Ilya has always seemed like he was idealistic and I’m guessing that he was the reason for OpenAI’s very strange structure. Ilya is the man when it comes to AI so people put up with his foolishness. Adam D'Angelo is, like Ilya, an amazing computer science talent who may have shared Ilya’s idealistic notions (in particular OpenAI is non-profit, unless forced to be capped profit and is categorically not in the business of making money or selling itself to MSFT or any entity). “Helen” and “Tasha” are comically out of their depth and are loony toons, and simply decided at some time ago to follow Ilya.
Sam got the call from MSFT to sell, MSFT really ponied up (300B ?). The inference costs for OpenAI are/were staggering and they needed to sell (or get a large influx of capital which was in the works). This ran counter to Ilya’s idealistic notions. Sam attempted to negotiate with Ilya and the loony toons, a vote was called and they lost, hard.
I think this tracks with all the data we have.
There are a couple of other scenarios that track given OpenAI’s comically poor board composition, but I think the one above is the most plausible.
If this did happen then OpenAI is in for a hard future. Imagine you worked at OpenAI and you just found out that your shares could have been worth a tremendous amount and now their future is, at best, uncertain. There will be some true believers who won;t care but many (most?) will be appalled.
Let this be a lesson, don’t have a wacky ownership structure and wacky board when you have the (perhaps) the most valuable product in the world.
Would any of this have been a surprise given all that you've detailed above? What would they have honestly been expecting?
Going the other way.. imagine you worked at a company that put ideals first but then you find out they were just blindly hyping that lie so they could vault themselves into the billionaires club by selling your shared ideals out from underneath you? To, of all players, Microsoft.
> when you have the (perhaps) the most valuable product in the world.
Maybe the people who work there are a little more grounded than this? Viewed through this lens, perhaps it's extremely ungenerous to refer to any of them as "looney tunes."