Sam Altman described as ‘sociopath’ by board member in brutal insider report: ‘He’s unconstrained by truth’

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman was dragged through the mud in a new in-depth report that features former colleagues and current board members referring to him as sociopath and a liar.

Altman, 40, has yet to respond to claims made in a recent report, some of which were uncovered in secret memos to OpenAI’s board members.

‘He is a sociopath. He would do anything.’

According to the New Yorker, OpenAI’s chief scientist, Ilya Sutskever, sent the memos to three other board members in 2023. One of the memos about Altman began with a list titled “Sam exhibits a consistent pattern of.” The first item on the list was “lying.”

The memos also alleged that Altman misrepresented facts to executives and board members while deceiving them about safety protocols. Unfortunately for Altman, the claims did not stop there.

“He’s unconstrained by truth,” a board member told the New Yorker. “He has two traits that are almost never seen in the same person. The first is a strong desire to please people, to be liked in any given interaction. The second is almost a sociopathic lack of concern for the consequences that may come from deceiving someone.”

The outlet said that the unnamed board member was not the only person to describe Altman as “sociopathic” without being prompted. Not long before his 2013 suicide, according to the New Yorker, coder Aaron Swartz warned at least one friend about Altman, whom Swartz had known from their time together at Y Combinator. His warning: “You need to understand that Sam can never be trusted. He is a sociopath. He would do anything.”

Sutskever additionally implied that he did not think Altman should have power over others, saying, “I don’t think Sam is the guy who should have his finger on the button.”

Others described him as more ambitious than anything else.

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Former OpenAI board member Sue Yoon said Altman was “not this Machiavellian villain” but was able to convince himself of his own sales pitches.

“He’s too caught up in his own self-belief,” she reportedly said. “So he does things that, if you live in the real world, make no sense. But he doesn’t live in the real world.”

Other anonymous colleagues cited by the New Yorker said that Sutskever and similar detractors were simply aspiring to take Altman’s throne. Still, even many neutral comments did not help Altman’s portrayal in the report.

“He’s unbelievably persuasive. Like, Jedi mind tricks,” a tech executive colleague of Altman’s reportedly said. “He’s just next-level.”

At the same time, OpenAI is allegedly in the midst of unleashing superintelligence that Altman himself says will be so disruptive that it will require a new social contract.

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Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

Altman told Axios that there would be widespread job loss and a threat of cyberattacks coupled with social unrest.

“I suspect in the next year,” he said, “we will see significant threats we have to mitigate from cyber.”

Altman proposed a new deal with citizens that includes a public wealth fund, taxes on “automated labor,” a 32-hour workweek, and the “right to AI.”

That confirms previous reports that Altman wanted to put AI on a meter like electricity or water, to both democratize its usage and limit the possibility of overburdening the electrical grid.

OpenAI did not respond to Return’s request for comment about the claims made about Altman and who they were coming from.

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