OpenAI CEO Sam Altman was dishonest, caused chaos, ex-exec Mira Murati says in bombshell testimony | Latest Tech News
OpenAI’s former head of technology Mira Murati slammed CEO Sam Altman as an untrustworthy chief who fomented strife among the company’s top ranks — beautiful testimony that was shared Wednesday in Elon Musk’s bombshell lawsuit against the artificial intelligence giant.
Altman created an surroundings where OpenAI executives had been pitted against each other, creating “chaos” in a means that “undermined” her means to do her job, Murati alleged.
“My concern was about Sam saying one thing to one person and completely the opposite to another person,” she said in taped testimony performed in Oakland, Calif., federal court.
Former OpenAI Chief Technology Officer Mira Murati. REUTERS
When requested if she felt that Altman was not always candid with her, Murati replied, “Not always.”
“My issues with Sam were very much around management,” she added.
The testimony got here in the second week of a trial that has gripped Silicon Valley and past. Musk’s swimsuit accuses Altman and OpenAI’s President Greg Brockman of betraying the company’s founding contract by placing business gain over creating AI for public benefit. The ChatGPT maker has rejected the allegations, claiming Musk truly supported its transformation into a for-profit business.
The Tesla titan is searching for up to $180 billion in damages and a court order for OpenAI to unwind its for-profit standing. Musk also desires Altman booted from the company’s board. In his own testimony last week, he said he’d been a “fool” to trust Altman with the future of the company.
After Altman was briefly fired by the board of administrators in November 2023, Murati briefly served as CEO. She has since left OpenAI and co-founded her own AI startup, Thinking Machines Lab.
Still, she said in her testimony that she beforehand supported an effort to carry Altman back as CEO, urgent board members for a fuller rationalization for why they’d ousted him.
“I realized the board had not followed a process that could be trusted with regards to firing Sam,” Murati said. “As we can see in retrospect, the way [board members] handled it caused complete and utter chaos.”
Mira Murati attends the 2026 Met Gala on Monday in Manhattan. Getty Images
Murati — who was seen in a glam costume at Monday’s Met Gala in Manhattan — detailed the chaos surrounding Altman’s ouster and how it threatened the company’s future.
“OpenAI was at catastrophic risk of falling apart,” she said. “I was concerned about the company completely blowing up.”
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. via REUTERS
The exec added that she stored in close contact with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella during the tumultuous time. Text messages had been displayed exhibiting she texted him asking that he call her to coordinate “how to talk with sam here.”
Murati called Nadella a “voice of reason,” including, “it was kind of a crazy situation.”
Microsoft said last month it was no longer paying half of its income to OpenAI, the latest in a sequence of steps to loosen a close partnership between the companies.
Murati said competing AI firms – particularly Google and Musk’s AI outfits – tried to swoop in to poach OpenAI workers amid the chaos of Altman’s firing and eventual rehiring.
“Very important we don’t lose researches to Demis or Elon,” Murati texted Nadella, referring to Demis Hassabis, the CEO of Google’s DeepMind.
Former OpenAI board member Helen Toner took some photographs at Murati in a video testimony that was also performed Wednesday in court, describing her as two-faced about Altman’s firing.
“She was waiting to see which way the wind would blow,” Toner said, including that Murati was “not willing to stick her neck out” and implied she was frightened about “blowback for her career.”
The Post’s proprietor, News Corp, has a content-licensing deal with OpenAI.
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