Former OpenAI Board Member Testifies in Musk Lawsuit Over 2023 CEO Ouster

A federal court in Oakland, California, heard testimony Thursday from a former OpenAI board member and employee that the company's push to deploy AI products compromised its commitment to safety. Tasha McCauley, a member of OpenAI’s board at the time of the 2023 events, testified about concerns that Sam Altman was not forthcoming enough with the board.

She described a pattern in which Altman lied to another board member about her intention to remove Helen Toner.

Helen Toner had published a white paper that included some implied criticism of OpenAI’s safety policy. Sam Altman also failed to inform the board about the decision to launch ChatGPT publicly. Board members were concerned about Sam Altman’s lack of disclosure of potential conflicts of interest.

“We are a non-profit board and our mandate was to be able to oversee the for-profit underneath us,” McCauley told the court. ” The decision to remove Sam Altman occurred at the same time as a tender offer to OpenAI’s employees. When OpenAI staff sided with Sam Altman and Microsoft worked to restore the status quo, the board reversed course.

The deployment of GPT-4 in India was one of the red flags that led OpenAI’s non-profit board to briefly fire CEO Sam Altman in 2023. Microsoft had deployed a version of OpenAI’s GPT-4 model in India through its Bing search engine before the model had been evaluated by OpenAI’s Deployment Safety Board.

Rosie Campbell, who joined OpenAI's AGI readiness team in 2021, testified that the model itself did not present a huge risk.

Campbell left OpenAI in 2024 after her team was disbanded. OpenAI's Super Alignment team was shut down in 2024. “When I joined, it was very research-focused and common for people to talk about AGI and safety issues,” she testified.

Under cross-examination Campbell acknowledged that significant funding was likely necessary for OpenAI to build AGI. She added that creating a super-intelligent computer model without the right safety measures would not fit with the mission of the organization she originally joined. Campbell stated that OpenAI needed to set strong precedents as the technology gets more powerful.

Employees including then-chief scientist Ilya Sutskever and then-CTO Mira Murati had complained about Sam Altman’s conflict-averse management style before the 2023 board action. Dylan Scandinaro was hired from Anthropic in February 2026 as OpenAI’s current head of preparedness. Sam Altman said the hire would let him sleep better tonight.

OpenAI’s attorneys also had Campbell admit that in her speculative opinion OpenAI’s safety approach is superior to that at xAI. xAI was acquired by SpaceX earlier in 2026. TechCrunch reported that the testimony unfolded in a hearing tied to Elon Musk’s legal effort to dismantle OpenAI.

David Schizer, a former dean of Columbia Law School testifying as an expert witness, said OpenAI has emphasized that a key part of its mission is safety and they are going to prioritize safety over profits. Tasha McCauley said the failures of internal governance at OpenAI should be a reason to embrace stronger government regulation of advanced AI.