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.
It's not "wacky" to have goals other than the accumulation of capital. In fact, given the purpose of OpenAI, I think it's meritorious.
I'd personally prefer we just not work on AGI at all, but I'd rather a non-profit dedicated to safe AI do it than a for-profit company dedicated to returns for shareholders.
> 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.
I think the lesson is just the opposite: If you want to work according to your ideals, and not simply for money, you should absolutely do whatever 'wacky' thing protects that.
It is an honour based system to clarify what you edited if it goes beyond typos/grammar.
Most probably GP used stronger words and then edited.