The belief in what's in the letter could explain some things like how the board couldn't trust Sam to keep this "discovery" at bay, and how it could be better to implode the company than let it explore said technology.
Half the board members have a background in ML.
Why should they be able to make the decision to implode the entire company over this?
Why should they have the ability to give zero transparency or comms to the public on their decision?
OpenAI's governance structure was idiotic and glad to see the board members fired.
The same can be said for Altman. Ilya at least has a research background in ML. The rest, I don’t know
Implied in that is that if it can't advance it in a way that is beneficial then it will not advance it at all. It's easy to imagine a situation where the board could feel their obligation to the mission is to blow up the company. There's nothing contradictory in that nor do they have to be ML experts to do it.
It's weird and surprising that this was the governance structure at all, and I'm sure it won't ever be again. But given that it was, there's nothing particularly broken about this outcome.
When adding Larry "My predictions didn't come true but I wasn't wrong" Summers to your board is supposed to be part of the solution, you may need to rethink your conception of the problem.