"Do You Tell Lies?" Dispatches from Sam Altman's Day in Court
The OpenAI CEO took the stand Tuesday in the Musk v. Altman trial, and I was there. He was charming, careful, and couldn’t quite testify to his own trustworthiness.
Today was Altman’s first day in court, and tomorrow is the last day of evidence, with final arguments Thursday. You can follow all of it here!
A mishmash of lawyers, reporters, and a few protesters watched as Sam Altman was finally sworn in Tuesday morning in a federal courtroom in Oakland to defend himself against accusations of tricking the world’s richest man into funding a sneaky bid to create the world’s most powerful company. I was there.
The case, in its narrowest legal form, asks whether Altman and OpenAI breached a charitable trust by converting a nonprofit into a profit-seeking enterprise. Musk says they promised him something different. Altman says they didn’t.
But as I explained to a half-dozen CNN producers today texting me to see whether they should put this stuff on the air, the testimony wasn’t really about contract law, at least not for me. It was an anthropological exhibit, a power trip, a ringside seat to the billionaire circus. (The press conference on the courthouse steps was framed by a half-dozen elderly women singing “We’ll Stop A.I., Hallelujah,” which I loved, and I’ve discovered that my kink is watching billionaires say “yes, your honor” to Judge Yvette Gonzalez-Rogers.) Two of the most powerful men in technology, both convinced they’re saving civilization, are in court over a falling-out that’s been building for nearly a decade — and in the process, they’re giving us all a portrait of what it looks like when very, very rich men who claim to be steering the future have to account for themselves.
Here’s what stood out.
1. Molo opened the cross-examination with one question: “Are you completely trustworthy?”
Steven Molo is Musk’s attorney, and the dude is not subtle. After a mannered and pleasant direct examination of Altman by his own lawyer, William Savitt, Molo came right in with the big questions: is Altman trustworthy? (You can read about all the people he’s worked with who say otherwise here.) Within the first two minutes of cross-examination, right after exchanging hellos, he asked Altman this:
Molo: Are you completely trustworthy?
Altman: I believe so.
Molo: Do you always tell the truth?
Altman: I believe I’m a truthful person.
Molo: That wasn’t my question, sir. Do you always tell the truth?
Altman: I’m sure there is some time in my life when I have not.
Molo: Do you tell lies to advance your business interests?
Altman: No. No.
Molo: Have you misled people with whom you do business?
Altman: I believe I am an honest and trustworthy business person.
Molo: That wasn’t my question about what you believe. Have you misled people with whom you do business?
Altman: I do not think so.
Molo: Would they think so?
Altman: I can’t answer that for other people.
Gotta hand it to him: Altman was calm and pleasant throughout, while Molo became (or at least acted) angrier and angrier. It wasn’t clear to me whether Molo was honestly irritated, but he couldn’t seem to make Altman angry. Altman maintained the affect of a man who has been asked tougher questions than this. It made me wonder what it would take to accuse Altman of something he’d take offense to.
2. Then Molo read him the list.
What followed was a methodical recitation of every person who has, under oath or on record, called Sam Altman dishonest. It took a while.
Ilya Sutskever, OpenAI co-founder, testified that Altman exhibited “a pattern of lying.” Mira Murati, former CTO, accused him of dishonesty. Helen Toner, former board member, accused him of lying about OpenAI’s safety processes. Tasha McCauley, also a former board member, testified to “a toxic culture of lying.” Soo Yoon accused him of “a lack of concern for the consequences of misleading others.” Dario Amodei accused him of misrepresenting the Microsoft investment terms.
Altman’s answer to most of these was a variation on: I didn’t hear that testimony. Because, after all, as CEO of an $850 billion company, he has other things going on. He couldn’t be in court every day.
Molo: Is it important to you to find out what’s going on in this trial?
Altman: Yes. Although I also have a very busy day job and have not been able to be here every day.
On Dario Amodei specifically, he offered the sharpest line of the day, as close to admitting he doesn’t like someone as I could imagine him saying:
“Dario accuses me of many things.”
3. Altman was entertaining mind-blowingly casual political ambitions in 2017.
While negotiating who would control the technology that might one day produce artificial general intelligence, Altman’s own colleagues — Greg Brockman and Ilya Sutskever — sent him an email asking why the CEO title mattered so much to him. Their email asked, specifically, about his “political goals.”
Molo asked if Altman had told them he wanted to be president of the United States.
Altman: I was thinking about running for governor at the time, which I believe is what they meant here.
Chill, bro. Just governor.
4. The warmest memory he had of Elon Musk was a late-night meeting in 2018 that ended with watching Musk scroll his phone.
Savitt, on direct examination, was walking Altman through the 2018 period when relations with Musk were still, relatively speaking, functional. Altman described a meeting at Tesla headquarters — about the structure of what would become OpenAI’s for-profit entity, the future of AI governance, billions of dollars — and how it had gone unusually well.
“This was, like, a pretty late night meeting, and then it was a long conversation about him showing us memes on his phone. It was just like him showing us memes on his phone. So that was, like, the happiest and calm part.”
Ah, the good times.
5. Shivon Zilis remaining on the OpenAI board after he discovered she was the mother of Musk’s children was, in Altman’s words, “a close call.”
