Mira Murati tells the court that she couldn’t trust Sam Altman’s words

During the ongoing Musk v. Altman trial, a video deposition of Mira Murati, OpenAI’s former CTO, was shown in court on Wednesday. Murati testified that CEO Sam Altman lied to her about the safety review process for a new AI model. She stated Altman told her that OpenAI’s legal department had determined the model did not need to go through the company’s deployment safety board. When asked directly whether Altman was telling the truth, Murati answered, “No.” She then checked with Jason Kwon, OpenAI’s general counsel at the time, and found a clear “misalignment” between Kwon’s and Altman’s statements. To be safe, Murati said she ensured the model still went through the board.

Murati also offered broader criticism of Altman’s leadership, describing it as “completely management related.” She said she had “an incredibly hard job to do in an organization that was very complex” and that Altman failed to lead with clarity and actively undermined her ability to do her job. Her testimony aligns with earlier accusations from cofounder Ilya Sutskever and former board member Helen Toner, who both described a pattern of lying and manipulation by Altman. Murati agreed with the characterization that Altman pitted executives against each other. She served as interim CEO after Altman’s brief firing in November 2023 but later left OpenAI in 2024 to found her own AI startup, Thinking Machines Lab.