I genuinely can't believe the board didn't see this coming. I think they could have won in the court of public opinion if their press release said they loved Sam but felt like his skills and ambitions diverged from their mission. But instead, they tried to skewer him, and it backfired completely.
I hope Sam comes back. He'll make a lot more money if he doesn't, but I trust Sam a lot more than whomever they ultimately replace him with. I just hope that if he does come back, he doesn't use it as a chance to consolidate power – he's said in the past it's a good thing the board can fire him, and I hope he finds better board members rather than eschewing a board altogether.
EDIT: Yup, Satya is involved https://twitter.com/emilychangtv/status/1726025717077688662
I doubt he returns, now he can start a for profit AI company, poach OpenAI's talent, and still look like the good guy in the situation. He was apparently already talking to Saudis to raise billions for an Nvidia competitor - >>38323939
Have to wonder how much this was contrived as a win-win, either OpenAI board does what he wants or he gets a free out to start his own company without looking like he's purely chasing money
This is why you need someone with business experience running an organization. Ilya et al might be brilliant scientists, but these folks are not equipped to deal with the nuances of managing a ship as heavily scrutinised as OpenAI
comical to imagine something like this happening at a mature company like FedEx, Ford, AT&T. All which have smaller market caps than OpenAI. You basically have impulsive children in charge of massively valuable company
The companies you listed in contrast to OpenAI also have some key differences: they're all long-standing and mature companies that have been through several management and regime changes at this point, while OpenAI is still in startup territory and hasn't fully established what it will be going forward.
The other major difference is that OpenAI is split between a non-profit and a for-profit entity, with the non-profit entity owning a controlling share of the for-profit. That's an unusual corporate structure, and the only public-facing example I can think of that matches it is Mozilla (which has its own issues you wouldn't necessarily see in a pure for-profit corporation). So that means on top of the usual failure modes of a for-profit enterprise that could lead to the CEO getting fired, you also get other possible failure modes including ones grounded in pure ideology since the success or failure of a non-profit is judged on how well it accomplishes its stated mission rather than its profitability, which is uh well, it's a bit more tenuous.
In wartime, pandemics, and in matters of national security, the government's power is at its apex, but pretty much all of that has to withstand legal challenge. Even National Security Letters have their limits: they're an information gathering tool, the US Government can't use them to restructure a company and the structure of a company is not a factor in its ability to comply with the demands of an NSL.