LarsDu88 on Nov 21, prev next [—]. There has to be a bigger story to this. Altman took a non-profit and vacuumed up a bunch of donor money only to flip Open AI into the hottest TC style startup in the world. Then put a gas pedal to commercialization. It takes a certain type of politicking and deception to make something like that happen. Then in the past week, he's going and taking money from the Saudis on the order of billions of dollars to make AI accelerators, even though the single greatest threat from strong AI according to Hinton is rich and powerful people using the technology to enhance their power over society.
Combine that with a totally inexperienced board, and D'Angelo's maneuvering, and you have the single greatest shitshow in tech history. Alternative theory: ChatGPT was a runaway hit product that sucked up a lot of the organization's resources and energy. Sam and Greg wanted to roll with it and others on the board did not. They voted on it and one side won. There isn't a bigger, more interesting story here. This is in fact a very common story that plays out at many software companies. The board of openai ended up making a decision that destroyed billions of dollars worth of brand value and good will.
That's all there is to it. The "lying" line in the original announcement feels like where the good gossip is. The general idea of "Altman was signing a bunch of business deals without board approval, was told to stop by the board, he said he would, then proceeded to not stop and continue the behavior" This is all court intrigue of course, but why else are we in the comments section of an article talking about the internals of this thing?
We love the drama, don't we. This certainly feels like the most likely true reason to me. Altman fundraising for this new investment, and taking money from people the board does not approve of, and Altman possible promised not to do business with. Of course it's all speculation, but this sounds a lot more plausible for such a sudden and dramatic decision than any of the other explanations I've heard.
Moreover, if this is true, he could reasonably well continue knowing that he has more power than the board. I could almost imagine the board saying, "You can't do that" and him replying "Watch me! And he proved he was right, and the board can either step down and lose completely or try to continue and destroy whatever is left of OpenAI.
