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Notes -
I think Matt Levine had the correct take in his latest Money Stuff. The basic idea is there's some natural tension between the board of OpenAI and its employees/investors. The board is committed to the non-profit mission of building safe AI while the employees and investors want to build a commercially viable product that turns their equity into big piles of money. There can naturally be some tension between these things!
While the board has a certain formal legal power over the employees and investors it cannot actually accomplish much without them. So the employees and investors have a great deal of informal power. Currently it seems like the balance of power is on the "make big piles of money" side and this will probably be more true after the restructuring.
I think one outcome here is the IRS should probably revoke OpenAI's charitable status. It is hard for me to take the idea they are a charitable organization seriously when the CEO of the for-profit subsidiary can overrule the board to which he ostensibly reports in order to make more money.
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