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gwern's avatar

Some additions:

- Hoffman didn't resign voluntarily, Altman forced him out: https://www.semafor.com/article/11/19/2023/reid-hoffman-was-privately-unhappy-about-leaving-openais-board

- Shivon Zilis stepped down not over the twins, which was old news, but only after Musk broke Twitter's contract with OA and began heavily criticizing it: https://www.semafor.com/article/03/24/2023/the-secret-history-of-elon-musk-sam-altman-and-openai

- The Open Phil seat deal was only for 3 years, and has long since expired, so while Karnofsky may have nominated Toner, he couldn't've forced her in nor can Toner pass it on to a person of her choice, so when Altman began saying she should be fired for criticizing OA, the seat was up for grabs. (AFAICT, OpenPhil has been a bystander to all this.)

- The lack of board nominations was due to a stalemate: see https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/21/technology/openai-altman-board-fight.html https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/altman-firing-openai-520a3a8c

- I haven't come across any evidence that Hurd's departure is other than it seems: political campaigns are short & brutal, so the fact that he dropped out a few months later means simply that his campaign didn't take off but crashed & burned. Hurd's departure is pretty much forced - one of the only red lines for a 501(c)3 like OA nonprofit is touching a political campaign or specific elected official: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/501(c)(3)_organization#Limitations_on_political_activity So as soon as he decided to run, he needed to leave.

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Chris L's avatar

Who defines "highly ideological AI governance organization"? I don't think it's nearly that simple.

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