Mira Muratti, former CTO of OpenAI, testified under oath that CEO Sam Altman did not tell her the truth, and that his habits interfered with her ability to do her job. The allegation in question, that Altman lied about safety practices, was already public, having been highlighted in a recent New Yorker feature about Altman. Now this is court testimony.
For a few strange days in 2023, Murati was the interim CEO of OpenAI after Altman was briefly fired (and then OpenAI very briefly chose another CEO, Emmett Shear). Reports from this chaotic time paint a picture of a working relationship between Altman and Murati, which came under strain when Murati lost Altman’s trust. Behind-the-scenes accounts say he sent memos to the company’s board of directors and Altman himself, questioning Altman’s managerial abilities, and soon led to his dismissal.
During Musk v. Altman court proceedings on Wednesday, a video statement from Murati was shown in court, in which he testified to the truth of the story. A new model was being prepared for release – which The New Yorker calls GPT-4 Turbo – and in his testimony, as described by the Verge, he said that Altman told his OpenAI legal department, whose head at the time was Jason Kwon, that it was not necessary for the OpenAI security board to review the model.
The person questioning the statement asked, “As you understand it, did Mr. Altman tell the truth when he made this statement to you?”
To which Murati said, “No.” According to the Verge, she later explained in her testimony, “I confirmed that what Jason was saying and what Sam was saying were not the same thing.” He described this as a “misalignment” between Altman and Kwon. Kwon is now the Chief Strategy Officer of OpenAI.
“My concern was that Sam was saying one thing to one person and the exact opposite thing to another person,” Muratti said in his testimony, according to Reuters. She also reportedly testified that Altman was “causing chaos.” According to Reuters, he described OpenAI as being at “disastrous risk of breaking up” at this time and said he was “worried about the company being completely destroyed”.
According to The New Yorker, Murati’s memo to Altman and the board came shortly after this conversation, and “shortly thereafter, the board decided to fire Altman.” Murati was interim CEO for a few days, then Shear stepped down for a few days and then Altman was reinstated, a move Murati publicly supported.
According to Forbes, Murati testified on Wednesday that after returning to OpenAI, Altman continued behaviors that she was concerned about, including delaying important decisions and delivering inconsistent messages to various coworkers, which she reportedly said created a “very difficult and chaotic environment.”
About ten months after Sam Altman was reinstated as CEO, Murati left and, a few months later, founded his own AI company.
<a href