At least from the intro, it sounds like my predictions were on-point: re-appointed Altman (I waffled about this at 60% because while his narcissism/desire to be vindicated requires him to regain his board seat, because anything less is a blot on his escutcheon, and also the pragmatic desire to lock down the board, both strongly militated for his reinstatement, it also seems so blatant a powergrab in this context that surely he wouldn’t dare...? guess he did), released to an Altman outlet (The Information), with 3 weak apparently ‘independent’ and ‘diverse’ directors to pad out the board and eventually be replaced by full Altman loyalists—although I bet if one looks closer into these three women (Sue Desmond-Hellmann, Nicole Seligman, & Fidji Simo), one will find at least one has buried Altman ties. (Fidji Simo, Instacart CEO, seems like the most obvious one there: Instacart was YC S12.)
As predicted, the full report will not be released, only the ‘summary’ focused on exonerating Altman. Also as predicted, ‘the mountain has given birth to a mouse’ and the report was narrowly scoped to just the firing: they bluster about “reviewing 30,000 documents” (easy enough when you can just grep Slack + text messages + emails...), but then admit that they looked only at “the events concerning the November 17, 2023 removal” and interviewed hardly anyone (“dozens of interviews” barely even covers the immediate dramatis personae, much less any kind of investigation into Altman’s chip stuff, Altman’s many broken promises, Brockman’s complainers etc). Doesn’t sound like they have much to show for over 3 months of work by the smartest & highest-paid lawyers, does it… It also seems like they indeed did not promise confidentiality or set up any kind of anonymous reporting mechanism, given that they mention no such thing and include setting up a hotline for whistleblowers as a ‘recommendation’ for the future (ie. there was no such thing before or during the investigation). So, it was a whitewash from the beginning. Tellingly, there is nothing about Microsoft, and no hint their observer will be upgraded (or that there still even is one). And while flattering to Brockman, there is nothing about Murati—free tip to all my VC & DL startup acquaintances, there’s a highly competent AI manager who’s looking for exciting new opportunities, even if she doesn’t realize it yet.
Also entertaining is that you can see the media spin happening in real time. What WilmerHales signs off on:
WilmerHale found that the prior Board acted within its broad discretion to terminate Mr. Altman, but also found that his conduct did not mandate removal.
Which is… less than complimentary? One would hope a CEO does a little bit better than merely not engage in ‘conduct which mandates removal’? And turns into headlines like
(Nothing from Kara Swisher so far, but judging from her Twitter, she’s too busy promoting her new book and bonding with Altmanover their mutual dislike of Elon Musk to spare any time for relatively-minor-sounding news.)
OK, so what was not as predicted? What is surprising?
This is not a full replacement board, but implies that Adam D’Angelo/Brett Taylor/Larry Summers are all staying on the board, at least for now. (So the new composition is D’Angelo/Taylor/Summers/Altman/Demond-Hellmann/Seligman/Simo plus the unknown Microsoft non-voting observer.) This is surprising, but it may simply be a quotidian logistics problem—they hadn’t settled on 3 more adequately diverse and prima-facie qualified OA board candidates yet, but the report was finished and it was more important to wind things up, and they’ll get to the remainder later. (Perhaps Brockman will get his seat back?)
EDIT: A HNer points out that today, March 8th, is “International Women’s Day”, and this is probably the reason for the exact timing of the announcement. If so, they may well have already picked the remaining candidates (Brockman?), but those weren’t women and so got left out of the announcement. Stay tuned, I guess. EDITEDIT: the video call/press conference seems to confirm that they do plan more board appointments: “OpenAI will continue to expand the board moving forward, according to a Zoom call with reporters.” So that is consistent with the hurried women-only announcement.
(Fixed. This is a surname typo I make an unbelievable number of times because I reflexively overcorrect it to ‘Sumners’, due to reading a lot more of Scott Sumner than Larry Summers. Ugh—just caught myself doing it again in a Reddit comment...)
Looks like you were right, at least if the reporting in this article is correct, and I’m interpreting the claim accurately.
At least from the intro, it sounds like my predictions were on-point: re-appointed Altman (I waffled about this at 60% because while his narcissism/desire to be vindicated requires him to regain his board seat, because anything less is a blot on his escutcheon, and also the pragmatic desire to lock down the board, both strongly militated for his reinstatement, it also seems so blatant a powergrab in this context that surely he wouldn’t dare...? guess he did), released to an Altman outlet (The Information), with 3 weak apparently ‘independent’ and ‘diverse’ directors to pad out the board and eventually be replaced by full Altman loyalists—although I bet if one looks closer into these three women (Sue Desmond-Hellmann, Nicole Seligman, & Fidji Simo), one will find at least one has buried Altman ties. (Fidji Simo, Instacart CEO, seems like the most obvious one there: Instacart was YC S12.)
The official OA press releases are out confirming The Information: https://openai.com/blog/review-completed-altman-brockman-to-continue-to-lead-openai https://openai.com/blog/openai-announces-new-members-to-board-of-directors
He’s probably right.
As predicted, the full report will not be released, only the ‘summary’ focused on exonerating Altman. Also as predicted, ‘the mountain has given birth to a mouse’ and the report was narrowly scoped to just the firing: they bluster about “reviewing 30,000 documents” (easy enough when you can just grep Slack + text messages + emails...), but then admit that they looked only at “the events concerning the November 17, 2023 removal” and interviewed hardly anyone (“dozens of interviews” barely even covers the immediate dramatis personae, much less any kind of investigation into Altman’s chip stuff, Altman’s many broken promises, Brockman’s complainers etc). Doesn’t sound like they have much to show for over 3 months of work by the smartest & highest-paid lawyers, does it… It also seems like they indeed did not promise confidentiality or set up any kind of anonymous reporting mechanism, given that they mention no such thing and include setting up a hotline for whistleblowers as a ‘recommendation’ for the future (ie. there was no such thing before or during the investigation). So, it was a whitewash from the beginning. Tellingly, there is nothing about Microsoft, and no hint their observer will be upgraded (or that there still even is one). And while flattering to Brockman, there is nothing about Murati—free tip to all my VC & DL startup acquaintances, there’s a highly competent AI manager who’s looking for exciting new opportunities, even if she doesn’t realize it yet.
Also entertaining is that you can see the media spin happening in real time. What WilmerHales signs off on:
Which is… less than complimentary? One would hope a CEO does a little bit better than merely not engage in ‘conduct which mandates removal’? And turns into headlines like
“OpenAI’s Sam Altman Returns to Board After Probe Clears Him”
(Nothing from Kara Swisher so far, but judging from her Twitter, she’s too busy promoting her new book and bonding with Altman over their mutual dislike of Elon Musk to spare any time for relatively-minor-sounding news.)
OK, so what was not as predicted? What is surprising?
This is not a full replacement board, but implies that Adam D’Angelo/Brett Taylor/Larry Summers are all staying on the board, at least for now. (So the new composition is D’Angelo/Taylor/Summers/Altman/Demond-Hellmann/Seligman/Simo plus the unknown Microsoft non-voting observer.) This is surprising, but it may simply be a quotidian logistics problem—they hadn’t settled on 3 more adequately diverse and prima-facie qualified OA board candidates yet, but the report was finished and it was more important to wind things up, and they’ll get to the remainder later. (Perhaps Brockman will get his seat back?)
EDIT: A HNer points out that today, March 8th, is “International Women’s Day”, and this is probably the reason for the exact timing of the announcement. If so, they may well have already picked the remaining candidates (Brockman?), but those weren’t women and so got left out of the announcement. Stay tuned, I guess. EDITEDIT: the video call/press conference seems to confirm that they do plan more board appointments: “OpenAI will continue to expand the board moving forward, according to a Zoom call with reporters.” So that is consistent with the hurried women-only announcement.
Nitpick: Larry Summers not Larry Sumners
(Fixed. This is a surname typo I make an unbelievable number of times because I reflexively overcorrect it to ‘Sumners’, due to reading a lot more of Scott Sumner than Larry Summers. Ugh—just caught myself doing it again in a Reddit comment...)
Yeah I figured Scott Sumner must have been involved.