Ilya Sutskever testifies Sam Altman lied consistently
Former OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever testified under oath that CEO Sam Altman showed a consistent pattern of lying. He said he spent roughly a year collecting evidence of the conduct for the board and concluded that removing Altman was appropriate. The testimony came in legal proceedings involving Elon Musk and OpenAI governance. Sutskever also described OpenAI's November 2023 merger proposal to Anthropic that would have made Dario Amodei CEO of the combined entity.
🚨BREAKING: Ilya just confirmed under oath what he saw: Sam lying.
And he confirmed that he thought it was appropriate to fire Altman for it.
And that he had been concerned for about Sam for a long time.
100% confirming what I had been saying since the week of the firing.
Checkmate to everyone on X who doubted my coverage of Sam’s firing.
Checkmate.
🚨BREAKING: Ilya just confirmed under oath what he saw: Sam lying. And he confirmed that he thought it was appropriate to fire Altman for it. And that he had been concerned for about Sam for a long time. 100% confirming what I had been saying since the week of the firing.
🚨 In his testimony just now, at the Musk-OpenAI trial, Satya Nadella came off as shrewd, calm, and (mostly) honest, an impressive leader – but also selectively blind.
How? He seemed unable to believe that the board doubted Sam’s candor, or that the board could have fired him for that reason
Yet Nadella himself testified unambiguously that would fire someone not candid to their board.
By that standard, Sam certainly should have been fired, and should no longer serve on the board.
Witness after witness has testified that Sam lied. Toner, McCauley, Murati, and now Sutskever. All painting the same picture of Sam as a liar.
(Karen Hao’s book, Ronan Farrow’s article, and my own Substack also pointed that way, too.)
How could Nadella have missed the signs?
@DanielleFong The big one.
timeline fork
In November 2023, after Sam Altman had been fired, it was reported that OpenAI met secretly with Anthropic and asked Dario to merge Anthropic with OpenAI and then take over as CEO of the new company. And that Anthropic turned them down.
I posted about this at the time. But it was never corroborated, and so many angry people said it was obviously false and fake that I eventually deleted the post. Today we got testimony from Ilya Sutskever under oath that this actually did happen.
In November 2023, after Sam Altman had been fired, it was reported that OpenAI met secretly with Anthropic and asked Dario to merge Anthropic with OpenAI and then take over as CEO of the new company. And that Anthropic turned them down. I posted about this at the time. But it was never corroborated, and so many angry people said it was obviously false and fake that I eventually deleted the post. Today we got testimony from Ilya Sutskever under oath that this actually did happen.
timeline fork
In November 2023, after Sam Altman had been fired, it was reported that OpenAI met secretly with Anthropic and asked Dario to merge Anthropic with OpenAI and then take over as CEO of the new company. And that Anthropic turned them down. I posted about this at the time. But it was never corroborated, and so many angry people said it was obviously false and fake that I eventually deleted the post. Today we got testimony from Ilya Sutskever under oath that this actually did happen.
Ex-OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever claims to have collected proof of Sam Altman’s alleged dishonesty https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-openai-trial-sutskever-sam-altman-musk/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter