According to 1M AI News monitoring, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ronan Farrow and The New Yorker reporter Andrew Marantz have published a comprehensive investigative report based on interviews with over 100 informed sources, for the first time fully disclosing two core documents: a roughly 70-page confidential memo compiled by Ilya Sutskever, former Chief Scientist at OpenAI, in autumn 2023, and over 200 pages of internal notes accumulated by Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei during his tenure at OpenAI. Both documents had remained undisclosed prior to this report.

The Sutskever memo begins with a list titled “Sam exhibits a consistent pattern…” — the first item being “lying.” The memo accuses Altman of misrepresenting facts to executives and the board, and of deceiving colleagues on safety protocols. At the time, Sutskever told another board member: “I don’t believe Sam is the person who should be holding the button.”

Amodei’s notes, titled “My Experience at OpenAI” (subtitle: “Private Document – Do Not Share”), circulated among Silicon Valley peers but were never made public. They state: “The problem with OpenAI is Sam himself,” and allege that Altman denied the existence of clauses already present in the $1 billion investment agreement with Microsoft, even after Amodei read them verbatim aloud, refusing to acknowledge them.

The report also reveals several previously undisclosed facts:

1. The independent investigation promised by Altman upon his return has never produced a written report. The law firm WilmerHale, which previously led investigations into Enron and WorldCom, reported only orally to two new board members. The decision not to issue a written report was partly influenced by advice from the personal lawyers of those two directors. An informed source described the process as “appearing designed to limit transparency,” while some current board members believe the matter may require a re-investigation.

2. The Super Alignment team received actual compute resources amounting to only 1%-2% of the publicly committed 20%, with most allocated to the “oldest and worst-performing clusters.” When journalists requested interviews with researchers working on existential safety, an OpenAI representative responded: “What do you mean by ‘existential safety’? That’s not a thing.”

3. Around 2018, senior leadership seriously discussed an internal initiative dubbed the “National Plan”: allowing major powers—including China and Russia—to bid for access to AI technology. Jack Clark, then policy lead, described the goal as “creating a prisoner’s dilemma where all nations would be forced to fund us.” The plan was shelved after multiple employees threatened to resign.

4. Several Microsoft executives expressed strong dissatisfaction with Altman. One executive stated: “He misrepresented, distorted, renegotiated, and violated agreements,” adding that “there is a small but real possibility he will ultimately be remembered like Bernie Madoff, the mastermind behind the Ponzi scheme, or Sam Bankman-Fried, founder of FTX.”

During a post-termination call with the board, Altman was asked to acknowledge his pattern of deception. He repeatedly said, “This is too absurd,” before stating, “I can’t change my nature.” A board member present interpreted this as meaning: “I possess the trait of lying to people, and I won’t stop.” Aaron Swartz, a Y Combinator inaugural cohort member who died in 2013, had warned friends shortly before his death: “You must understand Sam can never be trusted. He’s a sociopath—capable of anything.” The report notes that multiple interviewees voluntarily used the term “sociopath” when describing Altman.

In over a dozen conversations with reporters, Altman denied intentional deception, characterizing shifting commitments as “good-faith adaptation” to rapidly evolving conditions. He attributed early criticism to his own tendency to “avoid conflict excessively.” When asked whether running an AI company demands higher standards of integrity, he added: “Yes, it requires a higher level of integrity—I feel the weight of that responsibility every single day.”