The Rise And Fall Of Sam Altman: A Detailed Timeline Of OpenAI’s Management Shakeup

In most public corporations, board members are elected by shareholders. This is not the case with OpenAI, which retains numerous guidelines from its early days as a non-profit. The OpenAI board can set its personal measurement, usher in new members, and dismiss members with out consulting the corporate’s stakeholders. It is all finished through a majority vote.

Earlier this 12 months, a number of board members departed — leaving six folks accountable for the corporate. Two of these folks had been Altman and Brockman. This led to a state of affairs the place Altman may very well be dismissed if 4 board members wished him gone, and there was little anybody might do about it.

There’s a logic behind this construction. A lot of the board members haven’t any monetary stake within the now for-profit firm. The board is designed to exist and function independently from the remainder of the corporate — with its major focus being the completion of OpenAI’s core mission. In principle, it is a kind of safeguard. Whereas profit-driven enterprise capitalists could throw ethics out of the window for elevated earnings, the board has no monetary stake within the firm and cannot be punished for going in opposition to traders. So it could put a cease to any potential moral violations. Sadly, as we have lately seen, it may well additionally backfire.