OpenAI: it’s like nothing happened, or is it?
Finally, Sam is back. After several days of conversations, a number of people having left the board, a couple of others back where they belong, and the lesson learned that it is better to let the scientists focus on science and stay away from management.
Let’s take it one step at a time: Sam Altman and Greg Brockman are reinstated as if nothing had happened. Adam D’Angelo stays on the board to provide some continuity (and probably because he was the only one who reacted correctly), Tasha McCauley and Helen Toner, are gone for putting their loyalties on the wrong side, and the person who apparently started the whole mess only to ed up regretting it later, Ilya Sutskever, leaves the board but continues to work for the company. In other words, leave Adam here, who knows how a board works and what is expected of it, send Ilya back to the lab and warn him not to make a management decision again for the rest of his life (he will probably leave to Anthropic or to some other place as soon as his stock options vest), and get rid of Tasha and Helen for not knowing which side their bread was buttered on.
In addition, two important figures join the board: on the one hand, Bret Taylor, one of the most experienced people in Silicon Valley (founder of FriendFeed, and the occupier of very high level positions at Facebook/Meta and Salesforce); and on the…
