This is very interesting. You wouldn't normally hire an investigator to dig into a corporate shitshow. Firing of Sam Altman was a huge mess, but if there was a serious reason to do that (like, frauding the board), and that reason would be backed by investigation report, it'll suddenly make board actions much more justifiable. And it'll put Microsoft into a tough spot, because they hired Altman back without any considerations whatsoever...
People confabulate just like AI does. Just because the stories don’t add up doesn’t mean somebody deliberately lied.
Emmet is just doing the smartest thing to salvage the situation.
but of course the question captivates the peanut gallery so there's a certain importance to it. so making this empty promise costs nothing, hence it's there.
If the investigator finds the board was wrong, it makes the new CEO an enemy of the board. If the investigator finds Sam Altman did bad things, it makes Microsoft look bad and incompetent for hiring him; MS is OpenAI biggest client.
And if, as is likely, the investigator finds some blame here and there, and nothing conclusive, nobody's better off and a lot of time and energy was spent learning nothing.
What good can possibly come from this?
The investigation would also include checking if the board had some odd intentions by ousting Sam; so, no, not necessarily.
If there is misconduct from Sam - he will get fired. If he succeeds - MS will benefit from whatever success means.
On the other hand, other competitors won't be able to porch Sam at this point. This is something many do not get. Whatever happens in the next few weeks to month, it won't hurt MS and won't benefit others, while on the outside we play the corporate compliance game.
OpenAI definitely needs professional structures. And MS will help them achieve that.
Emmet Shear presumably had very little to do with the prior events, but if he's going to salvage the company, he needs to control the narrative around the governance. That means either publicly justifying the boards actions or changing the board.
but... it's a happy accident of new imagery. I imagine "porching" someone could mean to poach them... and then sit them on a nice rocking chair on the front porch, give them some lemonade, and make sure they do absolutely nothing.
(Kind of like how big companies acquire small, yet competitive, companies for no other reason than to put them out of business.)
I don't think Microsoft wants to "porch" Sam in this case, but they are happy to poach him and put him to work.
At this point we still have no idea what the outside board director's issue might have been but the fact that even their initial internal allies, co-founder/board member Ilya, CTO/interim CEO Mira and the COO, all stopped supporting the three outside directors after engaging directly with them over the weekend is pretty damning. Unfortunately, the scope, conduct and results of any such investigation are all entirely under the control of the three outside board members. The same outside directors that abruptly fired the last interim CEO and the CEO before her in a period of 48 hours. Unlike most boards, they aren't accountable to shareholders, investors, employees or anyone else.