I’m not sure this is an unconditional surrender. They’re not talking about changing the charter, just appointing a new board. If the new board isn’t much less safety conscious, then a good bit of the organization’s original purpose and safeguards are preserved. So the terms of surrender would be negotiated in picking the new board.
AFAICT the only formal power the board has is in firing the CEO, so if we get a situation where whenever the board wants to fire Sam, Sam comes back and fires the board instead, well, it’s not exactly an inspiring story for OpenAI’s governance structure.
This is a very good point. It is strange, though, that the Board was able to fire Sam without the Chair agreeing to it. It seems like something as big as firing the CEO should have required at least a conversation with the Chair, if not the affirmative vote of the Chair. The way this was handled was a big mistake. There needs to be new rules in place to prevent big mistakes like this.
I’m not sure this is an unconditional surrender. They’re not talking about changing the charter, just appointing a new board. If the new board isn’t much less safety conscious, then a good bit of the organization’s original purpose and safeguards are preserved. So the terms of surrender would be negotiated in picking the new board.
AFAICT the only formal power the board has is in firing the CEO, so if we get a situation where whenever the board wants to fire Sam, Sam comes back and fires the board instead, well, it’s not exactly an inspiring story for OpenAI’s governance structure.
This is a very good point. It is strange, though, that the Board was able to fire Sam without the Chair agreeing to it. It seems like something as big as firing the CEO should have required at least a conversation with the Chair, if not the affirmative vote of the Chair. The way this was handled was a big mistake. There needs to be new rules in place to prevent big mistakes like this.