It doesn't add up because there's multiple actors with different motives.
- At least two members of the board probably were genuinely more concerned about AI alignment
- Ilya may have been partially motivated by ego, Altman being the public face
- Microsoft had leverage: license to the models and code, and providing the compute. It expected profit incentives would keep people aligned.
- Sam needs compute hardware to stay in the space. Outside Amazon, Google and MS, who actually has the hardware, even if you have the money?
There's a bunch of people behaving with their own goals, and probably a misunderstanding of other people's motivations. People like Sam and Satya expect people to be self-interested and not tear everything down.
Sometimes people want a change in direction, but they don't have the power and end up decapitating instead.
- At least two members of the board probably were genuinely more concerned about AI alignment
- Ilya may have been partially motivated by ego, Altman being the public face
- Microsoft had leverage: license to the models and code, and providing the compute. It expected profit incentives would keep people aligned.
- Sam needs compute hardware to stay in the space. Outside Amazon, Google and MS, who actually has the hardware, even if you have the money?
There's a bunch of people behaving with their own goals, and probably a misunderstanding of other people's motivations. People like Sam and Satya expect people to be self-interested and not tear everything down.
Sometimes people want a change in direction, but they don't have the power and end up decapitating instead.