Good morning,
Boards don’t like to be in the news. It’s unseemly.
Directors are supposed to work behind the scenes, providing a company with guidance, occasionally managing orderly succession plans, not out there massively bungling a CEO’s firing, putting business and investments at risk, and attracting attention. But OpenAI’s board dominated headlines this weekend for apparently doing all of the above when they cut loose former CEO and cofounder Sam Altman on Friday afternoon, then watched public opinion—and the employees at the company—turn against them. (Read a full recap of the events here.)
Governance experts who spoke to me about the entire debacle said they couldn’t judge, based on available information, whether or not the board made the right call when it fired Altman. This board, it should be noted, oversees the company’s non-profit research arm and is tasked with overseeing the organization’s mission to develop AI safely and protect humanity, not protect investors or the company’s multi-billion dollar business interests. That said, several experts said they did see problems with the way the decision was executed—in a Friday afternoon video call, without the board chair present, among other issues—and that even given the company’s unusual ownership structure, which has its supporters and detractors, this was a story of governance gone wild.
