zlacker

Silicon Valley outsider here. Am I being harsh here?

I just bothered to look at the full OpenAI board composition. Besides Ilya Sutskever and Greg Brockman, why are these people eligible to be on the OpenAI board? Such young people, calling themselves "President of this", "Director of that".

- Adam D'Angelo — Quora CEO (no clue what he's doing on OpenAI board)

- Tasha McCauley — a "management scientist" (this is a new term for me); whatever that means

- Helen Toner — I don't know what exactly she does, again, "something-something Director of strategy" at Georgetown University, for such a young person

No wise veterans here to temper the adrenaline?

Edit: the term clusterf*** comes to mind here.

>>kashya+(OP)
Helen Toner funded OpenAI with $30M, which was enough to get a board seat at the time.

>>kashya+(OP)
Adam D'Angelo was brought in as a friend because Sam Altman lead Quora's Series D around the time OpenAI was founded, and he is a board member on Dustin Moskovitz's Asana.

Dustin Moskovitz isn't on the board but gave OpenAI the $30M in funding via his non-profit Open Philantopy [0]

Tasha McCauley was probably brought in due to the Singularity University/Kurziwel types who were at OpenAI in the beginning. She was also in the Open Philanthropy space.

Helen Toner was probably brought in due to her past work at Open Philanthropy - a Dustin Moskovitz funded non-profit working on building OpenAI type initiatives, and was also close to Sam Altman. They also gave OpenAI the initial $30M [0]

Essentially, this is a Donor versus Investor battle. The donors aren't gunna make money of OpenAI's commercial endeavors that began in 2019.

It's similar to Elon Musk's annoyance at OpenAI going commercial even though he donated millions.

[0] - https://www.openphilanthropy.org/grants/openai-general-suppo...

>>taylor+65
Source? Where did that money come from?

>>kashya+(OP)
Exactly this. I saw another commenter raise this point about Tasha (and Helen, if I remember correctly) noting that her LinkedIn profile is filled with SV-related jargon and indulge-the-wife thinktanks but without any real experience taking products to market or scaling up technology companies.

Given the pool of talent they could have chosen from their board makeup looks extremely poor.

>>mizzao+h7
From Open Philanthropy - a Dustin Moskovitz funded non-profit working on building OpenAI type initiatives. They also gave OpenAI the initial $30M. She was their observer.

https://www.openphilanthropy.org/grants/openai-general-suppo...

>>kashya+(OP)
The board previously had people like Elon Musk and Reid Hoffman. Greg Brockman was part of the board until he was ousted as well.

The attrition of industry business leaders, the ouster of Greg Brockman, and the (temporary, apparently) flipping of Ilya combined to give the short list of remaining board members outsized influence. They took this opportunity to drop a nuclear bomb on the company's leadership, which so far has backfired spectacularly. Even their first interim CEO had to be replaced already.

>>kashya+(OP)
You can like D'Angelo or not but he was the CTO of Facebook.

>>church+9a
> indulge-the-wife thinktanks

Regardless of context, this is an incredibly demeaning comment. Shame on you

>>mdekke+Qv
Truth hurts sometimes, eh?

>>kashya+(OP)
This is the Silicon Valley's boy's club, itself an extension of the Stanford U. boys club.

"Meritocracy" is very impolite word in these circles.

>>mdekke+Qv
It doesn't have to be taken that way. It's a pretty accurate description.

>>alephn+m6
Thank you for the context; much appreciate it. In short, it's all "I know a guy who knows a guy".