OpenAI is down two board members.

[bilateralrope]

OpenAI fires CEO Sam Altman, citing less than “candid” communications

"The board no longer has confidence in his ability to continue leading OpenAI."
KYLE ORLAND AND BENJ EDWARDS - 11/18/2023, 10:20 AM

OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT and DALL-E, announced Friday that co-founder and CEO Sam Altman will be departing the company and vacating his seat on the board. CTO Mira Murati has been appointed interim CEO effective immediately, according to a blog post from the board of directors.

"Mr. Altman’s departure follows a deliberative review process by the board, which concluded that he was not consistently candid in his communications with the board, hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities," the blog reads, in part. "The board no longer has confidence in his ability to continue leading OpenAI."

"We are grateful for Sam’s many contributions to the founding and growth of OpenAI," the board writes in a prepared statement. "At the same time, we believe new leadership is necessary as we move forward."

OpenAI also announced that Chairman of the Board Greg Brockman will be stepping down from that role but staying with the company.

Altman was the keynote speaker at OpenAI's DevDay just last week, making today's announcement seem rather sudden to those outside the company. Altman has served as an important public face for OpenAI and the entire artificial intelligence sector since helping to found the company in 2015.
Earlier this week, Altman told the Financial Times that the company was pursuing "how to build superintelligence" and future versions of the GPT model that could perform more complex actions.

"We will make these agents more and more powerful... and the actions will get more and more complex from here," he said. "The amount of business value that will come from being able to do that in every category, I think, is pretty good."

As news spread of the firing on social media, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt publicly vouched for Altman, saying, "Sam Altman is a hero of mine. He built a company from nothing to $90 billion in value and changed our collective world forever. I can't wait to see what he does next. I, and billions of people, will benefit from his future work—it's going to be simply incredible. Thank you @sama for all you have done for all of us."

About 20 minutes later, Altman himself posted a statement on the social media network X, saying, "I loved my time at openai. it was transformative for me personally, and hopefully the world a little bit. most of all i loved working with such talented people. will have more to say about what’s next later."

2 hours later:

OpenAI President Greg Brockman quits as nervous employees hold all-hands meeting

After Altman firing, Microsoft has "utmost confidence" in partner OpenAI.
BENJ EDWARDS - 11/18/2023, 1:31 PM

On Friday afternoon, not long after news of CEO Sam Altman's abrupt and surprising departure from OpenAI began spreading online, the company held an all-hands meeting at its headquarters in San Francisco, reports The Information. During the meeting, interim CEO Mira Murati attempted to reassure the shocked employees that the search for a new CEO is underway.

Hours later, OpenAI co-founder and president Greg Brockman posted a statement on X, saying that after he learned today's news he sent a message to the OpenAI team: "based on todays news, i quit." Brockman, a key technical figure involved in many of the company's successes, was relieved of his OpenAI board membership on Friday, but the company initially announced he would be staying on.

Earlier on Friday, OpenAI released a blog post titled "OpenAI announces leadership transition" where it announced that Atlman "was not consistently candid in his communications with the board, hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities." In a response post on X, Altman wrote, "I loved my time at openai," and hinted at future plans without revealing any details.

News of the firing sent shockwaves through the tech community on Friday, prompting rumors on social media about the potential reasons behind Altman's departure, none of which have yet been verified. Altman recently delivered the keynote for its inaugural Dev Day conference and spoke on a panel at the APEC CEO Summit on Thursday. Nothing seemed amiss, according to reports from people who know Altman, so the firing possibly came as a surprise.

OpenAI Chief Scientist Ilya Sutskever reportedly told staff that the internal shake-up will "make us feel closer." In a note to staff earlier in the day, Sutskever wrote, “Change can be scary,” according to The Information, while reassuring that the company has an "incredible team" and that the company’s “research progress is wildly dramatic to say the least, and our product is the fastest growing in history.”

Microsoft employees were also shocked by Altman's departure; reportedly, employees working on OpenAI-related projects did not receive notice that Altman was being fired. Altman served as OpenAI's primary point of contact, and he was instrumental in architecting deals that led to billions of dollars of investment from Microsoft. Reportedly, Altman attended a regularly scheduled meeting with Microsoft executives on Thursday.

A Microsoft spokesperson told The Information, “We have a long-term partnership with OpenAI and Microsoft remains committed to Mira and their team as we bring this next era of AI to our customers."

Amid the shakeup, OpenAI has emphasized that Murati's role as CEO is apparently temporary. "Search process underway to identify permanent successor," they wrote in their announcement. OpenAI was not immediately available to comment.

Something happened at OpenAI to get the CEO fired that suddenly. Probably something bad.

I hope we get to hear exactly what it was.

[LadyTevar]

I'll be honest, this is the kind of stuff that would have stocks tanking out of fear

4 Board Members kick out the top two? Suspicious.

[bilateralrope]

Details emerge of surprise board coup that ousted CEO Sam Altman at OpenAI

Microsoft CEO Nadella "furious"; OpenAI President and three senior researchers resign.
BENJ EDWARDS - 11/19/2023, 3:24 AM

On Friday, OpenAI fired CEO Sam Altman in a surprise move that led to the resignation of President Greg Brockman and three senior scientists. The move also blindsided key investor and minority owner Microsoft, reportedly making CEO Satya Nadella furious. As Friday night wore on, reports emerged that the ousting was likely orchestrated by Chief Scientist Ilya Sutskever over concerns about the safety and speed of OpenAI's tech deployment.

"This was the board doing its duty to the mission of the nonprofit, which is to make sure that OpenAI builds AGI that benefits all of humanity," Sutskever told employees at an emergency all-hands meeting on Friday afternoon, as reported by The Information.

Since its founding, OpenAI has pursued the development of artificial general intelligence (or AGI), which is a hypothetical technology that would be able to perform any intellectual task a human can do, potentially replacing a large number of humans at their jobs.

Internally at OpenAI, insiders say that disagreements had emerged over the speed at which Altman was pushing for commercialization and company growth, with Sutskever arguing to slow things down. Sources told reporter Kara Swisher that OpenAI's Dev Day event on November 6, with Altman front and center in a keynote pushing consumer-like products, was an "inflection moment of Altman pushing too far, too fast."

In a joint statement released Friday night, Altman and Brockman said they were "shocked and saddened" by the board's actions. And they weren't the only ones shocked by the news, as tech insiders took to social media on Friday to share their reactions. Angel investor Ron Conway wrote, "What happened at OpenAI today is a Board coup that we have not seen the likes of since 1985 when the then-Apple board pushed out Steve Jobs. It is shocking; it is irresponsible; and it does not do right by Sam & Greg or all the builders in OpenAI."

OpenAI has an unusual structure where its for-profit arm is owned and controlled by a non-profit 501(c)(3) public charity. Prior to yesterday, that non-profit was controlled by a board of directors that included Altman, Brockman, Ilya Sutskever and three others who were not OpenAI employees: Adam D’Angelo, the CEO of Quora; Tasha McCauley, an adjunct senior management scientist at RAND corporation; and Helen Toner, director of strategy and foundational research grants at Georgetown’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology. Now, only Sutskever, D'Angelo, McCauley, and Toner remain.

Surprise moves and turmoil

According to the joint statement from Brockman and Altman, Altman's firing came as a complete surprise to the pair, and they laid out a rough timeline of what happened. On Thursday night, Altman was asked to attend a remote board meeting on Friday at noon. The next day, Brockman, who was Chairman of the OpenAI board, was not invited to this board meeting, where Altman was fired.

Around 30 minutes later, Brockman was informed by Sutskever that he was being removed from his board role but could remain at the company, and that Altman had been fired (Brockman declined, and resigned his role later on Friday). According to Brockman, the OpenAI management team was only made aware of these moves shortly after the fact, but former CTO (now interim CEO) Mira Murati had been informed on Thursday night.

Key questions remain about accusations made against Altman in the OpenAI blog post that announced his departure, where the board said that Altman "was not consistently candid in his communications with the board, hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities." That has yet to be clarified by the company, but insiders say the move was mostly a power play that resulted from a cultural schism between Altman and Sutskever over Altman's management style and drive for high-profile publicity. On September 29, Sutskever tweeted, "Ego is the enemy of growth."

The schism is causing further turmoil on the inside. Three AI researchers loyal to Altman departed the company as well on Friday, resigning in reaction to the news: Jakub Pachocki, GPT-4 lead and OpenAI's director of research; Aleksander Madry, head of a team evaluating AI risk, and Szymon Sidor, an open source baselines researcher.

Pushing back the "veil of ignorance"

Rumors have already begun swirling about potential internal breakthroughs at OpenAI that may have intensified the slow/fast rift within the company, owing to Sutskever's role as co-lead of a "Superalignment" team that is tasked with figuring out how to control hypothetical superintelligent AI. At the APEC CEO Summit on Thursday, Altman said, "Four times now in the history of OpenAI—the most recent time was just in the last couple of weeks—I’ve gotten to be in the room when we push the veil of ignorance back and the frontier of discovery forward. And getting to do that is like the professional honor of a lifetime."

The concern here not necessarily being that OpenAI has developed superintelligence, which experts say is unlikely, but that the new breakthrough Altman mentioned may have added pressure to a company that is fighting within itself to proceed safely (from its non-profit branch) but also make money (from its for-profit subsidiary). Altman also recently said that GPT-5, presumed to be a powerful successor to the alarm-causing GPT-4, is now in development.

As news spread, some predictably shared quips on social media. X user shaurya wrote, "this is like the roman empire for people who do matrix multiplication." And AI futurist Daniel Jeffries said, "The entire AI industry would like to thank the OpenAI board for giving us all a chance to catch up."

But not all reactions were doom and gloom. As Friday night wore on, some at OpenAI made forward-looking statements. Evan Morikawa, Engineering Manager at OpenAI wrote on X, "For those wondering what’ll happen next, the answer is we’ll keep shipping. @sama & @gdb weren’t micro-managers. The comes from the many geniuses here in research product eng & design. There’s clear internal uniformity among these leaders that we’re here for the bigger mission."

Expect to hear more on the OpenAI board's side of the story as further details emerge.

[bilateralrope]

OpenAI board attempts to hit “Ctrl-Z” in talks with Altman to return as CEO

Cleared of malfeasance, Altman's unpopular firing may be undone—if he's interested.
BENJ EDWARDS - UPDATED 11/19/2023, 1:36 PM

Just over a day since the surprise firing of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman that sent shock waves through the tech industry, the OpenAI board is reportedly engaging in discussions with Altman to potentially return as chief executive of the company, according to The Verge, citing people familiar with the matter. The outlet says that Altman is "ambivalent" about returning and would want significant changes to how the company is run.

The New York Times reports that the talks are part of a pressure campaign from OpenAI investors, led by Microsoft, who has invested $13 billion in the for-profit arm of OpenAI.

The move would be a dramatic about-face for the board, which has received intense scrutiny from all corners of the tech world for abruptly and surprisingly firing one of the tech industry's most high-profile CEOs. Altman was popular with both Microsoft leadership and OpenAI staff, and his firing came as a shock to employees, who reportedly pushed back against OpenAI Chief Scientist Ilya Sutskever's handling of the move during an all-hands meeting on Friday.

The overtures toward Altman suggest that the board may have been surprised by the sizable reaction from the world at large—and is keenly feeling the aforementioned pressure from investors like Microsoft who have bet big on OpenAI's technology.

In an internal memo obtained by Axios on Saturday, OpenAI COO Brad Lightcap hinted at criticism of how the firing was handled and confirmed that Altman was not fired in response to "malfeasance or anything related to our financial, business, safety, or security/privacy practices." With no apparent legal wrongdoing at play, and with broad support within the company (present board of directors excluded), the path could clear for Altman's return, should he choose to accept it.

In the OpenAI blog post that first announced Altman's firing on Friday, the board wrote that Altman was fired because he "was not consistently candid in his communications with the board, hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities." COO Lightcap wrote in his memo on Saturday that the firing was due to a "breakdown in communication between Sam and the board." The firing prompted OpenAI President Greg Brockman to quit in solidarity with Altman on Friday afternoon.

As we've previously reported, several sources citing OpenAI insiders suggest that a culture clash with OpenAI Chief Scientist Ilya Sutskever over safety issues and the commercial direction of OpenAI was the primary reason for Altman's firing. Sutskever, a member of the OpenAI board, reportedly orchestrated the ouster, which came as a surprise to both Altman and Brockman. Altman was a member of the board, and Brockman served as chairman. Now four board members remain.

If Altman were to return to OpenAI, we do not yet know what that would mean for Sutskever's position at the company, or if others like Brockman and the three senior OpenAI researchers who also resigned would return with Altman as well. According to the New York Times, Altman and Brockman have already taken initial planning steps toward founding a new AI company and have received pledges of support from investors, should that take place.

"The best case for the board is that Sam and Greg come back, the 4 board members resign, and lay low for a long while," speculated venture capitalist Will Hubbard on X. "The worst case for the board is that Sam and Greg start another company, take all OpenAI's talent and future funding, and have a lawsuit brought against them." No plans for a lawsuit have been announced.

But even if the talks with Altman go nowhere, the fact they are taking place serves as yet another unexpected turn in this very unusual series of events. Expect further updates as details emerge.

The Verge cites people "familiar with the matter", then has an update from people close to Altman. So I have to wonder if this is part of the pressure campaign from Microsoft or something coming from people close to the remaining board.

Either way, this will get messier.

[LadyTevar]

This is starting to sound like a coup that failed

[bilateralrope]

The deal to bring Sam Altman back to OpenAI has fallen apart

Former Twitch CEO Emmett Shear will now take over as interim CEO of OpenAI, replacing Mira Murati.
By Nilay Patel and Alex Heath

Nov 20, 2023, 6:14 PM GMT+13

After a weekend of negotiations to bring back Sam Altman as OpenAI CEO following his shock firing, the company’s nonprofit board has gone another way entirely and named former Twitch CEO Emmett Shear as interim CEO. Shear will take over as interim OpenAI CEO from Mira Murati, who was publicly aligned with Altman. The news was first reported by The Information.

That’s three CEOs in three days, if you’re keeping track.

The hiring of Shear appears to close the door on Altman’s exit after he was fired Friday when the board said he had not been “consistently candid in his communications.” As we reported Saturday, the board quickly began discussing the CEO’s return under pressure from investors and the threat of a mass employee walkout.

On Saturday night, sources told The Verge the remaining board members had missed a 5PM PT deadline to resign and reinstate Altman and fellow co-founder Greg Brockman or face a slew of staff resignations. After the deadline passed, droves of OpenAI employees started posting their support for Altman on social media.

Altman returned to OpenAI’s office this morning saying it would be the “first and last time” he wore a guest badge — implying he would either return as CEO or never return at all. It appears that after hours of negotiation, it’s the latter.

OpenAI’s profile has skyrocketed since the launch of ChatGPT, which quickly became one of the fastest-growing services ever and kicked off a tech gold rush over generative AI. The company’s valuation reportedly reached $80 to $90 billion in recent weeks. Earlier this month, Altman reported that the service has over 100 million weekly users.

Developing...

It looks like the support for Altman appeared greater than it really was. Whatever investor pressure he could bring down on the board wasn't enough to save his job. The 5pm deadline now looks like it was only a bluff.

[LadyTevar]

I think the Deal fell apart for another reason --

Sam Altman Joining Microsoft

Sam Altman is joining Microsoft, the tech-giant has announced, ending speculation he might return to OpenAI just 48 hours after his chaotic ousting.
Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella wrote on X, formerly Twitter, that Mr Altman would be joining Microsoft to lead "a new advanced AI research team".

Meanwhile, ex-Twitch CEO Emmett Shear will become OpenAI's new interim boss.
Writing on X, he called the job a "once-in-a-lifetime opportunity".
But he added the way Mr Altman had been sacked was "handled very badly" and "seriously damaged our trust".

There's more to the article, but it's mostly rehashing what we already know, and one party is calling it an "embarrassing circus".

[Zaune]

Colour me utterly unsurprised that a company whose business model runs on mass art theft would be up to various other forms of shady goings-on.

[bilateralrope]

It gets messier

OpenAI employees revolt after board names new CEO and Altman may head to Microsoft

Ilya Sutskever announces regret; 700+ OpenAI employees sign letter asking board to resign.
BENJ EDWARDS - 11/21/2023, 4:29 AM

After two days of roller-coaster negotiations at OpenAI HQ due to the surprise ouster of CEO Sam Altman, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has announced that Microsoft plans to hire Altman and former OpenAI President Greg Brockman to head a "new advanced AI research team." Overnight, the OpenAI board named a new interim CEO, Emmett Shear, who acknowledged the messy process and promised to hire an investigator to generate a full report on Altman's firing.

But the story isn't over yet, because Monday morning, 650 of 770 OpenAI employees sent a letter to the OpenAI board demanding that all current board members resign and Altman and Brockman be reinstated, or they will likely leave to join Altman and Brockman at Microsoft. (Apparently the number of signatories to the letter is still growing, see update below.)

"The process through which you terminated Sam Altman and removed Greg Brockman from the board has jeopardized all of this work and undermined our mission and company," the letter states. "Your conduct has made it clear you did not have the competence to oversee OpenAI."

Ilya Sutskever, whom sources identified as a key architect of Altman's firing, also appears to have had a change of heart Monday morning, tweeting, "I deeply regret my participation in the board's actions. I never intended to harm OpenAI. I love everything we've built together and I will do everything I can to reunite the company."

Sutskever is a deep believer in the future rise of world-changing advanced AI (often called "AGI," for artificial general intelligence) that he thinks may one day replace humans at numerous jobs or even threaten life on earth if not developed safely, which is OpenAI's core mission. According to an article in The Atlantic, Sutskever became something of a guru on the topic at OpenAI, leading chants of "feel the AGI" during parties and even burning a wooden representation of an "unaligned" AI in effigy offsite.

Curiously, the undersigned in the 650-strong protest letter include both Sutskever and former interim CEO Mira Murati, whom the board voted to replace with Emmett Shear against the wishes of the company's executive staff. After Murati's removal, the letter says that the OpenAI board "informed the leadership team that allowing the company to be destroyed 'would be consistent with the mission.'"

An ongoing mess

The latest news caps a tense weekend of negotiations that saw ups and downs as insiders fed tips to the media. To briefly recap, the OpenAI board fired Altman on Friday in a surprise move that shocked OpenAI staff and investors, saying that Altman "was not consistently candid in his communications with the board." However, many reports since have pinned the firing on an internal culture clash between Altman and OpenAI Chief Scientist Sutskever, with Sutskever annoyed at Altman pushing to launch GPTs when Sutskever is concerned about a future when autonomous AI may become potentially dangerous.

On Saturday, OpenAI COO Brad Lightcap sent an internal memo saying that Altman had not been fired due to malfeasance. Under pressure from OpenAI employees and investors, the board invited Sam Altman to return to OpenAI HQ on Sunday as a guest to negotiate, but after two days, the talks broke down early Monday morning.

Through it all, a large majority of OpenAI employees have remained loyal to Altman. Saturday morning saw hundreds of OpenAI employees posting heart emoji on X in solidarity with Altman, who tweeted, "i love the openai team so much." And Monday morning, hundreds of employees began posting the phrase "OpenAI is nothing without its people," retweeting each other in solidarity.

However, key questions remain about exactly why the board acted as it did in firing Altman. We have not yet heard firsthand from Sutskever or the existing board directly explaining the actual thinking behind the move. And with Sutskever now regretting his actions and demanding the board's resignation (which technically includes him as well), the story has taken an even stranger turn.

In reply to a tweet by Every co-founder Dan Shipper expressing regret for the apparent breakup of OpenAI, former Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer wrote, "I’m sad too - the crazy governance model allowed this to happen. The fact that Ilya now regrets just shows how broken and underadvised they are/were. They call them board deliberations because you are supposed to be deliberate."

Emmett Shear steps into the hurricane; Nadella offers an out

Overnight, a new figure entered the picture: Emmett Shear, who previously served as CEO of Twitch but had resigned from that position to spend time with his newborn child.

"Today I got a call inviting me to consider a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity: to become the interim CEO of @OpenAI," wrote Emmett Shear in a lengthy post on Monday at 1:01 am Pacific time. "I took this job because I believe that OpenAI is one of the most important companies currently in existence."

Shear promised to implement a three-point plan to shore up OpenAI over the next 30 days that involves hiring an independent investigator to "dig into" the process leading up to Altman's firing, continue to speak to stakeholders and share key takeaways, and reform the OpenAI management team in light of recent departures.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella also chose social media network X as his venue to announce major news at 11:53 pm Pacific time Sunday, voicing support for Shear as interim CEO and talking up future plans for Altman at Microsoft. Here is the text of his full statement:

"We remain committed to our partnership with OpenAI and have confidence in our product roadmap, our ability to continue to innovate with everything we announced at Microsoft Ignite, and in continuing to support our customers and partners. We look forward to getting to know Emmett Shear and OAI's new leadership team and working with them. And we’re extremely excited to share the news that Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, together with colleagues, will be joining Microsoft to lead a new advanced AI research team. We look forward to moving quickly to provide them with the resources needed for their success."

For now, it's looking like Microsoft may walk away with Altman, Brockman, and a large majority of OpenAI employees if the OpenAI board does not cede to employee demands, which means that the OpenAI board will have inadvertently engineered the implosion of tech's hottest startup. Bloomberg journalist Ashlee Vance wrote, "I suspect there might not be enough cars in the U.S. for the number of lawyers that shall descend upon San Francisco."

Altman joining Microsoft is not yet a foregone conclusion. As of Monday morning Pacific time, over 700 OpenAI employees out of 770 have reportedly signed the aforementioned protest letter that asks the board of OpenAI to resign, with news of the numbers coming from multiple sources inside OpenAI. OpenAI researcher Noam Brown tweeted, "Everyone at @OpenAI is united. This is not a civil war. Unless Sam and Greg are brought back, there will be no OpenAI left to govern."

At 10:27 am, Sam Altman wrote, "we have more unity and commitment and focus than ever before. we are all going to work together some way or other, and i’m so excited. one team, one mission."

Meanwhile, amid fears that OpenAI's services may become unstable due to the chaos, several OpenAI employees have tweeted that staff is still on hand to tend services such as ChatGPT and their API systems. OpenAI API engineer Sherwin Wu wrote, "In case it isn’t clear: all of our services (i.e. our API and ChatGPT) are still being actively maintained and monitored. Folks have actually stepped up to ensure duplicate on-call coverage during this time to make sure the customer experience is still stable and reliable."

This is part of a breaking news story that will be updated as details emerge. It has been updated November 20, 2023 at 2:06 pm Eastern time with tweets from Noam Brown, Sam Altman, and Sherwin Wu.

All this and we still don't know what caused the board to kick Altman out so suddenly. It not having leaked makes me think that these employees threatening to leave don't know either.

[LadyTevar]

Well.... he's back....

Outed OpenAI Boss Returns after Sacking

OpenAI co-founder Sam Altman will return as boss just days after he was fired by the board, the firm has said.

The agreement "in principle" involves new board members being appointed, the tech company added.

Mr Altman's sacking on Friday astonished industry watchers and led to staff threatening mass resignations unless he was reinstated.

"I am looking forward to returning to OpenAI," Mr Altman said in a post on X, formerly Twitter.
He added: "I love OpenAI, and everything I've done over the past few days has been in service of keeping this team and its mission together.

Last week, the board decided to remove Mr Altman, which led to co-founder Greg Brockman's resignation, sending the star artificial intelligence (AI) company into chaos.
The decision was made by the three non-employee board members, Adam D'Angelo, Tasha McCauley and Helen Toner, and a third co-founder and the firm's chief scientist Ilya Sutskever.

But on Monday Mr Sutskever apologised on X, and signed the staff letter calling on the board to reverse course.

Microsoft, which uses OpenAI technology in many of its products - and is its biggest investor - then offered Mr Altman a job leading "a new advanced AI research team" at the tech giant.
Then on Wednesday, OpenAI said it had agreed Mr Altman's return to the tech company in principle, and that it would partly reconstitute the board of directors that had dismissed him.

Former Salesforce co-CEO Bret Taylor and former US treasury secretary Larry Summers will join current director Adam D'Angelo, OpenAI said.
In a post on X, Mr Brockman also said he would be returning to the firm.
Emmett Shear, who had been appointed OpenAI's interim chief executive, said he was "deeply pleased" by Mr Altman's return after about "72 very intense hours of work".

Microsoft boss Satya Nadella said the firm was "encouraged by the changes to the OpenAI board".
"We believe this is a first essential step on a path to more stable, well-informed, and effective governance."

(There's more to the article but it's mostly stuff already posted)

So. Where does this put MicroSoft? Is Altman working for M$ as well as being on the board? Will there be a representative of M$ on the board? Will OpenAI's board remain Non-Profit but running a for-Profit company?

[bilateralrope]

All this mess and we still don't know what the board fired him over in the first place.