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And/or, how active they are on manifold

It sounds like one of the board members is an "AI safety" person, so it's not that crazy.

OpenAI is an ideologically driven, political organisation, around the political and technological question of how to deal with AI safety. They only hire people who are AI safety people using "culture fit", and their board was constructed before they were for profit + doesn't hold any equity in the company and only owes a fiduciary duty to the OpenAI charter (which is entirely about AI safety). The board of OpenAI kicking out the CEO of OpenAI is much more likely to be related to AI safety than any other company in a similar situation, this isn't AI safety people projecting their own concerns and what's important to them onto an entity that doesn't care. OpenAI very obviously does care about AI safety, as an organisation, even if they're more towards the "build it" side of the debate in AI safety.