zlacker

1. i am surprised that Sam, a known prepper, left himself vulnerable to the most traditional risk a CEO can have. presumably he had a lot of control over board composition?

2. soooo is Sam back? how exactly might satya influence a nonprofit board he has zero votes in? why would the board flipflop so quickly in the span of 24 hrs when presumably they took the original action knowing the shitstorm that would ensue? none of these things make sense given that everyone in the room is presumably smart and knows how the world works

>>swyx+(OP)
> none of these things make sense given that everyone in the room is presumably smart and knows how the world works

The board can try to anticipate the next actions after they fire them, but predicting the final outcome of what essentially are human actions seems quite difficult.

>>swyx+(OP)
When you can turn the switch and cut off fleet of nvidias from ChatGPT, you have a very strong influence.

>>swyx+(OP)
They did not realize firing Altman would pose an existential risk.

Then they found out it did

>>pauldd+Z2
Or maybe they didn’t want to exist under Sam Altman?

>>vbezhe+i2
OpenAI can just as easily turn the switch and cut off access to gpt models. OpenAI can get compute anywhere, while Microsoft can only get GPT4 at OpenAI.

>>p1esk+C3
OpenAI powers a few features for Microsoft but it hardly moves the needle.

The partnership is useful for making it look exciting and relevant which helps with attracting talent i.e. it's largely branding/marketing.

So it's very much a once sided relationship in terms of dependency.

>>p1esk+C3
MS can live without GPT models, being just less competitive. Meanwhile, OpenAI will quickly go bankrupt without Microsoft's financial support and infrastructure.

>>summer+P4
In case the marriage between OpenAI and Microsoft ends, I'm pretty sure that Google, IBM, Facebook and any over big corp will try to step in to replace Microsoft.

>>vb-844+A8
Microsoft owns 49% of OpenAI. They’re not going to let them jump in bed with someone else.

>>vb-844+A8
It’s easy to imagine it but I think the reality would be a little stickier. Msft still has its investment active.

>>huyter+ee
They own that in a subsidiary of the non-profit, not the controlling non-profit itself.

>>p1esk+C3
Microsoft has the models and the weights and hosts them on their own servers on Azure. How would OpenAI "turn the switch?"

>>reissb+Bj
"Hey, any IP lawyers want to sue Microsoft for stealing our IP?"

>>cinnta+j1
Who could have possibly predicted a backlash?

>>huyter+ee
Who owns the 51%? Seems like if it’s the non-profit, MSFT can make any demands and suggestions they want, and the 51% perfect can say “that’s nice” and do what they want. Which is probably why MSFT owns _only_ 49%?

>>huyter+ee
And the non-profit board is the majority stakeholder, so MS doesn’t have a day

>>p1esk+C3
From who? Google, the company who's funding their competitors, or AWS, who's also likely working on their own AI modeling? OpenAI needs $$$$$ of compute. There's not a ton of companies who can provide them with the large amount of computed needed to move fast.

>>Trombo+9m
And immediately turn off access to Azure. I hope they have FDE, but it doesn't matter anyway because Microsoft can read the RAM.

>>p1esk+m3
Yes.

Until they realized what their existence was like without him.

>>pauldd+y81
It’s sad that OpenAI talent will be split across two companies, one controlled by Sam, and the other by Ilya. This will probably delay the development of GPT-5.

>>huyter+ee
Yeah, I definitely agree. I was just responding to the user who was saying that without Microsoft, OpenAI cannot survive.

>>Trombo+9m
It's not theft, Microsoft has a license to use them! OpenAI can't turn off the machines, can't turn off hardware access to the models or weights, and can't turn off the license either. They can sue, but they'd most likely lose, and go out of business beforehand anyway.

>>fooste+tD
It would have been interesting to see how you would have predicted the final outcome on friday, but we'll never know.