샘 알트만, 뉴요커 폭로 무마용 PR 전략 실패

Sam Altman Tries, Fails to Distract From Damning 'New Yorker' Exposé Hilariously timed announcements, invocations of superintelligent AI, and a softball Axios interview are not moving the needle. Alex Shultz Apr 07, 2026 27 1 9 Share It’s rare to get an inside look at how the upper echelons of a tech company navigate a public relations crisis, but thanks to discovery from the upcoming court case Elon Musk v. Sam Altman , we know a little bit about how OpenAI tracks and then spins unsavory news. On March 8, 2024, Altman regained his board of directors seat , which was temporarily taken away from him during his snap firing and then rehiring in November 2023. OpenAI announced that an investigation into Altman’s behavior (others at OpenAI had accused him of being duplicitous) didn’t yield enough information to necessitate his removal. Crucially, OpenAI also announced that it would not be releasing a comprehensive report from the investigation. Source: trust me is not at all convincing or reassuring, but that’s not really the point. A brief flurry of news stories and columns about OpenAI’s lack of transparency is much preferable to releasing an honest appraisal of how Altman lost his colleagues’ confidence. At 10:10 p.m. on March 8, OpenAI’s then-communications chief Hannah Wong emailed the company’s board of directors (including Altman) about the “widespread coverage of today’s announcements.” She summarized key themes and criticisms she was seeing in news reports, and explained how Altman and fellow board member Bret Taylor were working to “control the narrative.” In the early-morning hours of March 10, Wong issued another update: “Our strategy of one high impact news moment paid off with coverage slowing significantly today… Next week we plan to ‘turn the page’ with a steady drumbeat of product and publisher deal announcements.” This Substack is reader-supported. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Subscribe I can’t help but notice some strategic similarities this week, as OpenAI tries to distract from the aftershocks of a New Yorker exposé about Altman . The piece, co-written by Ronan Farrow and Andrew Marantz, is sourced to more than 100 people “with firsthand knowledge of how Altman conducts business.” Farrow and Marantz also spoke to Altman “more than a dozen times.” Through their exhaustive research and reporting, an unmistakable theme emerges: Altman, according to those who know him best, is a chronic liar. Just a sampling from the piece : A memo written by OpenAI’s former chief scientist Ilya Sutskever listed a bunch of observed patterns about Altman; the first observation is “lying.” Altman has repeatedly told people that he was not fired from his previous role as president of Y Combinator. But Y Combinator cofounder Paul Graham reportedly said in private that “Altman was removed because of Y.C. partners’ mistrust… On one occasion, Graham told Y.C. colleagues that, prior to his removal, ‘Sam had been lying to us all the time.”’ An OpenAI board member said of Altman: “He’s unconstrained by truth,” adding, “He has two traits that are almost never seen in the same person. The first is a strong desire to please people, to be liked in any given interaction. The second is almost a sociopathic lack of concern for the consequences that may come from deceiving someone.” A Microsoft senior executive said of Altman, “I think there’s a small but real chance he’s eventually remembered as a Bernie Madoff- or Sam Bankman-Fried-level scammer.” The entire piece is like this: damning detail after damning detail. Given the unusually thorough reporting, Altman and OpenAI are clearly trying to “turn the page” with a couple of hilariously timed announcements. One of OpenAI’s announcements is that the company is accepting applications for a “safety fellowship,” which is apparently “a new program for external researchers, engineers, and practitioners to pursue rigorous, high-impact research on the safety and alignment of advanced AI systems.” The stipend is great—$3,850 a week—but the fellowship lasts less than five months and is light on details. One could fairly question when the fellowship was dreamt up, and the motivations behind it, especially because The New Yorker piece extensively lays out how Altman went from talking about AI safety risks in apocalyptic terms to praising President Trump’s “deregulatory approach,” plus whatever this is : “My vibes don’t match a lot of the traditional A.I.-safety stuff,” Altman said. He insisted that he continued to prioritize these matters, but when pressed for specifics he was vague: “We still will run safety projects, or at least safety-adjacent projects.” When we asked to interview researchers at the company who were working on existential safety—the kinds of issues that could mean, as Altman once put it, “lights-out for all of us”—an OpenAI representative seemed confused. “What do you mean by ‘existential safety’?” he replied. “That’s not, like, a thing.” Farrow himself noted the peculiar timing of the safety fellowship announcement. newyorker.com/magazine/2026/…</a>) described how OpenAI dissolved its superalignment and AGI-readiness teams and dropped safety from the list of its most significant activities on its IRS filings—and how, when we asked to speak","username":"RonanFarrow","name":"Ronan Farrow","profile_image_url":"https://pbs.substack.com/profile_images/1515433189375987715/L6_IRSHH_normal.jpg","date":"2026-04-06T18:40:44.000Z","photos":[],"quoted_tweet":{"full_text":"Introducing the OpenAI Safety Fellowship, a new program supporting independent research on AI safety and alignment—and the next generation of talent.\n\nhttps://t.co/vAQKvf8KyO","username":"OpenAI","name":"OpenAI","profile_image_url":"https://pbs.substack.com/profile_images/1885410181409820672/ztsaR0JW_normal.jpg"},"reply_count":50,"retweet_count":1405,"like_count":6923,"impression_count":504060,"expanded_url":null,"video_url":null,"belowTheFold":true}" class="pencraft pc-display-flex pc-flexDirection-column pc-gap-12 pc-padding-16 pc-reset bg-primary-zk6FDl outline-detail-vcQLyr pc-borderRadius-md sizing-border-box-DggLA4 pressable-lg-kV7yq8 font-text-qe4AeH tweet-fWkQfo twitter-embed"> Ronan Farrow @RonanFarrow This announcement arrives hours after our investigation ( newyorker.com/magazine/2026/… ) described how OpenAI dissolved its superalignment and AGI-readiness teams and dropped safety from the list of its most significant activities on its IRS filings—and how, when we asked to speak OpenAI @OpenAI Introducing the OpenAI Safety Fellowship, a new program supporting independent research on AI safety and alignment—and the next generation of talent. https://t.co/vAQKvf8KyO 6:40 PM · Apr 6, 2026 · 504K Views 50 Replies · 1.41K Reposts · 6.92K Likes The other OpenAI announcement has gotten more buzz, probably because it’s more ambitious-sounding and also because OpenAI snookered Axios into taking it seriously. I’ll let Axios cofounders Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei take it from here: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is doing something no tech titan has ever done: He’s publishing a detailed blueprint for how government should tax, regulate and redistribute the wealth from the very technology he’s racing to build and spread. Why it matters: Altman told us… that AI superintelligence is so close, so mind-bending, so disruptive that America needs a new social contract—on the scale of the Progressive Era in the early 1900s, and the New Deal during the Great Depression . The supposedly “detailed” blueprint (it is not detailed at all) is called “Industrial Policy for the Intelligence Age: Ideas to Keep People First.” It states, without evidence, that “we’re beginning a transition toward superintelligence: AI systems capable of outperforming the smartest humans even when they are assisted by AI.” In an accompanying interview with Axios , Altman distanced himself from the document. “These are ideas—I think an ‘agenda’