I suspect that the board will look better over time as more information comes out.
Here’s some quotes from the Time article where Sam was named CEO of the Year:
But four people who have worked with Altman over the years also say he could be slippery—and at times, misleading and deceptive. Two people familiar with the board’s proceedings say that Altman is skilled at manipulating people, and that he had repeatedly received feedback that he was sometimes dishonest in order to make people feel he agreed with them when he did not. These people saw this pattern as part of a broader attempt to consolidate power. “In a lot of ways, Sam is a really nice guy; he’s not an evil genius. It would be easier to tell this story if he was a terrible person,” says one of them. “He cares about the mission, he cares about other people, he cares about humanity. But there’s also a clear pattern, if you look at his behavior, of really seeking power in an extreme way.”
… Some worried that iterative deployment would accelerate a dangerous AI arms race, and that commercial concerns were clouding OpenAI’s safety priorities. Several people close to the company thought OpenAI was drifting away from its original mission. “We had multiple board conversations about it, and huge numbers of internal conversations,” Altman says. But the decision was made. In 2021, seven staffers who disagreed quit to start a rival lab called Anthropic, led by Dario Amodei, OpenAI’s top safety researcher.
… For some time—little by little, at different rates—the three independent directors and Sutskever were becoming concerned about Altman’s behavior. Altman had a tendency to play different people off one another in order to get his desired outcome, say two people familiar with the board’s discussions. Both also say Altman tried to ensure information flowed through him. “He has a way of keeping the picture somewhat fragmented,” one says, making it hard to know where others stood.
… Altman told one board member that another believed Toner ought to be removed immediately, which was not true, according to two people familiar with the discussions.
In other words, it appears that Sam started the fight and not them. Is it really that crazy for the board to attempt to remove a CEO who was attempted to undermine the board’s oversight over him?
They were definitely outclassed in terms of their political ability, but I don’t think they were incompetent. It’s more that when you go up against a much more skilled actor, they end up making you look incompetent.
I suspect that the board will look better over time as more information comes out.
Here’s some quotes from the Time article where Sam was named CEO of the Year:
In other words, it appears that Sam started the fight and not them. Is it really that crazy for the board to attempt to remove a CEO who was attempted to undermine the board’s oversight over him?
They were definitely outclassed in terms of their political ability, but I don’t think they were incompetent. It’s more that when you go up against a much more skilled actor, they end up making you look incompetent.