this post was submitted on 20 Nov 2023
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One or more people on the board were upset with Sam pushing Open AI towards a "for profit" business model because they wanted to be all altruistic and not paywall things. But they were completely ignorant of the expensive reality of their tech (look up the tons of articles about Open AI burning through money) and after firing Sam, likely got a rude awakening from people in the company showing them the books. Once they realized their out of business in less than a year if they don't monetize things, suddenly Sam's ideas aren't so bad and they know they just fucked the entire company over.
That doesn't make very much sense.
Yes, the board members who are into Effective Altruism are undoubtedly a piece of the puzzle. But everything you outline isn't just common corporate knowledge, it's basically well-documented public record.
And remember that this is a Board that Altman effectively hand-picked. He did not appoint a host of dum-dums to oversee him.
Whatever happened, there is waaaay more to this than anyone has been told. At this point it's all speculation, but I think it's pretty safe to assume it's not just a case of "we didn't know it was expensive" or "we didn't know how popular Sam was".
I really can't see the board members not being aware of what's on their own books.
Anyway the statement the board made was that he wasn't being candid with them, well what does that mean? If he'd been pushing for profit and they didn't want to go in that direction they wouldn't use the word candid