![]() ![]() Here’s Altman’s own description, from February this year: “We have a nonprofit that governs us and lets us operate for the good of humanity (and can override any for-profit interests), including letting us do things like cancel our equity obligations to shareholders if needed for safety.” The not-for-profit board, then, could close the whole show if it thought that was the responsible course. ![]() Safety came first the interests of the profit-seeking subsidiary were secondary. For all its faults, the structure was intended to put the board of the controlling not-for-profit entity in change. Yet the whole purpose of OpenAI’s weird governance setup was to ensure safe development of the technology. If that is correct, outsiders might indeed be relaxed: it is normal for other board members to worry about whether the boss is sufficiently focused on the day job. Not fully candid about what? A benign (sort of) interpretation is that the row was about the amount of time Altman was devoting to other business interests, including a reported computer chip venture. The original non-explanation from OpenAI was that Altman had to go because he had not been “consistently candid” with other directors. Saying nothing useful, especially when your previous stance has been that transparency and safety go hand in hand, is indefensible. ![]() Or, if the fear is unfounded, the architects of the failed boardroom coup could do everybody a favour and say so. If the old board judged, for example, that Altman was unfit for the job because he was taking OpenAI down a reckless path, lights-wise, there would plainly be an obligation to speak up. Since we are constantly told, not least by Altman himself, that the worst outcome from the adoption of artificial general intelligence could be “lights out for all of us”, somebody needs to find a voice here. In the top company in the world’s most explosive industry, the boss was fired and rehired – and no one has said why OpenAI was ‘working on model so powerful it alarmed staff’ The OpenAI farce has moved at such speed in the past week that it is easy to forget that nobody has yet said in clear terms why Sam Altman – the returning chief executive and all-round genius, according to his vocal fanclub – was fired in the first place. ![]()
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