The New Yorker just published what may be one of its most damning articles in recent years, alongside major investigations like its exposé of Harvey Weinstein, focusing not just on a darker, manipulative side of Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, but also his repeated deception and reckless leadership. The article draws on more than 100+ interviews, over 200+ pages of private notes from Dario Amodei, former OpenAI VP of Research, and previously undisclosed memos from Ilya Sutskever, OpenAI’s co-founder and chief scientist. The investigation found that Sam Altman’s issues didn’t just start with the creation of OpenAI. Back at Loopt, senior staff pushed to remove him as CEO twice over concerns about honesty and leadership. During his time at Y Combinator, partners raised similar complaints, and Paul Graham reportedly told others that Sam had been consistently dishonest. Inside OpenAI, Ilya Sutskever gathered around 70 pages of internal evidence, including Slack messages, HR records, and photos taken off company devices to avoid tracking. He shared them with board members using disappearing messages. The first memo opened by calling out a repeated pattern, starting with lying. Dario Amodei kept detailed private notes over several years, more than 200 pages, documenting his experience at the company. His conclusion was blunt: the core issue at OpenAI was Sam himself. There were also repeated problems with transparency around safety. Sam told the board that certain GPT-4 safety features had been approved, but when Helen Toner checked, some of the most controversial ones had never gone through proper review. He also failed to disclose that Microsoft had launched an early version of ChatGPT in India before required safety checks were completed. The superalignment team was publicly promised a large share of compute resources, around 20%. In reality, people working with the team say they received closer to 1 to 2%, often on outdated hardware. The effort was eventually shut down before it could finish its work. Sam also made side arrangements that cut around formal governance. At one point, he privately agreed with Greg Brockman and Ilya Sutskever that he would step down if the two of them decided it was necessary, effectively creating a separate power structure. The actual board was not aware of this. When it came to leadership, he played different sides. He struck a deal with Greg to become CEO, while telling researchers that Greg’s role would be reduced, and telling Greg something entirely different. After he was removed, the response turned aggressive. Sam told Mira Murati that his allies were actively trying to dig up damaging information on her. Around the same time, Thrive Capital paused a massive investment and signaled it would only move forward if Sam returned, putting pressure on employees who stood to gain financially. He also directly involved himself in reshaping oversight. He texted Satya Nadella suggesting a new board, including himself as CEO, and proposed who would run the investigation into his own conduct. The people later chosen to oversee that inquiry had been discussed with him beforehand. In the New Yorker article, one board member described him as someone who wants to please people in the moment but shows little concern for the consequences of misleading them. Several others independently used the word sociopathic. Altman was a literal “sociopath,” one OpenAI board member alleged. “He’s unconstrained by truth,” they 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.” Aaron Swartz, the famed coder and hacktivist who mysteriously died by suicide in 2013, used similar language to describe Altman. Swartz had been batchmates with Altman in the inaugural class of 2005 at the Silicon Valley incubator Y Combinator and warned friends about him just before his death. “You need to understand that Sam can never be trusted,” Swartz told one confidante. “He is a sociopath. He would do anything.” Among all of these new revelations, there is also a renewed civil lawsuit filed by Altmans younger sister, Annie Altman, who alleges he sexually abused her as a child beginning when she was 3 and he was 12. All of this is happening as OpenAI moves toward a potential trillion-dollar valuation and secures government contracts connected to surveillance, immigration enforcement, and military operations. Leadership like this raises urgent questions about who is really in control and what the stakes are. This is not about a single misstep or an internal dispute. It is a consistent pattern of deception, power plays, and sidestepping oversight at the helm of one of the world’s most influential AI companies. The deeper concern is not just what occurred inside OpenAI. It is what it signals for the future. A company shaping global technology, backed by massive capital and government influence, appears to have been guided by someone repeatedly accused of flouting rules designed to keep that power in check.(Jacob King)