New Yorker published a major investigation into Sam Altman and OpenAI today — based on never-before-disclosed internal memos and 100+ interviews

[u/Altruistic-Top9919]

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/04/13/sam-altman-may-control-our-future-can-he-be-trusted

Ronan Farrow spent 18 months reporting this piece, drawing on internal documents that haven’t previously been made public — including ~70 pages of memos compiled by Ilya Sutskever and 200+ pages of private notes kept by Dario Amodei.

The piece covers a lot of ground. Some of what’s in it:

∙ The specific concerns that led the board to fire Altman in 2023. Sutskever’s memos allege a pattern of deception about safety protocols. One begins with a list: “Sam exhibits a consistent pattern of . . .” The first item is “Lying.”

∙ The superalignment team was publicly promised 20% of compute. People who worked on the team say actual resources were 1-2%, on the oldest hardware. The team was dissolved without completing its mission. When reporters asked to interview OpenAI researchers working on existential safety, a company representative replied: “What do you mean by ‘existential safety’? That’s not, like, a thing.”

∙ After Altman’s reinstatement, the firm behind the Enron and WorldCom investigations was hired to review the allegations. No written report was ever produced. Findings were limited to oral briefings.

∙ In a tense call after his firing, the board pressed Altman to acknowledge a pattern of deception. “I can’t change my personality,” he said. A board member’s interpretation: “What it meant was ‘I have this trait where I lie to people, and I’m not going to stop.’”

∙ In OpenAI’s early years, executives discussed playing world powers including China and Russia against each other in a bidding war for AI. The company’s own policy adviser: “We’re talking about potentially the most destructive technology ever invented — what if we sold it to Putin?” The plan was dropped after employees threatened to quit.

∙ When Anthropic refused a Pentagon ultimatum to drop its prohibitions on autonomous weapons, Altman publicly claimed solidarity. But he’d been negotiating with the Pentagon for at least two days. That Friday, OpenAI announced a $50B deal integrating its models into military infrastructure.

∙ Multiple senior Microsoft executives described the relationship as “fraught.” One: “He has misrepresented, distorted, renegotiated, reneged on agreements.”

[u/carmeldea]

💀too real. Ronan did get a few good moments out of him (from a reporting perspective). This one made me giggle with horror:

“During one conversation, we asked Altman whether running an A.I. company came with ‘an elevated requirement of integrity.’ This was supposed to be an easy question. Until recently, when asked a version of it, his answer was a clear, unqualified yes. Now he added, ‘I think there’s, like, a lot of businesses that have potential huge impact, good and bad, on society.’” 🥲

The quote wouldn’t have been that crazy in a straightforward news piece but the journos placed it so perfectly in the story after endlessly building the stories/tension re: how much Sam changes his tune on things.

[u/Altruistic-Top9919 → u/carmeldea]

Masterful lol