question is what actual leverage Microsoft has over him should he choose to do something Microsoft doesn’t like. This makes a nonzero difference in his favor.
If Sam is as politically astute as he is made out to be, loading the board with blatant MSFT proxies would be bad optics and detract from his image. He just needs to be relatively sure they won’t get in his way or try to coup him again.
From Planecrash page 10:
This post generally does well on this point (obviously written by a bayesian, Zvi’s coverage is generally superior), except for the claim “Altman started it”. We don’t know who started it, and most of the major players might not even know who started it. According to Alex A:
We do know that Microsoft is a giant startup-eating machine with incredible influence in the US government and military, and also globally (e.g. possibly better at planting OS backdoors than the NSA and undoubtedly irreplaceable in that process for most computers in the world), and has been planting roots into Altman himself for almost a year now.
Microsoft has >50 Altman-types for every Altman at OpenAI (I couldn’t find any publicly available information about the correct number of executives at Microsoft). Investors are also savvy, and the number of consultants consulted is not knowable. A friend characterized this basically as “acquiring a ~$50B dollar company for free”.
The obvious outcome where the giant powerful tech company ultimately ends up on top is telling (although the gauche affirmation of allegiance to Microsoft in the wake of the conflict is a weak update since that’s a reasonable thing for Microsoft to expect due to its vulnerability to FUD) because Microsoft is a Usual Suspect, even if purely internal conflict is generally a better explanation and somewhat more likely to be what happened here.
I was actually surprised that the new board ended up with members who might reasonably be expected, under the right circumstances, to resist something Microsoft wanted. I wouldn’t have been surprised if it had ended up all Microsoft employees and obvious Microsoft proxies.
Probably that was a concession in return for the old board agreeing to the whole thing. But it’s also convenient for Altman. It doesn’t matter if he pledges allegiance. The question is what actual leverage Microsoft has over him should he choose to do something Microsoft doesn’t like. This makes a nonzero difference in his favor.
If Sam is as politically astute as he is made out to be, loading the board with blatant MSFT proxies would be bad optics and detract from his image. He just needs to be relatively sure they won’t get in his way or try to coup him again.
The former boards only power was to agree/fire to new board members and CEOs.
Pretty sure they only Let Altman back as CEO under the condition of having a strong influence over the new board.