zlacker

>>medler+(OP)
This makes sense. The board thinks they're calling the shots, but the reality is the people with the money are the ones calling the shots, always. Boards are just appointed by shareholders aka investors aka capital holders to do their bidding.

The capped-profit / non-profit structure muddles that a little bit, but the reality is that entity can't survive without the funding that goes into the for-profit piece

And if current investors + would-be investors threaten to walk away, what can the board really do? They have no leverage.

Sounds like they really didn't "play the tape forward" and think this through...

>>airstr+r3
A non profit board absolutely calls the shots at a non profit, in so far as the CEO and their employment goes. Non profit boards are not beholden, structurally, to investors and there are no shareholders.

No stakeholder would walk away from OpenAI for want of sam Altman. They don’t license OpenAI technology or provide funding for his contribution. They do it to get access to GPT4. There is no comparable competitor available.

If anything they would be miffed about how it was handled, but to be frank, unless GPT4 is sam Altman furiously typing, I don’t know he’s that important. The instability caused by the suddenness, that’s different.

>>fnordp+f7
Nothing matters if you don’t have the money to enforce the system. Come on get real. Whatever the board says MS can turn off the money in a second and invalidate anything.

>>tsunam+A8
Microsoft depends on OpenAI much more than OpenAI depends on Microsoft. If you work with OpenAI as a company very often this is extraordinarily obvious.

>>fnordp+0b
I'm not sure this is true- Microsoft put something like 10 billion into OpenAI, which they absolutely needed to continue the expensive computing and training. Without that investment money OpenAI might quickly find themselves at a huge deficit with no way to climb back out.

>>naet+MA
Ah yes, no other company would step in and get this deal from OpenAI if Microsoft pulls out. It's not like Amazon and Google pump billions into the OpenAI competitor.

>>ctvo+DF
I’m pretty sure there are contracts, and one way or another, everyone would get a stay on everyone else and nothing would happen for years except court cases

>>mdekke+f11
> I’m pretty sure there are contracts

Which one side or the other would declare terminated for nonperformance by the other side, perhaps while suing for breach.

> and one way or another, everyone would get a stay on everyone else

If by a stay you mean an injunction preventing a change in the arrangements, it seems unlikely that "everyone would get a stay on everyone". Likelihood of success on the merits and harm that is not possible to remediate via damages that would occur if the injunction wasn't placed are key factors for injunctions, and that's far from certain to work in any direction, and even less likely to work in both directions.

> and nothing would happen for years except court cases

Business goes on during court cases, it is very rare that everything is frozen.