It seems like the combined probabilities of all the non-top-3 options (the current board) implies something like a 80% chance that OpenAI adds at least one board member before January 1. I'm guessing most people voting up any given individual don't actually believe there's an 80+% chance that OpenAI adds a board member in general before Jan 1, but do believe in their given candidate being added above the current odds, and are too lazy/illiquid to go about buying no stakes on everyone else — which would seem like a prediction market failure.

Does this have a name / has anyone else discussed this phenomenon?

EDIT: Created a new market to test this. If it is the case that there's a big gap between the prediction from my market and the implicit prediction from this market, I'll assume this is an inefficiency in extrapolating implicit probabilities from multiple-choice markets. If not, here's some free arbitrage for anyone who wants to correct this market or my own.

@TylerJohnston This is due to poor liquidity because each board member is an individual yes/no market.

Individual yes/no markets like this generally have "deceptive" liquidity where some options can be way less liquid than others.

@TylerJohnston also it could be an 80% chance of adding one member, or a 40% chance of adding two, or a ~30% chance of adding 3 to bring the board size back to the original 6.

@RyanGreenblatt Interesting — so a bunch of small individual markets here are overpriced due to low trade volume/liquidity, and there's no incentive to correct them because of the fact that they are low-liquidity + the correction is pretty small?

I wonder if there could be some way to design a platform that lets me trade the conjunction of two or more markets resolving yes/no. Some sort of design that incentivizes people to correct a bunch of small low-liquidity markets at once. Like, what if I could place a bet on all of the non-current-board choices resolving "NO," in such a way that I get favorable odds (80% in this case) and it actually impacts the current odds of the individual markets rather than requiring a single counterparty for the specific bet (which would basically mean creating a new market). I don't imagine that'd be easy or even possible to design though, especially since these aren't independent events.

OpenAI website indicates Bret Taylor, Larry Summers, Adam D’Angelo are currently board members. https://openai.com/our-structure

can someone who is betting NO on eg Bret Taylor explain their rationale? they might not even have a board meeting in the next month.

@KevinBurke I've made a decent amount of mana going onto all of the OpenAI markets and betting a small amount of YES on any halfway plausible option under 5% and NO on any halfway plausible option over 95%.

I expect that I'll probably lose these particular bets, but I still think the chance that e.g. a board member leaves within the first month is probably at least 10%.

@KevinBurke In addition to what @FaulSname said, the percentages in this market have just been way too high. Nonprofit bards are often just three members, and while it could go up to five or seven, that usually takes time. I just bet NO on all the options above ~10% (approximately the current risk-free rate on Manifold) and have made a decent profit as well.

@Jacy I'm specifically talking about Bret Taylor who was named as a board member in a press release put out yesterday by OpenAI.

@KevinBurke I'm personally selling when it's around 95% because of the opportunity cost of that money sitting there for a month

@KevinBurke I'm NO on all because OpenAI said that there will be more changes to the board. That might happen in december.

@Shump To be clear are you NO on Bret Taylor?

@KevinBurke I'm NO on all current board members, including him

Do non voting members count?

@Odoacre Yes they're members of the board. Technically called non-voting observer members, but members nonetheless

@Odoacre Good question. I'm leaning yes. The original description is worded as who are the "members" (and the question as who is "on" the board) and not who are the "directors". From what I am reading, non-voting observers are not "full" or "formal" members by some sources, but that still by implication makes them "members" of the board. Some news sources are referring to Microsoft's non-voting observer as a board "seat", which sounds like membership. From what I understand, non-voting observers are codified by the organization's bylaws and have confidentiality obligations, which sounds like attributes of membership. In any case, the presence and identity of a Microsoft non-voting observer in board discussions is relevant to how OpenAI's board will function in-practice, and so seems worth tracking as part of a question about "who is on the board" of OpenAI. Let me know if anyone has relevant arguments I should consider, otherwise, I'll edit this qualification into the question description tomorrow. If we don't learn the identity of the non-voting observer for whatever reason, then I will ignore them when the resolution date comes along (I won't resolve to e.g. "Microsoft person" or whatever).

https://www.theinformation.com/articles/openai-isnt-expected-to-offer-microsoft-other-investors-a-board-seat

Note that kalshi agrees but is more confident about all the options traded there (right now) https://kalshi.com/markets/openaiboard/openai-board-members-that-will-leave#openaiboard-23

I made a market to determine when (if ever) Altman would join the board. it currently disagrees a lot with this market, potential arbitrage opportunity https://manifold.markets/TheBayesian/when-will-sam-altman-become-a-membe

This gap between the 3 publically stated initial members and Sam makes no sense. Sam will obviously get a board seat, he cares about that and look how much power he has here… there still needs to be some internal OpenAI control over the board so Greg should also get a seat. If the reason they are trading low is that it might not happen in time, shouldn’t the “initial 3” members also be trading low? Can someone explain?

@Reality There have been tweet / announcements that have been pointing in this direction mostly (if i find it I’ll link it). And altman didn’t have all the negotiating power; had some, but may have accepted CEO + losing spot at the board

@TheBayesian I really don’t think that makes much sense, from what I know of founding SV CEOs, and Sam Altman. He clearly wants to prevent a repeat of what happened, so needs some executive control. Who do you imagine he’s negotiating against exactly? The past external board members have departed, all but Adam, who doesn’t hold much power in OpenAI since he’s an external.

@Reality Media articles saying a condition of the old board resigning was Sam and Greg not getting their seats back

@bec Ah i see, that’s a super weird negotiation. Ok, so based on that theory there would be an initial board of externals (sounds like a terrible idea)… investors/Microsoft, which would then at its earliest possibility according to the negotiation transfer a new seat to Altman. Altman/OpenAI will need to figure out different mechanics to have some control of their company in that case.

@Reality Having the board dominated by externals/investors is a surefire way to be steered towards external interest. Wonder how they will represent openai’s interests on the board

@Reality I'm still not sure on the timeline of all this. They definitely aren't on the preliminary board that's been announced, but maybe they'll beo n the permanent board? But will that permanent board be formed by january? That seems fast.

Reminder that the (nonprofit) board’s mission isn’t toward the shareholders

@Reality To me it makes complete sense - if the point of all this is to reign in Sam’s power-seeking, that should be the fundamental criterion for the board. Why do you think Microsoft will be allowed to get a seat on the board of the non profit either?

@bec Yes, here's from The Information:

@TheBayesian I’m not sure the nonprofit aspect of this matters very much anymore. Look who the intial 3 members of the board are :-)

But yeah, I suppose if that was the initial negotiation then they’ll need to find a way around this.

@Reality What are you saying the new board members mean for the nonprofit aspect? That they are independent parties so the non-profit’s priorities are preserved?

~~my understanding was that @Reality is implying sama won and the nonprofit focused board lost, and… now the board is for profit? Seems unlikely if true~~ (edit: not endorsed!)

nope, I’m arguing that your model of this situation as “non profit interests” vs “for profit” is much too high-level and not capturing relevant complexity. 1) The fate of OpenAI will not be decided by “externals”, 2) everyone knows each other at this level in tech (Larry included).

@Reality Re 1, I don’t see how the board changes would affect that (externals -> externals), re 2, what’s the relevance of that?

@bec Ill bring it back to the start of this discussion to make it more coherent. The core of my hypothesis here is that the betting differential between the 3 initial proposed board members, and the internals (OpenAI - Sam, Greg), is suspicious, since I believe ultimately the company will end up controlled by OpenAI again (this was the case in the beginning, there was just a miscalculation, it’s not like the typical case where investors buy out board seats and the internals truly lose control. This is evidenced by the fact that Sam is getting his job back). So, simply that would mean that Sam and Brock will eventually get board seats. If it was truly a condition of the negotiation that they can’t do so, then they’ll implement some other maneuvering to build control. The initial board will not oppose this; Sam/Satya would not have agreed to effectively swap one coup for another.

Reasonable arguments to explain the betting differential, in my view: there will be a time gap between initial board and sam getting a board seat, due to negotiation condition. Or sam will not get a board seat but there will need to be other maneuvering to preserve OpenAI control

@Reality Ehh, I think it depends if you think the board would agree to let Sam back unless they were highly confident that their priorities would be sufficiently preserved, and whether you think they are likely to be correct. The board has signalled their willingness to let the company fall apart if the alternative is to let the organisation fail at its purpose - what leverage would Microsoft have against this?

may be relevant to hash this disagreement out in a market! https://manifold.markets/TheBayesian/when-will-sam-altman-become-a-membe?r=VGhlQmF5ZXNpYW4

@bec I respect your opinion, which is different than mine. Perhaps we differ because, in regard to the points you brought up in your last message, I don’t think the intruder-board really had capacity to ensure the longterm survival/propagation of their intent while also leaving (even if Adam stays, who is a human and not an ideal). If they thought that, I think they were wrong (though I doubt they even assumed that, and more likely they just resigned to the inevitable/preserved career slightly). I think on the other hand, Sam and Greg as founders, would have just left if they felt they would end up in a similar position to before, where they were not in control. They had alternatives. I think staying as non-self-determining employees at Microsoft longterm also wasn’t an alternative, ie. so unless they became self-determining there in some capacity.

@Reality Sure, that’s what I meant by saying it depends on what you think about those factors. Though I guess now we’re also adding another one - whether it makes sense to conceptualise the history of OpenAI as ‘Sam & Greg founded a company and then somehow these intruders got on their board’.

@bec That framing doesn’t matter. I do think Sam and Greg had power/control in the organization, Ilya as well. They work at OpenAI. 700+ employees wanted to reinstate them. Who do you think opposes them exactly? Sounds a bit like a ghost theory.

I think the safety concerns of the public + employee base + their own thinking influence them, but that doesn’t constitute a counter-argument.

@Reality The board, who are not beholden to the employees

@bec Ah ok, so you think it’s a shared ideology passed from external to external, as the board members change over time. 🥹🥹

@Reality I’m saying I don’t believe there was any mechanism of pressure that would make the old board resign if they believed that doing so would result in Sam gaining the balance of power

Yeah maybe they’re carving it in stone, corporate law definitely works that way. Or perhaps they are just gonna select new board members that share their ideals. They’re off to a good start, the initial board is sure to uphold what they wanted.

@Reality I don’t mind if you disagree with me, I’m just articulating what the cruxes of my opinion are. No need to get snarky. (Though I will add that the relevant laws would be those governing 501(c)(3)s, not corporations).

@bec Sorry :p thanks for the discussion. ❤️❤️

@Reality No worries 🙂