Be it cricket or AI, never underestimate the strategic value of grace

livemint.com:

World Cup loss to Australia. A pall of gloom seemed to descend on a once-roaring stadium rather early in the match, an audible loss of confidence in Indian chances of victory. Arguably, had spectators kept clapping now and then for the crisp strokes hit by Australian batters and shown cheerier appreciation for Travis Head’s century, a sullen mood in the stands would’ve had less of a chance to reach our players on the field and dampen morale.

While the silence was explainable, gracious applause here and there for the other side might have masked its dismal message and kept up spirits. The second case is even more debatable: the ouster of Sam Altman from OpenAI for inconsistent candour, as cited by its board while forcing out the co-founder and CEO of this artificial intelligence (AI) hot-house famous for ChatGPT. So graceless was Altman’s ejection that the shock of it threw the company into tumult, with colleagues, clients and investors ready to rally around him.

Efforts were reportedly made by investors to get him back, but OpenAI being left worse off was made likelier as an eventuality by the shock firing of a CEO who’d almost become the AI industry’s voice. Now Emmett Shear of Twitch will take that job as Altman heads for Microsoft. The sacking that Altman said he learnt of only minutes in advance was enabled by OpenAI’s peculiar structure as a non-profit startup.

It began in 2015 as an AI researcher committed to ensure that general AI “benefits all humanity," with a board that assured scientists and others control over capitalists by insisting that at no point could a majority of its members have a financial stake in it. It was meant to be a board of thinkers. Altman had no equity either.