“OpenAI: The Battle of the Board: Ilya’s Testimony” by Zvi

04/11/2025 9 min
“OpenAI: The Battle of the Board: Ilya’s Testimony” by Zvi

Listen "“OpenAI: The Battle of the Board: Ilya’s Testimony” by Zvi"

Episode Synopsis

New Things Have Come To Light
The Information offers us new information about what happened when the board if AI unsuccessfully tried to fire Sam Altman, which I call The Battle of the Board.
The Information: OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever shared new details on the internal conflicts that led to Sam Altman's initial firing, including a memo alleging Altman exhibited a “consistent pattern of lying.”

Liv: Lots of people dismiss Sam's behaviour as typical for a CEO but I really think we can and should demand better of the guy who thinks he's building the machine god.

Toucan: From Ilya's deposition—

• Ilya plotted over a year with Mira to remove Sam

• Dario wanted Greg fired and himself in charge of all research

• Mira told Ilya that Sam pitted her against Daniela

• Ilya wrote a 52 page memo to get Sam fired and a separate doc on Greg

This Really Was Primarily A Lying And Management Problem

Daniel Eth: A lot of the OpenAI boardroom drama has been blamed on EA – but looks like it really was overwhelmingly an Ilya & Mira led effort, with EA playing a minor role and somehow winding up [...] ---Outline:(00:12) New Things Have Come To Light(01:09) This Really Was Primarily A Lying And Management Problem(03:23) Ilya Tells Us How It Went Down And Why He Tried To Do It(06:17) If You Come At The King(07:31) Enter The Scapegoats(08:13) And In Summary ---
First published:
November 4th, 2025

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/iRBhXJSNkDeohm69d/openai-the-battle-of-the-board-ilya-s-testimony
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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.