Mira Murati testifies that Sam Altman lied to her about AI model safety standards at OpenAI

In a video deposition during the Musk v. Altman trial on Wednesday, OpenAI's former CTO Mira Murati testified under oath that CEO Sam Altman falsely stated the company's legal department determined a new AI model did not need to go through OpenAI's deployment safety board.

Murati said she discovered misalignment between Altman's claims and what Jason Kwon (OpenAI's general counsel and now chief strategy officer) told her. To ensure safety, she made the model go through the board anyway.

Cofounder Ilya Sutskever, in a 52-page memo read in a deposition, accused Altman of exhibiting "a consistent pattern of lying, undermining his execs, and pitting his execs against one another." The board's 2023 firing statement said Altman "was not consistently candid in his communications with the board."

Murati left OpenAI in 2024 and later founded Thinking Machines Lab, described as an OpenAI rival.