Interesting to see how the board evolves from this. From what I know broadly there were 2 factions, the faction that thought Sam was going too fast which fired him and the faction that thought Sam’s trajectory was fine (which included Sam and Greg). Now there’s a balance on the board and subsequent hires can tip it one way or the other. Unfortunately a divided board rarely lasts and one faction will eventually win out, I think Sam’s faction will eventually win out but we’ll have to wait and see.
One of the saddest results of this drama was Greg being ousted from OpenAI. Greg apart from being brilliant was someone who regularly 80-90 hour work weeks into OpenAI, and you could truly say he dedicated a good chunk of his life into building this organization. And he was forced to resign by a board who probably never put a 90 hour work week in their entire life, much less into building OpenAI. A slap on the face. I don’t care what the board’s reasoning was but when their actions caused employees who dedicated their lives to building the organization resign (especially when most of them played no part at all into building this amazing organization), they had to go in disgrace. I doubt any of them will ever reach career highs higher than being on OpenAI’s board, and the world’s better off for it.
P.S., Ilya of course is an exception and not included in my above condemnation. He also notably reversed his position when he saw OpenAI was being killed by his actions.