Ronan Farrow on Sam Altman's "unconstrained" relationship with the truth

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

Support for Decoder comes from Adobe. Life is unpredictable, and that means you need your projects to adapt with whatever gets thrown at you. That means mastering the ability to pivot and collaborate with others to reach your goals. Adobe gets that, which is why they made a tool that's just as flexible as you are. PDF spaces and Acrobat.

Your PDF files are no longer static. Instead, they're living documents that flex with you and your project's needs.

Learn more at adobe.com/do that with Acrobat.

SPEAKER_2 (0:34)

This episode is brought to you by Indeed.

Stop waiting around for the perfect candidate. Instead, use Indeed sponsored jobs to find the right people with the right skills fast. It's a simple way to make sure your listing is the first candidate C.

According to Indeed data, sponsored jobs have four times more applicants than non-sponsored jobs. So go build your dream team today with Indeed. Get a $75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply.

SPEAKER_1 (1:02)

Support for the show comes from MongoDB.

If you're a developer stuck fixing bottlenecks, instead of building the next big thing, then you need MongoDB.

MongoDB is the flexible, unified platform that gets out of your way. It's ACID compliant, enterprise ready, and built to ship AI apps fast. It's trusted by so many of the Fortune 500 for a reason.

Ask any developer. It's a great freaking database. Start building at mongodb.com/build.

Nilay Patel (1:37)

Hello, and welcome to Decoder. I'm Nilay Patel, Editor-in-Chief of The Verge, and Decoder is my show about big ideas and other problems. Today, I'm talking with Ronan Farrow, one of the biggest stars of investigative reporting working today.

Ronan broke the Harvey Weinstein story, among many, many others. And just last week, he and co-author Andrew Marantz published an incredible deep dive feature in The New Yorker about OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, his trustworthiness, and the rise of OpenAI itself. One note before we go any further here. The New Yorker published that story, and Ronan and I had this conversation before the attacks on Sam Altman's home. So you won't hear us talk about them directly. But just to say it, I think violence of any kind is unacceptable. These attacks on Sam were unacceptable. And the kind of helplessness that people feel, which leads to this kind of violence, is also unacceptable. And it's worth more scrutiny from both the industry and our political leaders. I hope that's clear. All that said, there is a lot of swirl around Sam Altman that's fair game for rigorous reporting. The kind of reporting that Ronan set out to do. Thanks to the popularity of Chachibet, Altman has emerged as the most visible figurehead of the AI industry, having turned a once non-profit research lab into an almost trillion dollar private company in just a few years. But the myth of Sam Altman is deeply conflicted, defined equally by both his obvious steelmaking ability and the tendency which Ronan reported to lie to everyone around him. Ronan and Andrew's story is over 17,000 words long, and it contains arguably the definitive account of what happened in 2023 when the OpenAI Board of Directors very suddenly fired Altman over his alleged lie, only for him to be almost immediately rehired. The story is also a deep dive into Altman's personal life, his investments, his courting of Middle Eastern money, and his own reflections on his past behavior and character traits that led one source to say that he was, quote, unconstrained by truth. I really suggest you read the entire story. I suspect it will be referenced for many years to come. Ronan talked to Altman many times over the 18 months he spent reporting the story. And so one of the main things I was curious about was whether Ronan sensed any change in Altman over that time. After all, a lot has happened in AI, in tech, and in the world over the past year and a half. You'll hear Ronan talk about that very directly, as well as the sense that people have become much more willing to talk about Altman's ability to stretch the truth.

People are starting to wonder out loud and on the record, whether the behavior of people like Sam Altman is concerning, not just for AI or tech, but for society's collective future. Before we start, a quick reminder that you can listen to this episode or any episode of Decoder completely ad free by subscribing to The Verge. Just go to theverge.com/subscribe.

Ronan Farrow on Sam Altman, AI and the Truth. Here we go.

Ronan Farrow, you're an investigative reporter and contributor to The New Yorker. Welcome to Decoder.

Ronan Farrow (4:39)

Glad to be here. Thanks for having me.