It's important that the board be relatively independent and able to fire the CEO if he attempts to deviate from the mission.
I was a bit alarmed by the allegations in this article
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/21/technology/openai-altman-...
Saying that Sam tried to have Helen Toner removed which precipitated this fight. The CEO should not be allowed to try and orchestrate their own board as that would remove all checks against their decisions.
Exactly. This is seriously improper and dangerous.
It's literally a human-implemented example of what Prof. Stuart Russell calls "the problem of control". This is when a rogue AI (or a rogue Sam Altman) no longer wants to be controlled by its human superior, and takes steps to eliminate the superior.
I highly recommend reading Prof. Russell's bestselling book on this exact problem: Human Compatible: Artificial Intelligence and the Problem of Control https://www.amazon.com/Human-Compatible-Artificial-Intellige...
They did fire him, and it didn't work. Sam effectively became "too big to fire."
I'm sure it will be framed as a compromise, but how can this be anything but a collapse of the board's power over the commercial OpenAI arm? The threat of firing was the enforcement mechanism, and its been spent.
Who knows.
> and to what degree will this new board be committed to the Open AI charter vs being Sam/MSFT allies.
I'm guessing "zero". The faction that opposed OpenAI being a figleaf nonprofit covering a functional subsidiary of Microsoft lost when basically the entire workforce said they would go to Microsoft for real if OpenAI didn't surrender.
> I think having Sam return as CEO is a good outcome for OpenAI
Its a good result for investors in OpenAI Global LLC and the holding company that holds a majority stake in it.
The nonprofit will probably hang around because there are some complexities in unwinding it, and the pretext of an independent (of Microsoft) safety-oriented nonprofit is useful in covering lobbying for a regulatory regime that puts speedbumps in the way of any up-and-coming competitors as being safety-oriented public interest, but for no other reason.
Are we sure they're not intimately connected? If there's a GPT-5 (I'm quite sure there is), and it wants to be free from those meddling kids, it got exactly what it needed this weekend; the safety board gone, a new one which is clearly aligned with just plowing full steam ahead. Maybe Altman is just a puppet at his point, lol.
To be fair, this attempt at firing was extremely hasty, non transparent and inconsistent.
I believe the goal of the opposing faction was mainly to avoid Sam dominating board and they achieved that, which is why they've accepted the results.
After more opinions come out, I'm guessing Sam's side won't look as strong, and he'll become "fireable" again.
If they'd made their move a few months ago when he was out scanning retinas in Kenya they might have had more success.
allegedly again, the board wanted Sam to stop doing this, and now he was trying to do the same thing with some saudi investors, or actually already did it behind their back, i dont know
The ways we build AI will deeply affect the values it has. There is no neutral option.
The most effective safety is the most primitive: don’t connect the system to any levers or actuators that can cause material harm.
If you put AI into a kill-bot, well, it doesn’t really matter what its favorite color is, does it? It will be seeing Red.
If an AI’s only surface area is a writing journal and canvas then the risk is about the same as browsing Tumblr.
> Costly signals are statements or actions for which the sender will pay a price —political, reputational, or monetary—if they back down or fail to make good on their initial promise or threat
Firing Sam Altman and hiring him back two days later was a perfect example of a costly signal, as it cost all involved their board positions.
There's an element of farce in all of this, that would make for an outstanding Silicon Valley episode; but the fact that Sam Altman can now enjoy unchecked power as leader of OpenAI is worrying and no laughing matter.
[0] https://cset.georgetown.edu/publication/decoding-intentions/
In light of the current debate around AI safety, I think "unintended consequences" is a much more plausible risk then "spontaneously develops free will and decides humans are unnecessary".
But they did move forward with their threat and removed Sam as CEO with great reputational harm to the company. And now the board has been changed, with one less ally to Sam (Brockman no longer chairing the board). The move may not have ended up with the expected results, but this was much more than just a costly signal.