[osigurdson]

A company is essentially an optimization problem, meant to minimize / maximize some set of metrics. Usually a companies goal is simply to maximize NPV but in OpenAI's case the goal is to maximize AI while minimizing harm.

"Failure" in this context essentially means arriving at a materially suboptimal outcome. Leaders in this situation, can easily be considered "irreplaceable" particularly in the early stages as decisions are incredibly impactful.