Do we like them?Do we like Sam Altman?
Our score: 4 out of 10. No record of attacking any group, but contested environmental claims, a close embrace of Trump and persistent doubts about his straight dealing keep him mid-table.
Altman grew up in the US Midwest, got into Stanford, and dropped out. He became a partner at the startup incubator Y Combinator in 2011 and its president in 2014. He co-founded OpenAI in 2015 and became its CEO in 2019. In November 2023 the board fired him, and he was back in the job within five days.
That firing is the root of most of the fuss. In April 2026 the New Yorker, in a piece by Ronan Farrow and Andrew Marantz drawing on more than 100 people, alleged that many sources doubted his trustworthiness, and one anonymous board member was quoted describing a “sociopathic lack of concern” for deceiving people. Altman called it an “incendiary article”, wrote that he was “sorry to people I've hurt”, and admitted he tends to dodge conflict and handled the board fight badly. He did not concede the core claims, so they stay allegations.
The Musk stoush went his way in court. In May 2026 a unanimous jury in Oakland rejected Elon Musk's case against OpenAI and Altman, finding it was filed too late. It never ruled on whether OpenAI betrayed its nonprofit mission, and Musk said he would appeal. Musk's lawyer told jurors that Altman's credibility was directly at issue, so a win on timing does not settle the honesty question.
On the harm test, we found no words from him against LGBTQ+ people, trans people or women. He is openly gay, and in a 2024 interview he said he hoped queer people would feel no reason not to work in tech. But after appearing with Donald Trump he posted that Trump would be “incredible for the country in many ways”, which an Advocate columnist argued sits badly with that. On the planet, he called water-use claims about ChatGPT “totally fake”, though he also said the world must move to nuclear, wind and solar quickly, and the article offered no figures behind his efficiency claims.
His iris-scanning crypto project World, which he leads, is another sore spot. Spain suspended it, Argentina fined it over its data terms, Kenya opened a criminal investigation and Hong Kong ordered it to stop, while the company says it does not keep images of eyes. That is a privacy fight over a company he runs, not hate, but it is part of the pattern of moving fast and asking forgiveness later. A pile of wrongful-death lawsuits over ChatGPT also names OpenAI, and in one case Altman, but none had been decided in what we found.
On the good side, in 2024 he joined the Giving Pledge, committing to give away most of his wealth, with a focus on technology that helps create abundance for people. That is a promise, not yet a record of gifts we could verify. Nothing confirmed turned up from the last few weeks, so this reflects the record up to the Musk verdict and the spring New Yorker fallout.