[valine]

If anything this is a power grab by the board away from Microsoft. Optimistically, this could be an attempt to return OpenAI to its original status as a true non-profit company. OpenAI lost most of its openness under Sam.

They needed the Microsoft investment before GPT scaling was proven out. I imagine many entities would be willing to put money into a truly open research lab given OpenAI’s track record.

[kromem]

The focus on openness was literally how the board ended their statement on firing Altman.

And then Greg being all "committed to safety" in his resignation statement makes me think this was a conflict between being an open OpenAI with global research or being closed and proprietary in the name of safety.

[robswc]

I almost think its too late at this point, unless they have one hell of an arc. I don't see them being "open" until MS is totally out of the picture. I honestly don't even hate OpenAI in its current state... but sitting on the fence, trying to be both "open" and attached at the hip to MS is just... odd.

[jacooper]

MS has no voting shares.

[ffgjgf1]

What can you promise any other investors when you’ve already agree to give MS 75% all of your net income pretty much indefinitely and 49% of your shares?

[speedylight]

Microsoft gave them billions of dollars and access to lots of high performance compute, why would the board want to jeopardize that now?

[beejiu]

"Gave" is the operative term here. It only matters what will Microsoft offer in the future.

OpenAI (the board that made this decision) is still ultimately a non-profit, so it's possible that interests might not be aligned.

[ffgjgf1]

> so it's possible that interests might not be aligned.

Tough luck, considering all the obligations they have to MS now.

[whoiscroberts]

I’d try to get to the source of the compute, partner with AMD and Nvidia to build out DCs architected from the ground up to train and serve LLM’s. Get rid of Microsoft…

[ffgjgf1]

> Get rid of Microsoft…

Which is going to be hard considering they promised MS a 49% stake in OpenAI.

Which is something AMD/Nvidia will have to take in to account before agreeing to any partnership.

[yieldcrv]

OpenAI buys out Nvidia’s entire production capacity for the next couple quarters

OpenAI’s biggest customer and investor starts buying AMD chips and simultaneously building their own chips

there are a lot of ignorable cracks in the armor that support any number of theories

let alone Altman himself, who knows

[ffgjgf1]

> put money into a truly open research lab given OpenAI’s track record.

Why? It’s hard to imagine anyone putting any significant amounts of money (in comparison to the MS deal anyway) without any exclusivity rights at least

[valine]

OpenAI has the most capable language model in the world, that’s bordering on a national security asset. I could see the US government stepping in to provide funding.

[ffgjgf1]

I couldn’t