I do not share the cynicism of some with respect to OpenAI’s actions in the DoW/Ant dispute. It basically seems to me as though OpenAI was attempting to deescalate last week; whether they executed well is a separate question, but in their defense good execution in such chaos was nearly impossible.
But from where I sit it seems OpenAI tried to reduce tensions and find a productive path forward, while allowing its employees considerable latitude to speak their minds. The easy thing would have been for management to stay quiet and let this happen; they did not do that, and they also stood firm in opposition to the supply-chain risk designation.
In general, OpenAI is unjustly maligned.
This is the thing that bothers me the most about Dario’s leaked memo; it spends so much time on OpenAI conspiracies and cynicism that I fear industry solidarity in the future will be harder than it needs to be. This is not the last time we will see state interference into frontier AI, and until we build formalized structures for such interference it will be important for the industry to hang tough together. I fear that will be less likely now.