A board member, Helen Toner, made a borderline narcissistic remark that it would be consistent with the company mission to destroy the company when the leadership confronted the board that their decisions puts the future of the company in danger. Almost all employees resigned in protest. It's insulting calling the employees under these circumstances investors.
Don’t forget she’s heavily invested in a company that is directly competing with OpenAI. So obviously it’s also in her best interest to see OpenAI destroyed.
I agree that we should usually assume good faith. Still, if a member knows she will loose the board seat soon and makes such a implicit statement to the leadership team there is reason to believe that she doesn't want both companies to be successful, at least one of those not.
> obviously it’s also in her best interest to see OpenAI destroyed
Do you feel the same way about Reed Hastings serving on Facebooks BoD, or Eric Schmidt on Apples? How about Larry Ellison at Tesla?
These are just the lowest of hanging fruit, i.e literal chief executives and founders. If we extend the criteria for ethical compromise to include every board members investment portfolio I imagine quite a few more “obvious” conflicts will emerge.
By definition the attention economy dictates that time spent one place can’t be spent in another. Do you also feel as though Twitch doesn’t compete with Facebook simply because they’re not identical businesses? That’s not how it works.
But you don’t have to just take my word for it :
> “Netflix founder and co-CEO Reed Hastings said Wednesday he was slow to come around to advertising on the streaming platform because he was too focused on digital competition from Facebook and Google.”
I’m not sure how the point stands. The iPhone was introduced during that tenure, then the App Store, then Jobs decided Google was also headed toward their own full mobile ecosystem, and released Schmidt. None of that was a conflict of interest at the beginning. Jobs initially didn’t even think Apple would have an app store.
Talking about conflicts of interest in the attention economy is like talking about conflicts of interest in the money economy. If the introduction of the concept doesn’t clarify anything functionally then it’s a giveaway that you’re broadening the discussion to avoid losing the point.
> Talking about conflicts of interest in the attention economy is like talking about conflicts of interest in the money economy. If the introduction of the concept doesn’t clarify anything functionally then it’s a giveaway that you’re broadening the discussion to avoid losing the point.
It's a well established concept and was supported with a concrete example. If you don't feel inclined to address my points, I'm certainly not obligated to dance to your tune.
Your concrete example is Netflix’s CEO saying he doesn’t want to do advertising because he missed the boat and was on Facebook’s board and as a result didn’t believe he had the data to compete as an advertising platform.
Attempting to run ads like Google and Facebook would bring Netflix into direct competition with them, and he knows he doesn’t have the relationships or company structure to support it.
He is explicitly saying they don’t compete. And they don’t.
I think yes, because Netflix you pay out of pocket, whereas Facebook is a free service
I believe Facebook vs Hulu or regular TV is more of a competition in the attention economy because when the commercial break comes up then you start scrolling your social media on your phone and every 10 posts or whatever you stumble into the ads placed on there so Facebook ads are seen and convert whereas regular tv and hulu aren’t seen and dont convert
> I think yes, because Netflix you pay out of pocket, whereas Facebook is a free service
Do you agree that the following company pairs are competitors?
* FB : TikTok
* TikTok : YT
* YT : Netflix
If so, then by transitive reasoning there is competition between FB and Netflix.
...
To be clear, this is an abuse of logic and hence somewhat tongue in cheek, but I also don't think either of the above comparisons are wholly unreasonable. At the end of the day, it's eyeballs all the way down and everyone wants as many as of them shabriri grapes as they can get.
The two FAANG companies don't compete at a product level, however they do compete for talent, which is significant. Probably significant enough to cause conflicts of interest.
I couldn't find any source on her investing in any AI companies. If it's true (and not hidden), I'm really surprised that major news publications aren't covering it.
And it seems like they were right that the for-profit part of the company had become out of control, in the literal sense that we've seen through this episode that it could not be controlled.
Ands the evidence is now that OpenAI is a business 2 business product and not a attempt to keep AI doing anything but satiating anything Microsoft wants.
It is a correct statement, not really "borderline narcissistic". The board's mission is to help humanity develop safe beneficial AGI. If the board thinks that the company is hindering this mission (e.g. doing unsafe things), then it's the board's duty to stop the company.
Of course, the employees want the company to continue, and weren't told much at this point so it is understandable that they didn't like the statement.
I can't interpret from the charter that the board has the authorisation to destroy the company under the current circumstances:
> We are concerned about late-stage AGI development becoming a competitive race without time for adequate safety precautions. Therefore, if a value-aligned, safety-conscious project comes close to building AGI before we do, we commit to stop competing with and start assisting this project
That wasn't the case.
So it may be not so far fetched to call her actions borderline as it is also very easy to hide personal motives behind altruistic ones.
The more relevant part is probably "OpenAI’s mission is to ensure that AGI ... benefits all of humanity".
The statement "it would be consistent with the company mission to destroy the company" is correct. The word "would be" rather than "is" implies some condition, it doesn't have to apply to the current circumstances.
A hypothesis is that Sam was attempting to gain full control of the board by getting the majority, and therefore the current board would be unable to hold him accountable to follow the mission in the future. Therefore, the board may have considered it necessary to stop him in order to fulfill the mission. There's no hard evidence of that revealed yet though.
> this mission (e.g. doing unsafe things), then it's the board's duty to stop the company.
So instead of having to compromise to some extent but still have a say what happens next you burn the company at best delaying the whole thing by 6-12 months until someone else does it? Well at least your hands are clean, but that's about it...
