The OpenAI Board Drama Receipts Are Here
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A 365-page deposition transcript dropped this week with real evidence behind last November's OpenAI board chaos. Ilya Sutskever, the chief scientist who voted to fire Sam Altman, sat for nearly 10 hours of questioning in the Musk v. Altman lawsuit.
Here's what we learned:
The Secret 52-Page Memo
Sutskever wrote a detailed memo to the independent board directors that opened with: "Sam exhibits a consistent pattern of lying, undermining his execs, and pitting his execs against one another." When asked what action was appropriate, his answer was one word: "Termination." He used disappearing emails to keep it from Sam.
This Was a Year-Long Plan
When asked how long he'd been considering Altman's removal: "At least a year." He was waiting for board member departures to change the dynamics so "the majority of the board is not obviously friendly with Sam."
All Evidence Came From One Person
Almost everything in the memo came from Mira Murati. The Y Combinator allegations? From Mira. The Stripe firing claim about Greg Brockman? From Mira. The GPT-4 Turbo tensions? From Mira. Sutskever never verified any of it with anyone else. Later he admitted: "I've learned the critical importance of firsthand knowledge for matters like this."
The Anthropic Merger Nobody Talks About
During that chaotic weekend after the firing, Helen Toner coordinated a call with Anthropic about merging the two companies - with Anthropic taking over OpenAI's leadership. Dario and Daniela Amodei were on the call. The other board members were "a lot more supportive" than Sutskever, who was "very unhappy about it."
"Destroying OpenAI Would Be Consistent With The Mission"
When OpenAI executives warned that the company would be destroyed without Sam, Helen Toner responded that destroying the company would be consistent with the mission. Sutskever testified she said it "even more directly than that."
The Board Couldn't Even Show Up
Helen Toner and Tasha McCauley weren't attending all board meetings physically. When asked how familiar they seemed with OpenAI's operations, Sutskever's answer: "They seemed to have some familiarity, but it's hard for me to assess." This was the board that fired the CEO of one of the most valuable AI companies in the world.
They Expected Employees Not to Care
Sutskever clarified he hadn't expected employees to cheer when Altman was fired, but he "have not expected them to feel strongly either way." For someone at OpenAI since 2015, that's a remarkable miscalculation.
The full transcript is worth reading if you're into this kind of thing. The process was rushed, the board was inexperienced, the evidence was secondhand, and Anthropic was circling. Either Sutskever saw something real or he convinced himself of a narrative that fell apart under scrutiny.
Discovery is one hell of a thing.