The one (Adam D’Angelo) who’s a cofounder and CEO of a company (Quora) that has a product (Poe) that arguably competes with OpenAI’s “GPTs” feature, no less.

I don’t understand why that’s not a conflict of interest?

But honestly both products pale in comparison to OpenAI’s underlying models’ importance.

> I don’t understand why that’s not a conflict of interest?

It's not the conflict of interest it would be if it was the board of a for profit corporation that was basically identical to the existing for-profit LLC but without the lyaers above it ending with the nonprofit that the board actually runs, because OpenAI is not a normal company, and making profit is not its purpose, so the CEO of a company that happens to have a product in the same space as the LLC is not in a fundamental conflict of interest (there may be some specific decisions it would make sense for him to recuse from for conflict reasons, but there is a difference between "may have a conflict regarding certain decisions" and "has a fundamental conflict incompatible with sitting on the board".)

Its not a conflict for a nonprofit that raises money with craft faires to have someone who runs a for-profit periodic craft faire in the same market on its board. It is a conflict for a for profit corporation whose business is running such a craft faire to do so, though.

Still a conflict of interest. If D’Angelo has financial incentive to want OpenAI to fail, then this at odds with his duty to follow the OpenAI charter. It’s exactly why two of the previous board members left earlier this year.

D'Angelo?

Wonder if this is a signal that the theories about Poe are off the mark.

Doesn’t matter. It’s an absolutely clear conflict of interest. It may have taken an unrelated shakeup for people to notice (or maybe D’Angelo was critically involved; we don’t know), but there’s no way he should be staying on this board.

maybe it's just going to be easier to fire him in a second step once this current situation which seems to be primarily about ideology is cleared up. In D’Angelo's case it's going to be easier to just point to a clear traditional conflict of interest down the line

No one really knows who was responsible for what. But Sam agreed to this deal over the Microsoft alternative, so probably Adam isn't that bad.

I don't understand that either, but let's see what the board looks like in a few months/weeks/days/hours?

Old board needs to agree to new board, so I think some compromise is inevitable.

If all members of the old board resign simultaneously, what happens then? No more old board to agree to any new members. In a for-profit the shareholders can elect new board members, but in this case I don't know how it's supposed to work.

I've been privy to this happening at a nonprofit board. Depends on charter, but I've seen the old board tender their resignation and remain responsible only to vote for the appointment of their (usually interim to start) replacements. Normally in a nonprofit (not here), the membership of that nonprofit still has to ratify the new board in some kind of annual meeting; but in the meantime, the interim board can start making executive decisions about the org.

Maybe the other two left if Adam would remain.

Not sure why that would be contradictory.

Well then there’s still a “ignorant, ineffective dilettante“ making up 1/3 of the board.

Firstly, maybe don't put quotes around an unrelated party's representation of the board. Secondly, the board was made up of individuals and naturally, what might be true for the board as a whole does not apply to every individual on it.

I don’t understand this comment. I’m quoting from this thread, from the post that I was responding to. What do you think I was talking about?