[hooande]

If this were true they never would have had talks to bring him back. That's the opposite of steadfast commitment to principles. If Sam wronged them or the company in a significant way they never should have let him back in the building.

The board's decisions may or may not turn out to be correct in hindsight. But it's very difficult to say that this was a good example of leadership or decision making.

[dundarious]

https://twitter.com/ashleevance/status/1726469283734274338

> So, here's what happened at OpenAI tonight. Mira planned to hire Sam and Greg back. She turned Team Sam over past couple of days. Idea was to force board to fire everyone, which they figured the board would not do. Board went into total silence. Found their own CEO Emmett Shear

Written by the person who broke the story at Bloomberg.

So it appears a single person on the board wanted the talks to bring him back, and nobody else. I think that's 1 against 3, but the point is that the board wasn't totally united (which is not surprising).

[ignoramous]

Mira isn't on the OpenAI Board.

[dundarious]

I genuinely don't remember who's on it, so thanks for the data point. Regardless, my argument is they needn't act in total unanimity.

I presume this Mira person wasn't totally freelancing -- how would this even end up being presented to the board without some direction from someone on the board. So maybe more like 3.5 against 0.5. It could have been a total flip flop, but that's a bigger assumption. I have no problem not assuming grand narratives until the basic reporting shakes out.

[dragonwriter]

> I presume this Mira person wasn't totally freelancing

She was the interim CEO; it seems that it was her and some of the rest of the executive team, not the board, that wanted Sam to come back. The board apparently was working on finding a new interim CEO to replace Mira that wasn't in Sam's camp more than it was trying to bring Sam back.

[ffgjgf1]

She was the interim CEO not a board member? Considering was supposedly happened appointing her was the smartest thing to do (from the perspective of the board)

[lajawfe]

That is just current narrative, we don't know the details right? There was immense pressure from investors/Microsoft and board had to have that meeting. But the board probably already made their mind and did not balk under pressure.

[lostmsu]

That depends on what "talks" consisted of. If it was Altman throwing arguments at them, and them just replying "no thank you", I don't see a problem.

[jay_kyburz]

If I had to guess, they had the talks to bring him back as a favor to somebody, or as a sign of good faith, but neither party had changed their position so there was no compromise to be had.