May 11 (Reuters) – Former OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever testified on Monday that he spent about a year gathering evidence for the ChatGPT maker’s board that CEO Sam Altman had displayed a “consistent pattern of lying.”<\/p>\n
During his testimony in a legal \u200cfight between OpenAI and Elon Musk, the top AI researcher confirmed he had been thinking about taking action to remove \u200cAltman as CEO for at least one year prior to his November 2023 board vote to oust Altman.<\/p>\n
Sutskever said he had prepared a document gathering evidence of Altman’s dishonesty at \u200bthe request of OpenAI’s board, and confirmed Altman’s conduct included “undermining and pitting executives against one another.” He said he had discussed removing Altman with then chief technology officer Mira Murati “for a long time.”<\/p>\n
Sutskever had mentioned in a prior deposition that his document ran for 52 pages.<\/p>\n
Altman’s conduct was “not conducive to any grand goal”, including the creation of safe AGI, Sutskever said as he testified in a California courtroom.<\/p>\n
Sutskever had played a key role in Altman’s \u200cdramatic firing and rehiring in November 2023 \u2014 at \u2060the time, Sutskever was on OpenAI’s board and helped orchestrate Altman’s firing, but later expressed regret over his “participation in the board’s actions” and voted to reinstate Altman, who has since led the company and is now the \u2060central figure in OpenAI’s fight against Musk.<\/p>\n
His testimony comes in the third week of a trial that could determine the future of OpenAI, which has been raising billions of dollars from investors to build out its computing power ahead of a potential trillion-dollar IPO.<\/p>\n
Musk, a co-founder of OpenAI who left the board \u200bin \u200b2018, has accused the company and Altman of abandoning its nonprofit roots and \u200bbecoming a for-profit company to enrich themselves. Musk is seeking $150 \u200cbillion in damages from OpenAI and its backer Microsoft to be paid to the nonprofit, and for Altman and President Greg Brockman to be removed from their roles.<\/p>\n
Musk had testified in the first week of the trial that he knew about early discussions around turning OpenAI into a for-profit but was reassured by Altman it would remain a nonprofit.<\/p>\n
Closing arguments for the trial will happen on Thursday, U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers said.<\/p>\n
SUTSKEVER CONFIRMS 2023 OPENAI-ANTHROPIC MERGER TALKS<\/p>\n
Sutskever disclosed on Monday that his ownership stake in OpenAI was worth about $5 billion as of November \u200c2025, and about $7 billion currently.<\/p>\n
He also confirmed that after Altman’s brief ouster, the remaining \u200bOpenAI board members met with rival Anthropic about a proposal for the Claude chatbot \u200bcreator to merge with OpenAI and take over its leadership. \u200bHe said he was “not excited” about merging OpenAI with another company.<\/p>\n
Sutskever said he avoided the internet for most of \u200cthe weekend after the board vote to fire Altman, \u200band that he was not initially aware \u200bof contingency plans like Microsoft’s proposal to absorb Altman, Brockman, and other OpenAI employees into a new subsidiary.<\/p>\n
He left OpenAI in 2024 and has since launched an AI startup called Safe Superintelligence.<\/p>\n
Earlier on Monday, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella took the stand, characterizing the \u200btech giant’s investment in OpenAI as a “calculated risk,” \u200cemphasizing that Microsoft considered its early investments to be worthwhile for marketing benefits.<\/p>\n
Former and current OpenAI executives, including Brockman, Murati \u200band Shivon Zilis, have already testified in the trial.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Juby Babu in Mexico City, Deborah Sophia in Bengaluru, and \u200bDeepa Seetharaman and Kenrick Cai in Oakland, California; Editing by Shilpi Majumdar)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"May 11 (Reuters) – Former OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever testified on Monday that he spent about a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":479868,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[261],"tags":[291,289,290,18,1647,19,148871,17,307,308,93430,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-479867","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-eire","12":"tag-elon-musk","13":"tag-ie","14":"tag-ilya-sutskever","15":"tag-ireland","16":"tag-openai","17":"tag-sam-altman","18":"tag-sutskever","19":"tag-technology"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116558223370598996","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/479867","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=479867"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/479867\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/479868"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=479867"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=479867"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=479867"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}