[founderspend]

Very few are talking about Adam D'Angelo's insane conflicts of interest. Beyond ChatGPT being a killshot for Quora, the recently launched ChatGPT store puts Adam's recent effort, Poe, under existential threat. OpenAI Dev Day has been cited as the final straw, but is it mere coincidence that the event and subsequent fallout occurred less than a week after Poe announced their AI creator economy?

Adam had no incentive to kill OpenAI, but he had every incentive to get the org to reign in their commercialization efforts and to instead focus on research and safety initiatives, taking the heat off Poe while still providing it with the necessary API access to power the product.

I don't think it's crazy to speculate that Adam might have drummed up concern amongst the board over Sam's "dangerous" shipping velocity, sweeping up Ilya in the hysteria who now seems to regret taking part. Sam and Greg have both signaled positive sentiment towards Ilya, which points to them possibly believing he was misguided.

[hn_throwaway_99]

I agree with pretty much everything you've written except "Very few are talking about Adam D'Angelo's insane conflicts of interest." I've seen tons of comments all over the HN OpenAI stories about this, to the point where a lot of them feel unnecessarily conspiratorial.

Like your second paragraph, I don't believe that you need to get to the level of a "D'Angelo wanted to kill OpenAI" conspiracy. Whenever there is a flat out, objective conflict of interest like there obviously is in this case, it doesn't matter what D'Angelo's true motivations are. The conflict of interest should be in and of itself a cause for D'Angelo to have resigned. I mean, Reid Hoffman (who likely would have prevented all this insanity) resigned from the OpenAI board just in March because he had a similar conflict of interest: https://www.semafor.com/article/11/19/2023/reid-hoffman-was-...

[firejake308]

In regards to

> Very few are talking about Adam D'Angelo's insane conflicts of interest

I think most of HN has been focusing on Ilya, but after he flipped, I think that leaves Adam as our prime suspect

[siva7]

This seems to be the most likely explanation of the events. People say how incredibly smart Adam is. That might be true. Nevertheless being smart doesn't mean he is a good fit for a board seat with such a backstabbing attitude. On the other side Helen, having a fancy title "Director of Strategy at Georgetown’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology" without much substance if you look closely and Tash, both who got their seat as a donor exchange by organisations and people they are closely connected with are clinging to their seats like super glue when almost all employees signed a letter that they don't want to be governed by them anymore. This board is a masterpiece of fragile egos who accidentally got into the governance of a major company without the ability to contribute anything of substance back. Instead they are being remembered for one of the greatest board screw-ups in business history.

[martythemaniak]

Yep, this is the most likely explanation now. There's only four people:

- McCauley: Doesn't seen to have a high profile or the standing required to initiate and drive this

- Toner: Fun to speculate she's a government agent to bring down OpenAI, but in reality also doesn't seem to have the profile and motive to drive this.

- Sutskever - he was the #1 suspect over the weekend, has the drive, profile and motivation to pull this off, but now (Monday) deeply regrets it.

- D'Angelo - has the motive, drive, and profile to do this.

Best guess: Quora is a ZIRP Shitco and is in trouble, Poe is gonna get steamrolled by OAI and Adam needs a bailout. Why not get rid of Sam, get bought out by OAI and become its CEO? So he convinces Ilya to act on some pre-existing concerns, then uses Ilya's credibility to get Toner and McCauley onboard. It's really the only thing that makes sense anymore.

[ianhawes]

I think this is exactly what happened Thursday and Friday. Plus, Adam D'Angelo has a bit of a reputation[0] as being a backstabber.

Continuing the saga over the weekend, you would assume that Ilya regrets the coup and can vote to re-appoint Sam as CEO, BUT that leaves McCauley and/or Toner as wildcards.

In a Sam-returning scenario, all of the nobodies on the board have to resign. Presumably, D'Angelo offers an alternative solution that appoints Emmett Shear as CEO and gives McCauley and Toner a viable way to salvage (LOL) OpenAI and also allow them to keep their board seats.

I look forward to this Netflix series.

[0] https://twitter.com/justindross/status/1725670445163458744

[tucnak]

What do you mean fun to speculate? I think there's no doubt that Toner is not for real and Georgetown Center for Security and Emerging Technology smells fine, too, I mean their mission is quite literally "Providing decision-makers with data-driven analysis on the security implications of emerging technologies." And it's not even much of a secret that she's reportedly wielding "influence comparable to USAF colonel"[1]. What's unknown is what role she— as a government agent— played in exploiting Sutskever and the board and to what exact end?

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38330158#38330819

[Apocryphon]

I thought the speculation was that McCauley was the government agent, not Toner?

[tucnak]

Not that I'm aware, please share if there's useful input! Have you read the thread that I linked to? This particular communication had me convinced, look up OP.

[Apocryphon]

She works for the RAND Corporation...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38309920

I've read the thread you linked to, it sure sounds interesting but I have insufficient knowledge to weigh in either way. And the rebuttal about the abundance of USAF Colonels also makes sense.

[tucnak]

I believe that her military rank or equivalent thereof is inconsequential; for one, I would agree that it's nothing terribly impressive. What is telling, however, is the surrounding discourse, how the AI safety circles assess these people and their motivation; it is absolutely clear that these AI people are completely aware of it, moreover you get AI startup CEOs actively _bragging_ about meeting the spooks and their agents. And this signal is so much more telling than anything else you would be able to pick up, IMO.

[brianjking]

I've been calling this since Friday all over this site and Twitter. It makes absolutely no sense why he's on this board given his direct competition between GPTs and the Revenue sharing versus Poe's creators monetization platform/build your own bot.

The Poe creators monetization is a clear conflict of interest.

[tsunamifury]

Except it makes obvious sense if you know anything about the technology and the training system quora potentially could become.

[bastawhiz]

> the training system quora potentially could become

That ship sailed years ago. I was a Quora "Top Writer" for a few years in a row until I quit. I stopped using Quora because they did a complete 180 and stopped their writers program (read: the people answering questions) and instead started programs to incentivize people to ask questions. Almost overnight, people were algorithmically creating questions like "What is 23 times 154?" and spamming low-value questions that are trivially google-able.

In the last year, answers are obviously AI generated (perhaps ironically, most by ChatGPT). All in all, the damage is mostly done. Quora has sunk to a level that even Yahoo Answers did not sink to in terms of spammy questions, spammy/bad/incorrect/low-value answers, and a practically unusable UI.

[ghaff]

Quora went from being pretty interesting early on to still having some gems in a sea of mostly dross to just meh.

[ianhawes]

Surely the OpenAI developers know how to append `?shared=1` to Quora URLs.

[wand3r]

I never use quora so I personally just found out from your comment[1] that you can bypass login. Helpful if I need Quora.

[0] Arrays start at 0

[1] It encouraged me to google it: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/213726/adding-share...

[freedomben]

This is a very interesting observation, and given Quora's decision-making history, I think acknowledging the conflicts-of-interest is wise.

I suspect that this whole thing is going to be a little radioactive against the board members. It should at least, as the board basically self-destructed their organization. Even if that wasn't the intent, outcomes matter and I hope people consider this when considering putting one of these people in leadership.

[tempsy]

The other thing is he's already rich and can make bridge burning decisions like this because he doesn't exactly need help from anyone who might be upset with him about his decision.

[macspoofing]

>Very few are talking about Adam D'Angelo's insane conflicts of interest ... he had every incentive to get the org to reign in their commercialization efforts and to instead focus on research and safety initiatives

Given the original mission statement of OpenAI, is that really a conflict of interest?

Having said that, it's clear that the 'Open' in 'OpenAI' is at best a misnomer. OpenAI, today, is a standard commercial entity, with a non-profit vestigial organ that will now be excised.

[highduc]

>with a non-profit vestigial organ that will now be excised.

If this happens I'm not trusting any other non-profit org ever again.

[wand3r]

It pays to be skeptical but this was a super unique situation with cofounders with different goals and a very unique (absurd?) structure. Wikipedia and Wikimedia worked. Lets not throw the baby out with the bathwater.

[zozbot234]

Wikipedia is mostly written by its users though. Wikimedia is just a glorified site host, if it went rouge the encyclopedia could simply be forked and hosted elsewhere. Microsoft has the right to build on the GPT trained models but others do not, they'd have to start from scratch.

[vasco]

You shouldn't trust corporate entities, you should trust the people that run them. The people in charge can always do what they want, at least for a while.

[mullingitover]

D'Angelo's presence on the OpenAI board definitely feels like having a combination buggy whip magnate and competing motor company CEO on the board of Ford Motor Company in 1904.

[gaogao]

So sadly can't find a buggy whip magnate on the Ford board, but a fun little gem from Ford's initial bankroller Alexander Y. Malcomson

> In 1905, to hedge his bets, Malcomson formed Aerocar to produce luxury automobiles.[1] However, other board members at Ford became upset, because the Aerocar would compete directly with the Model K.

[sertbdfgbnfgsd]

> sweeping up Ilya in the hysteria who now seems to regret taking part

Awww poor Ilya is innocent. He didn't see it coming. You shouldn't expect that from him!!

[founderspend]

Maybe not innocent, but human. Many have spoken to his integrity, and given his apology (and the silence of the rest of the board), I'm inclined to believe he isn't so bad of a guy.

[vasco]

To me it just sounds like someone who was in a failed coup. Of course you'd apologize and try to stay in, specially if you're scared of progress of AI and you want to stop it from within. I don't see how he can remain there.