From my perspective, even rebuking Toner here is quite bad. It is completely inconsistent with the nonprofit’s mission to not allow debate and disagreement and criticism.
I can’t imagine any board, for-profit or non-profit, tolerating one of its members criticizing its organization in public. Toner had a very privileged position, she got to be in one of the few rooms where discussion of AI safety matters most, where decisions that actually matter get made. She got to make her criticisms and cast her votes there, where it mattered. That is hardly “not allow[ing] debate and disagreement and criticism”. The cost of participating in debate and disagreement and criticism inside the board room is that she gave up the right to criticize the organization anywhere else. That’s a very good trade for her, if she could have kept to her end of the deal.
Lightcone definitely tolerates (and usually encourages) criticism of itself by its members. Many other organizations do too! This is absolutely not in any way a universal norm.
I mean, yes, definitely (Zvi is on the board of our fiscal sponsor, and it would be crazy to me if we threatened remotely any consequences of him expressing concerns about us publicly, and my best guess is Zvi would move to fire me or step down pretty immediately if that happened).
Interesting. I’m not sure exactly what you mean by “fiscal sponsor”, and I don’t really want to go down that road. My understanding of nonprofit governance norms is that if a board member has concerns about their organization (and they probably do—they have a shit tone more access and confidential information than most people, and no organization is perfect) then they can express those concerns privately to the rest of the board, to the executive director, to the staff. They are a board member, they have access to these people, and they can maintain a much better working relationship with these people and solve problems more effectively by addressing their concerns privately. If a board member thinks something is so dramatically wrong with their organization that they can’t solve it privately, and the public needs to be alerted, my understanding of governance norms is that the board member should resign their board seat and then make their case publicly. Mostly this is a cached view, and I might not endorse it on deep reflection. But I think a lot of people involved in governance have this norm, so I don’t think that Sam Altman’s enforcement of this norm against Toner is particularly indicative of anything about Sam.
Like many I have no idea what’s happening behind the scenes, so this is pure conjecture, but one can imagine a world in which Toner “addressed concerns privately” but those concerns fell on deaf ears. At that point, it doesn’t seem like “resigning board seat and making case publicly” is the appropriate course of action, whether or not that is a “nonprofit governance norm”. I would think your role as a board member, particularly in the unique case of OpenAI, is to honor the nonprofit’s mission. If you have a rogue CEO who seems bent on pursuing power, status, and profits for your biggest investor (again, purely hypothetical without knowing what’s going on here), and those pursuits are contra the board’s stated mission, resigning your post and expressing concerns publicly when you no longer have direct power seems suboptimal. Seems to presume the board should have no say whether the CEO is doing their job correctly when, in this case, that seems to be the only role of the board.
Oh, I agree that utilitarian considerations, particularly in the case of an existential threat, might warrant breaking a norm. I’m not saying Toner did anything wrong in any objective sense, I don’t have a very strong view about that. I’m just trying to question Zvi’s argument that Sam and OpenAI did something unusually bad in the way they responded to Toner’s choice. It may be the case that Toner did the right and honorable thing given the position she was in and the information she had, and also that Sam and openAI did the normal and boring thing in response to that.
You do seem to be equivocating somewhat between board members (who have no formal authority in an organization) and the board itself (which has the ultimate authority in an organization). To say that a dissenting board member should resign before speaking out publicly is very different from saying that the board itself should not act when it (meaning the majority of its members) believe there is a problem. As I am reading the events here, Toner published her article before the board decided that there was something wrong and that action needed to be taken. I think everyone agrees that when the board concludes that something is wrong, it should act.
I’m in the process of joining a non-profit board, and one of the things I confirmed with them was that they were ok with me continuing to say critical things about them publicly as I felt needed.
On the contrary, I think there is no norm against board members criticizing corporate direction.
I think it is accepted that a member of the board of a for-profit corporation might publicly say that they think the corporation’s X division should be shut down, in order to concentrate investment in the Y division, since they think the future market for Y will be greater than for X, even though the rest of the board disagrees. This might be done to get shareholders on-side for this change of direction.
For a non-profit, criticism regarding whether the corporation is fulfilling its mandate is similarly acceptable. The idea that board members should resign if they think the corporation is not abiding by its mission is ridiculous—that would just lead to the corporation departing even more from its mission.
Compare with members of a legislative body. Legislators routinely say they disagree with the majority of the body, and nobody thinks the right move if they are on the losing side of a vote is to resign.
And, a member of the miltary who believes that they have been ordered to commit a war crime is not supposed to resign in protest (assuming that is even possible), allowing the crime to be committed. They are supposed to disobey the order.
If board members have an obligation not to criticize their organization in an academic paper, then they should also have an obligation not to discuss anything related to their organization in an academic paper. The ability to be honest is important, and if a researcher can’t say anything critical about an organization, then non-critical things they say about it lose credibility.
“anything related to”, depending how it’s interpreted, might be overly broad, but something like this seems like a necessary implication, yes. Is that a bad thing?
I can’t imagine any board, for-profit or non-profit, tolerating one of its members criticizing its organization in public.
This is only evidence for how insane the practices of our civilization are, requiring that those who most have the need and the ability to scrutinise the power of a corporation do so the least. OpenAI was supposedly trying to swim against the current, but alas, it just became another example of the regular sort of company.
requiring that those who most have the need and the ability to scrutinise the power of a corporation do so the least.
I have no idea how you got that from what I said. The view of governance I am presenting is that the board should scrutinize the corporation, but behind closed doors, not out in public. Again, I’m not entirely confident that I agree with this view, but I do think it is normal for people involved in governance and therefor doesn’t indicate much about Altman or openAI one way or the other.
I can’t imagine any board, for-profit or non-profit, tolerating one of its members criticizing its organization in public. Toner had a very privileged position, she got to be in one of the few rooms where discussion of AI safety matters most, where decisions that actually matter get made. She got to make her criticisms and cast her votes there, where it mattered. That is hardly “not allow[ing] debate and disagreement and criticism”. The cost of participating in debate and disagreement and criticism inside the board room is that she gave up the right to criticize the organization anywhere else. That’s a very good trade for her, if she could have kept to her end of the deal.
Lightcone definitely tolerates (and usually encourages) criticism of itself by its members. Many other organizations do too! This is absolutely not in any way a universal norm.
By members of the board of directors specifically?
I mean, yes, definitely (Zvi is on the board of our fiscal sponsor, and it would be crazy to me if we threatened remotely any consequences of him expressing concerns about us publicly, and my best guess is Zvi would move to fire me or step down pretty immediately if that happened).
Interesting. I’m not sure exactly what you mean by “fiscal sponsor”, and I don’t really want to go down that road. My understanding of nonprofit governance norms is that if a board member has concerns about their organization (and they probably do—they have a shit tone more access and confidential information than most people, and no organization is perfect) then they can express those concerns privately to the rest of the board, to the executive director, to the staff. They are a board member, they have access to these people, and they can maintain a much better working relationship with these people and solve problems more effectively by addressing their concerns privately. If a board member thinks something is so dramatically wrong with their organization that they can’t solve it privately, and the public needs to be alerted, my understanding of governance norms is that the board member should resign their board seat and then make their case publicly. Mostly this is a cached view, and I might not endorse it on deep reflection. But I think a lot of people involved in governance have this norm, so I don’t think that Sam Altman’s enforcement of this norm against Toner is particularly indicative of anything about Sam.
Like many I have no idea what’s happening behind the scenes, so this is pure conjecture, but one can imagine a world in which Toner “addressed concerns privately” but those concerns fell on deaf ears. At that point, it doesn’t seem like “resigning board seat and making case publicly” is the appropriate course of action, whether or not that is a “nonprofit governance norm”. I would think your role as a board member, particularly in the unique case of OpenAI, is to honor the nonprofit’s mission. If you have a rogue CEO who seems bent on pursuing power, status, and profits for your biggest investor (again, purely hypothetical without knowing what’s going on here), and those pursuits are contra the board’s stated mission, resigning your post and expressing concerns publicly when you no longer have direct power seems suboptimal. Seems to presume the board should have no say whether the CEO is doing their job correctly when, in this case, that seems to be the only role of the board.
Oh, I agree that utilitarian considerations, particularly in the case of an existential threat, might warrant breaking a norm. I’m not saying Toner did anything wrong in any objective sense, I don’t have a very strong view about that. I’m just trying to question Zvi’s argument that Sam and OpenAI did something unusually bad in the way they responded to Toner’s choice. It may be the case that Toner did the right and honorable thing given the position she was in and the information she had, and also that Sam and openAI did the normal and boring thing in response to that.
You do seem to be equivocating somewhat between board members (who have no formal authority in an organization) and the board itself (which has the ultimate authority in an organization). To say that a dissenting board member should resign before speaking out publicly is very different from saying that the board itself should not act when it (meaning the majority of its members) believe there is a problem. As I am reading the events here, Toner published her article before the board decided that there was something wrong and that action needed to be taken. I think everyone agrees that when the board concludes that something is wrong, it should act.
Yes, here is GPT-4′s reasoning.
This is not a link to shared chat, this is a link which is private to you
Apologies, I’ve changed the link.
Thanks!
I’m in the process of joining a non-profit board, and one of the things I confirmed with them was that they were ok with me continuing to say critical things about them publicly as I felt needed.
On the contrary, I think there is no norm against board members criticizing corporate direction.
I think it is accepted that a member of the board of a for-profit corporation might publicly say that they think the corporation’s X division should be shut down, in order to concentrate investment in the Y division, since they think the future market for Y will be greater than for X, even though the rest of the board disagrees. This might be done to get shareholders on-side for this change of direction.
For a non-profit, criticism regarding whether the corporation is fulfilling its mandate is similarly acceptable. The idea that board members should resign if they think the corporation is not abiding by its mission is ridiculous—that would just lead to the corporation departing even more from its mission.
Compare with members of a legislative body. Legislators routinely say they disagree with the majority of the body, and nobody thinks the right move if they are on the losing side of a vote is to resign.
And, a member of the miltary who believes that they have been ordered to commit a war crime is not supposed to resign in protest (assuming that is even possible), allowing the crime to be committed. They are supposed to disobey the order.
If board members have an obligation not to criticize their organization in an academic paper, then they should also have an obligation not to discuss anything related to their organization in an academic paper. The ability to be honest is important, and if a researcher can’t say anything critical about an organization, then non-critical things they say about it lose credibility.
“anything related to”, depending how it’s interpreted, might be overly broad, but something like this seems like a necessary implication, yes. Is that a bad thing?
This is only evidence for how insane the practices of our civilization are, requiring that those who most have the need and the ability to scrutinise the power of a corporation do so the least. OpenAI was supposedly trying to swim against the current, but alas, it just became another example of the regular sort of company.
I have no idea how you got that from what I said. The view of governance I am presenting is that the board should scrutinize the corporation, but behind closed doors, not out in public. Again, I’m not entirely confident that I agree with this view, but I do think it is normal for people involved in governance and therefor doesn’t indicate much about Altman or openAI one way or the other.