This piece breaks down The New Yorker’s 18,000-word deep dive into Sam Altman’s trust issues and OpenAI’s turbulent history—from his firing and secret “shadow board” deal to safety disputes and the botched investigation into his conduct. It highlights key conflicts with Musk, Dario Amodei, Microsoft’s unauthorized India release, and a fleeting “sell to Putin” brainstorm.

• Sutskever compiled seventy pages of vanishing Slack messages to justify firing Altman and Brockman, but much of that evidence was kept hidden from the public.
• The Summers/Taylor investigation into Altman's conduct never produced a written report, leaving insiders still pushing for a real probe.
• Microsoft quietly inserted a merger veto into OpenAI's charter, killing the "merge-and-assist" safety clause Amodei had fought for—he only found out at the last minute, contributing to his and Daniela's 2020 exit to found Anthropic.
• Altman denied key details reporters uncovered, including the informal "shadow board" pact with Brockman and Sutskever, despite responding to deception allegations with "I can't change my personality."