[murakamiiq84]

Come on, I think it's really obvious that the largest AI nonprofit in the world might be interested in chips, to a much larger degree than a typical nonprofit would be interested in cafeteria food.

I think the analogy is more like someone on the board + Executive Director of your wildlife preservation nonprofit buying up land with potentially endangered animals on the side, with the (presumed) intention of selling the land back to the nonprofit.

Clearly a COI even if it's net good for the animals.

[kmlevitt]

So why not just judge it a conflict of interest if he tries to sell them to them? The board can evaluate the options available to open AI, and agree to allow him to buy from his chip company if and only if it's in OpenAI's interest to. Firing him years before the chip company even exists in the mere anticipation of that possible conflict seems…premature.

Direct and immediate Conflicts of interest can arise if decisions you make for one company could regularly come into conflict with decisions you have to make for the other, example, if he was starting another AI company making rivals to ChatGPT. But in the case of the chip company, nobody has really made a persuasive case of how that would happen here. In terms of interrelatedness, maybe they would build chips customized for openAI. But that would be a potential benefit Open AI, not a conflict!

[jjeaff]

There is an immediate conflict of interest. Because one should immediately start to wonder if Sam is holding back the company from making their own chips or perhaps avoiding partnering with another supplier because he wants to funnel future business to his future side project. That may be in the best interest of the non-profit, but it may not be, we can't tell, because of the conflict of interest.

[jaybrendansmith]

I'm sorry but I have to disagree. There are very few other suppliers. We see it with Apple and ARM...without this vertical integration the M2 laptop upon which I write this post would not exist. When one is running a company, the biggest enemy is always time. Had Apple not planned the ARM move more than a decade ago, it would not have happened in time to revamp the mac lineup. What you see as a conflict I see as making good bets and moving the ball forward. Given more recent events, its abundantly clear that the board was out of touch. Letting OpenAI fall behind would have caused it to fail in its mission of safe AGI. When making these judgments, its always necessary to consider the alternative timelines that would inevitably occur.