Preface#
Here’s a question I’m prepared for. Is the drama, or was the drama, of OpenAI’s board, or its boardroom drama in late 2023, was that drama of a social dimension, of a psychological dimension, or an existential dimension? I’m going to reframe it. Was that drama of an emotional dimension? Was it of a tragic dimension? Or was it of a, what should I call it, a narrative dimension? Or if I may borrow from the great old famous fart, Polonius, was that drama pastoral comical, tragical, or historical? - Yours Truly
I’d say the drama surrounding OpenAI’s boardroom in late 2023 was fundamentally a tragic one—despite its clear social, emotional, and psychological layers. It wasn’t a typical corporate kerfuffle, but a clash of vision, identity, and ethos, deeply reflective of the conflicting impulses driving the tech industry and the ethical dilemmas AI poses.
In tragedy, characters confront forces beyond their control, often driven by hubris or the struggle to reconcile personal integrity with external power. The board’s decisions and public reactions had all the hallmarks of such a conflict—whether it was about leadership choices, divergent visions for AI’s future, or the broader implications of wielding such technology. The whole affair echoed something classically tragic, where the actors (many of them tech visionaries) were ensnared by larger philosophical and existential questions.
If we borrow from Polonius, I’d call it “tragical-historical”—an epic moment in tech history, laden with existential stakes, where personal ambitions and emotional betrayals intertwine. There was a palpable sense of fated unraveling, where no one could truly emerge victorious, but it was destined to change the landscape of AI forever. - GPT-4o