Alternatively, the board could choose once again not to fire Altman, watch as Altman finished taking control of OpenAI and turned it into a personal empire, and hope this turns out well for the world.
I think it’s pretty clear that Altman had already basically consolidated de facto control.
If you’ve arranged things so that 90+ percent of the staff will threaten to quit if you’re thrown out against your will, and a major funding source will enable you to instantly rehire many or most of those people elsewhere, and you’ll have access to almost every bit of the existing work, and you have massive influence with outside players the organization needs to work with, and your view of how the organization should run is the one more in line with those outside players’ actual interests, and you have a big PR machine on standby, and you’re better at this game than anybody else in the place, then the organization needs you more than you need it. You have the ability to destroy it if need be.
If it’s also true that your swing board member is unwilling to destroy the organization[1], then you have control.
I read somewhere that like half the OpenAI staff, probably constituting the committed core of the “safety” faction, left in 2019-2020. That’s probably when his control became effectively absolute. Maybe they could have undone that by expanding the board, but presumably he’d have fought expansion, too, if it had meant more directors who might go against him. Maybe there were some trickier moves they could have come up with, but at a minimum Altman was immune to direct confrontation.
The surprising thing is that the board members apparently didn’t realize they’d lost control for a couple of years. I mean, I know they’re not expert corporate power players (nor am I, for that matter), but that’s a long time to stay ignorant of something like that.
In fact, if Altman’s really everything he’s cracked up to be, it’s also surprising that he didn’t realize Sutskever could be swayed to fire him. He could probably have prevented that just by getting him in a room and laying out what would happen if something like this were done. And since he’s better at this than I am, he could also probably have found a way to prevent it without that kind of crude threat. It’s actually a huge slip on his part that the whole thing broke out into public drama. A dangerous slip; he might have actually had to destroy OpenAI and rebuild elsewhere.
None of this should be taken to mean that I think that it’s good that Altman has “won”, by the way. I think OpenAI would be dangerous even with the other faction in control, and Altman’s even more dangerous.
The only reason Sutskever voted for the firing to begin with seems to be that he didn’t that realize Altman could or would take OpenAI down with him (or, if you want to phrase it more charitably and politely, that Altman had overwhelmingly staffed it with people who shared his idea of how it should be run).
I honestly think the Board should have just blown OpenAI up. The compromise is worthless, these conditions remain and thus Sam Altman is in power. So at least have him go work for Microsoft, it likely won’t be any worse but the pretense is over. And yeah, they should have spoken more and more openly, at least give people some good ammo to defend their choices though the endless cries of “BUT ALL THAT LOST VALUE” would have come anyway.
I think it’s pretty clear that Altman had already basically consolidated de facto control.
If you’ve arranged things so that 90+ percent of the staff will threaten to quit if you’re thrown out against your will, and a major funding source will enable you to instantly rehire many or most of those people elsewhere, and you’ll have access to almost every bit of the existing work, and you have massive influence with outside players the organization needs to work with, and your view of how the organization should run is the one more in line with those outside players’ actual interests, and you have a big PR machine on standby, and you’re better at this game than anybody else in the place, then the organization needs you more than you need it. You have the ability to destroy it if need be.
If it’s also true that your swing board member is unwilling to destroy the organization[1], then you have control.
I read somewhere that like half the OpenAI staff, probably constituting the committed core of the “safety” faction, left in 2019-2020. That’s probably when his control became effectively absolute. Maybe they could have undone that by expanding the board, but presumably he’d have fought expansion, too, if it had meant more directors who might go against him. Maybe there were some trickier moves they could have come up with, but at a minimum Altman was immune to direct confrontation.
The surprising thing is that the board members apparently didn’t realize they’d lost control for a couple of years. I mean, I know they’re not expert corporate power players (nor am I, for that matter), but that’s a long time to stay ignorant of something like that.
In fact, if Altman’s really everything he’s cracked up to be, it’s also surprising that he didn’t realize Sutskever could be swayed to fire him. He could probably have prevented that just by getting him in a room and laying out what would happen if something like this were done. And since he’s better at this than I am, he could also probably have found a way to prevent it without that kind of crude threat. It’s actually a huge slip on his part that the whole thing broke out into public drama. A dangerous slip; he might have actually had to destroy OpenAI and rebuild elsewhere.
None of this should be taken to mean that I think that it’s good that Altman has “won”, by the way. I think OpenAI would be dangerous even with the other faction in control, and Altman’s even more dangerous.
The only reason Sutskever voted for the firing to begin with seems to be that he didn’t that realize Altman could or would take OpenAI down with him (or, if you want to phrase it more charitably and politely, that Altman had overwhelmingly staffed it with people who shared his idea of how it should be run).
I honestly think the Board should have just blown OpenAI up. The compromise is worthless, these conditions remain and thus Sam Altman is in power. So at least have him go work for Microsoft, it likely won’t be any worse but the pretense is over. And yeah, they should have spoken more and more openly, at least give people some good ammo to defend their choices though the endless cries of “BUT ALL THAT LOST VALUE” would have come anyway.