It seems like a strategy by investors or even large tech companies to create a self-fulfilling prophecy to create a coalition of OpenAI employees, when there previously was none.
How is this more likely than the alternative, which is simply that this is an already-existing coalition that supports Sam Altman as CEO? Considering that he was CEO until he was suddenly removed yesterday, it would be surprising if most employees and investors didn’t support him. Unless I’m misunderstanding what you’re claiming here?
Yeah, the impression I get is that if investors are going to the trouble to leak their plot to journalists (even if anonymously), then they are probably hoping to benefit from it acting as a rallying cry/Schelling point. This is a pretty basic thing for intra-org conflicts.
This indicates, at minimum, that the coalition they’re aiming for will become stronger than if they had taken the default action and not leaked their plan to journalists. It seems to me more likely that the coalition they’re hoping for doesn’t exist at all or is too diffused, and they’re trying to set people up to join a pro-Altman faction by claiming one is already strong and is due to receive outside support (from “anonymous sources familiar with the matter”).
That’s a good point in theory, but you’d think the board members can also speak to the media and say “no they are lying, we haven’t so far had these talks with them that they claimed to have had with us about reverting the decision.”
[Update Nov 20th, seems like you were right and the board maybe didn’t have good enough media connections to react to this, or were too busy fighting their fight on another front.]
How is this more likely than the alternative, which is simply that this is an already-existing coalition that supports Sam Altman as CEO? Considering that he was CEO until he was suddenly removed yesterday, it would be surprising if most employees and investors didn’t support him. Unless I’m misunderstanding what you’re claiming here?
Yeah, the impression I get is that if investors are going to the trouble to leak their plot to journalists (even if anonymously), then they are probably hoping to benefit from it acting as a rallying cry/Schelling point. This is a pretty basic thing for intra-org conflicts.
This indicates, at minimum, that the coalition they’re aiming for will become stronger than if they had taken the default action and not leaked their plan to journalists. It seems to me more likely that the coalition they’re hoping for doesn’t exist at all or is too diffused, and they’re trying to set people up to join a pro-Altman faction by claiming one is already strong and is due to receive outside support (from “anonymous sources familiar with the matter”).
That’s a good point in theory, but you’d think the board members can also speak to the media and say “no they are lying, we haven’t so far had these talks with them that they claimed to have had with us about reverting the decision.”
[Update Nov 20th, seems like you were right and the board maybe didn’t have good enough media connections to react to this, or were too busy fighting their fight on another front.]