No, this passage tells me that the board wants to cover their ass: "he was not consistently candid in his communications with the board [...]. The board no longer has confidence in his ability to continue leading OpenAI."
It's not just a "hey, we don't really agree on x or y so let's part ways". It's more "hey, this guy did something that could get us in jail if we don't cut tie immediately".
Alternatively: "We were implicitly aware of what he was doing, but he knew from the beginning that if it didn't work out, we'd publicly disavow knowledge of it. It didn't work out."
I have zero knowledge of the internals of OpenAI - just thinking out loud about what could have spurred such a statement.
Yeah I don't think the distancing is going to work in this case, you don't sign up to go make robots with eyeball scanner crypto boy and get to pretend you aren't willing to do stuff most people would consider incredibly shady.
It's not just a "hey, we don't really agree on x or y so let's part ways". It's more "hey, this guy did something that could get us in jail if we don't cut tie immediately".