How Altman’s Microsoft deal sparked deep distrust within OpenAI

Internal tensions at OpenAI reveal a growing divide between AI safety advocates and leadership, particularly regarding Sam Altman‘s strategic decisions and transparency. This excerpt from an upcoming book highlights how fundamental disagreements about AI deployment, safety priorities, and corporate commitments created an atmosphere of mistrust that would eventually contribute to the company’s leadership crisis.

The big picture: OpenAI’s AI safety team, led by Dario Amodei, developed serious concerns about Sam Altman’s leadership following the 2019 Microsoft investment deal.

• Safety researchers discovered Altman had made more extensive promises to Microsoft about access to OpenAI’s technology than had been communicated internally.
• The discrepancy raised doubts about Altman’s honesty and created fears that commercial commitments would prevent proper safety measures if issues emerged in future models.

Why this matters: These early conflicts foreshadowed the growing ideological divide within OpenAI between those prioritizing safety and those focused on rapid advancement and commercialization.

• The tensions reflect the broader AI industry’s struggle to balance innovation speed with responsible development practices.
• The safety team’s specific concern focused on potentially being unable to prevent deployment of problematic models due to commercial commitments.

Behind the concerns: Different forms of paranoia were developing across different segments of the company.

• The AI safety contingent was increasingly worried about “misaligned systems” potentially leading to “disastrous outcomes.”
• Altman himself exhibited paranoia about information leaks, particularly regarding Neuralink staff and Elon Musk following his departure from OpenAI.

Key details: Altman went as far as commissioning a secret electronic countersurveillance audit to check for bugs Musk might have planted to spy on OpenAI.

• This security concern demonstrates the deteriorating trust between Altman and Musk, who had previously been allies in founding OpenAI.
• Altman’s security apparatus was notably less extensive than Musk’s, who employed personal drivers and bodyguards.

Altman’s justification: To employees, Altman used geopolitical competition as rationale for OpenAI’s accelerating pace and increasing secrecy.

• He argued that if “an authoritarian government builds AGI before we do and misuses it,” OpenAI would have failed its mission.
• This reasoning created a sense of urgency that rapid technical progress was essential to fulfill the company’s purpose.