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Title: Why Sam Altman Was Booted From OpenAI, According To New Testimony

Link: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/25/11/06/23442...

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: What did Ilya see?" Two
years ago, it was the meme seen 'round the world (or at least 'round the tech
industry). OpenAI CEO Sam Altman had been briefly ousted in November 2023 by
members of the company's board of directors, including his longtime
collaborator and fellow cofounder Ilya Sutskever. The board claimed Altman
"was not consistently candid in his communications with the board,"
undermining their confidence in him. He was out for less than a week before
being reinstated after hundreds of employees threatened to resign. But
observers wondered: What hadn't Altman been candid about? And what led
Sutskever to turn against him? Now, new details have come to light in a legal
deposition involving Sutskever, part of Musk's ongoing lawsuit against Altman
and OpenAI. For nearly 10 hours on October 1st, bookended by repeated sniping
between Musk's and Sutsever's attorneys, Sutskever answered questions about
the turmoil around Altman's ouster, from conflicts between executives to
short-lived merger talks with Anthropic. He testified that from personal
experience and documentation he'd viewed, he'd seen Altman pit high-ranking
executives against each other and offer conflicting information about his
plans for the company, telling people what they wanted to hear. The testimony
paints a picture of a leader who could be manipulative and chameleon-like in
the relentless pursuit of his own agenda -- though Sutskever expressed
hesitation about his reliance on some of the secondhand accounts later in
testimony, saying he "learned the critical importance of firsthand knowledge
for matters like this." In a statement toThe Verge, OpenAI spokesperson Liz
Bourgeois said that "The events of 2023 are behind us. These claims were
fully examined during the board's independent review, which unanimously
concluded Sam and Greg are the right leaders for OpenAI." The comment echoes
a 2024 statement by board chair Bret Taylor, following an investigation
conducted by the company. Altman "exhibits a consistent pattern of lying,
undermining his execs, and pitting his execs against one another," reads a
quote from the memo Sutskever. Altman told him and Jakub Pachocki, who is now
OpenAI's chief scientist, "conflicting things about the way the company would
be run," leading to internal conflict and repeated undermining. Sutskever
said he also faulted Altman for "not accepting or rejecting" former OpenAI
research executive Dario Amodei Dario's conditions when he wanted to run all
research and fire OpenAI president Greg Brockman, implying Altman played both
sides. Furthermore, OpenAI CTO Mira Murati surfaced claims that Altman left Y
Combinator for "similar behaviors. He was creating chaos, starting lots of
new projects, pitting people against each other, and thus was not managing YC
well."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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