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
> 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.

The implication in Microsoft's statement is clear that they have what they need to use the tech. I read it to mean OpenAI board does not have leverage.

>>Terret+8a
Microsoft has licensing rights to OpenAI tech. They do not “have it” in the sense they control it.

>>fnordp+4b
Well I read Nadella threatened to turn off OpenAI's servers, so yeah, Microsoft does in fact control it.

Not your premises not your compute?

>>lordfr+iG
Even threatening that, if disclosed publicly, would entirely threaten Azures business model. Cloud providers try to stay entirely neutral to their users business insofar as they don’t breach a ToS, law, or regulation forcing their actions. The entire business model is trusting a third party with the keys to your business. In my time working as a senior person at a cloud provider, then as a person setting system for major customers of cloud providers, this specific point was sacrosanct and invariant. Crossing that line would be a huge breach of the business model.

I think in this case I would need to see a source to believe you, and if substantiated, it would make me question Nadellas fitness to lead a cloud computing business.

>>fnordp+4D2
Can't find the original thing I read with a more direct statement, I remember it being an anonymous source (on twitter maybe?) with inside info. I did more digging and found a few other things.

There's this [1], a NYT article saying that Microsoft is leading the pressure campaign to get Altman reinstated.

And there's this [2], a Forbes article which claims the playbook is a combination of mass internal revolt, withheld cloud computing credits from Microsoft, and a lawsuit from investors.

[1] https://archive.is/fEVTK#selection-517.0-521.120

[2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2023/11/18/openai-in...