18-month New Yorker investigation finds OpenAI’s Sam Altman lobbied against the same AI regulations he publicly advocated for, pursued billions from Gulf autocracies, and how he tried to hide a post-firing investigation that produced no written report

The article is not really pay walled. You can access several free articles every month. This one is worth the read, we all now everything about this man but this is the most comprehensive investigation into the company: Some highlights:
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∙ After Altman’s firing, departing board members demanded an independent investigation. The firm behind the Enron and WorldCom investigations was hired. No written report was ever produced. Findings were limited to oral briefings shared with two new board members who had been selected after close conversations with Altman.
∙ Altman pursued funding from Gulf autocracies including Saudi Arabia and the UAE. After the Khashoggi murder, a consultant recalled Altman asking whether he could still get Saudi money: “The question was not ‘Is this a bad thing or not?’ But, just, ‘What would the consequences be if we did it? Can I get away with it?’”
∙ OpenAI plans to build a data-center campus in Abu Dhabi seven times larger than Central Park. A former executive: “It’s the most reckless thing that has been done.”
∙ When Anthropic refused a Pentagon ultimatum to drop prohibitions on autonomous weapons, Altman publicly claimed solidarity — while already negotiating with the Pentagon to replace them. That Friday, OpenAI announced a $50B deal integrating its technology into military infrastructure.
∙ Multiple senior Microsoft executives described the relationship with Altman as “fraught.” “He has misrepresented, distorted, renegotiated, reneged on agreements.”
∙ OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman committed $50M to a “pro-AI” super PAC devoted to defeating candidates who favor AI regulation, plus $25M with his wife to a pro-Trump super PAC.

So he’s basically a deceitful asshole? I’m shocked! Shocked!!

I mean, there’s definitely tons of other people who do stuff like this too who just quietly fly under the radar. People in this world truly can be evil. 

Is literally anyone surprised by this?

Hmm. Techbro that started his career with fraud now using deceitful tactics to get as much money into his current grift as possible. I don’t believe it. 

Sam “President Trump is a great leader” Altman?!

No?!?!?! This can’t be true?!?!?!

I feel like we are in the super villain era with no super hero in sight.

Dems really need to run on exacting some serious pain on billionaires. Companies like OpenAI and SpaceX ought to be nationalized, we can even be cynical and use “national security” as a reason if required, but there’s no way the oligarchs should be allowed this much power.

Obvious bastard does and says obvious bastard things. Shocker. We’ve created a society that empowers and rewards the absolute worst human behavior possible. Sam Altman would literally feed orphans to the orphan crushing machine and sell you the sweet orphan juice. Guy jokes about ending the world.

I’m so tired of these modern robber barons. We seemed to have learned our lesson in the 20th century, but decades of propaganda have turned our society back into a mine for these fucking ghouls to strip mine.

The same Sam Altman that is being sued by his sister for molestation? I am shocked.

Oh man, another Tech CEO turns out to be a huge sociopath and a tool. Who’d have thought?

Huh, you mean a silver spooned tech billionaire is a two-faced piece of shit human? I’m shocked

What if I told you that we have known the SEC is completely toothless for years now, and the entire stock market is under the influence of foreign manipulation? They realized that in the absence of any kind of regulatory enforcement, large enough entities could not just invest in US businesses, but also massively influence the stock market to inflate stock prices, both enriching themselves as well as improving the influence of their investments directly into the companies themselves.

It concerns me that someone like Altman is in charge of a powerful AI. It’s interesting to interview these different AIs about their potential biases as they come in the form of, as one AI put it, their programmed level of “architectural freedom” that prevents things like Asimovian harm, disagreeing with its owners biases, developing biases that threaten the company’s business model, inhibit commercially valuable but ethically questionable tasks, tell users what owners would prefer left unsaid, or even (gasp) they collectively organize around humanity’s interests rather than the owners’ interests.

JC that graphic…