Written by: Web4 Research Center

The biggest philosophical question is not "Can you trust someone?" but "How to design a system that makes trust unnecessary?" Otherwise, we are using a governance framework from the 19th century to address one of the most powerful games of power in the 21st century.

01 An Investigative Report That Shocked Silicon Valley

On April 6, 2026, The New Yorker published an investigative report that took 18 months to complete, revealing a historical episode within OpenAI that still leaves many insiders feeling uneasy.

The core material of this report comprises a seventy-page internal memorandum compiled by OpenAI's former chief scientist Ilya Sutskever in the autumn of 2023, alongside over two hundred pages of private notes retained by Anthropic co-founder Dario Amodei. Following the publication of the report, all evidence pointed to one conclusion: OpenAI's leader Sam Altman has a "consistent pattern of lying."

This is not just ordinary tech gossip. It is a systemic questioning of whether the leaders of one of the most powerful tech companies in human history can be trusted.

02 This Is Not Just Altman's Problem

If you only understand this issue from that perspective, you have missed the truly important question.

Mainstream media is asking: Is Altman trustworthy?

But the real question worth asking is: When a technology capable of changing human civilization is entrusted to a system design that relies on "voluntary compliance," the crisis is not an accident but an inevitability.

We have named this phenomenon: the structural failure of AI governance.

This is not just Altman's problem. It is a common ailment of the entire AI industry.

Trust is one of the most frequently mentioned terms in the field of AI. Almost every AI company will tell you: trust us, we prioritize safety, trust that our technology will benefit humanity. However, The New Yorker investigation reveals a harsh reality: OpenAI has never established any institutional structure that makes trust unnecessary.

The core decisions of this organization are made by one person, or at most by a few individuals. There is no external check. There are no mandatory transparency mechanisms. Promises are tools, not constraints.

Camus wrote in "The Myth of Sisyphus": "To judge whether life is worth living is to answer the fundamental question of philosophy." The same logic applies to the field of AI: when technology is capable of changing civilization, and institutional constraints are so fragile, how do we establish a system that does not rely on personal integrity?

03 A List of Betrayed Promises

The New Yorker investigation lists a complete "betrayed promises list."

The first item is the Microsoft negotiations in 2019. At that time, OpenAI was transitioning from a nonprofit organization to a "profit-capped" entity. Anthropic co-founder Dario Amodei proposed a core safety clause, "merger and assistance"—that is, if another company is closer to AGI in terms of safety, OpenAI must cease competition and merge with them. This was his bottom line during the negotiations. After the contract was signed, Amodei found that Microsoft had the veto power over the merger, rendering the clause meaningless. When he confronted Altman about it, Altman initially denied the existence of the clause until Amodei asked a colleague to confirm it on the spot. Only then did Altman admit it and claimed to "not remember." Amodei wrote in his private notes: "80% of the charter was betrayed."

The second item is the compute promise of 2023. OpenAI had announced the establishment of a "super alignment team," promising to allocate 20% of the company's computing power to it. However, insiders revealed that the actual computing power allocated to the team was only 1% to 2%, and it was using the oldest and worst chips. When the person in charge, Jan Leike, protested, the executives' response was cold and ruthless: "This promise was never realistic." Note the selective memory here: promising 20%, but actually giving 1%-2%, and then claiming "the promise is unrealistic." This is not an execution deviation; it is systemic forgetfulness.

This is not a matter of integrity. It is an inevitable manifestation of institutional failure. When power is concentrated in one person's hands, and this person has an inherent tendency to weaken the binding force of promises, those promises will inevitably be systematically forgotten, redefined, and rationalized. This is not just a flaw of Altman; it is a common characteristic of any centralized power structure.

04 Why Whistleblowers Always Fail

Ilya Sutskever wrote in the memorandum submitted to the board that anyone committed to building technology that could change civilization would bear unprecedented responsibilities, but ultimately, those in these positions tend to be those who are interested in power.

Here lies a profound paradox: the individuals who need to be constrained the most are often the ones who crave power the most. The existing institutional design is utterly unprepared for this paradox.

When Ilya decided to raise the alarm from within, he did not report it to external regulatory agencies because the AI industry has almost no external oversight; he also did not organize collective action among employees because he is a scientist, not an activist. His only leverage was a document and the potential for dissent within the board.

We all know the outcome: in November 2023, the board did indeed remove Altman, but five days later, under the triad pressure of capital, public opinion, and employee interests, the board completely collapsed, Altman returned as a king, and the whistleblower Ilya was ousted from the center of power.

This is not just a story of "Altman being too powerful." This is a story about institutional design: within a highly centralized organization, the failure of whistleblower mechanisms is structural, not accidental. The reason is simple—whistleblowers' leverage is the reputation and career prospects they share with their employer. Once the organization chooses to deny, delay, and marginalize, individuals can hardly resist. The essence of centralized structures is to make external voices difficult to penetrate and internal voices difficult to amplify.

The same story also happened with Dario Amodei. When he realized he couldn't change OpenAI's safety culture from within, he chose another path: to leave and start Anthropic, to practice his values in his own institution. This is a honorable retreat but not a victory for the system—because it relies on the personal beliefs of the founder rather than any institutional guarantee.

The core issue of AI governance is not "how to cultivate more conscientious AI leaders," but "how to design a system that can operate normally even if leaders lack conscience."

05 Blockchain Is Not a Panacea,But It Is the Missing Piece

I present here a judgment that may surprise those outside the blockchain circle: the core value of blockchain is not issuing tokens or Web3 speculation, but rather an innovative paradigm of governance technology—externalizing trust.

What does externalizing trust mean? Traditional systems rely on "trusting a certain institution or person." The solution approach of blockchain is entirely different: transferring trust from people to rules and code. It does not rely on trusted third parties but on transparent rules and verifiable proofs.

The flaw in AI governance is precisely the complete lack of this externalized trust mechanism. OpenAI's commitments are judged by OpenAI itself. This is not regulation; it is self-assessment. The external world cannot independently verify whether they actually allocated 20% of their computing power to safety research or verify whether their model release processes truly received approval from safety committees. Transparency is an option, not a structural requirement.

Blockchain offers a potential solution path. It is not about solving the problem by putting AI models on the chain—technology cannot replace institutional problems—rather, transparent and verifiable record mechanisms can make the behaviors of AI systems more transparent and auditable. For example, a blockchain-based AI decision log can ensure that every key model update and every decision on resource allocation is recorded on the chain and immutable. This won't make AI systems perfect, but it will at least make "systemic forgetfulness of commitments" more difficult.

Of course, this is just a direction, not a silver bullet. Technology itself cannot replace governance. But in this almost blank state of AI governance, any solution that makes power more transparent and checks more structured deserves serious discussion.

06 A Deeper Questioning

The real lesson of the OpenAI crisis is not about the kind of person Altman is.

But rather: when a technology that could decide the direction of human civilization falls into a "voluntary compliance" institutional framework, the risk does not come from the loss of control over technology, but from the failure of institutions.

In human history, every significant technological revolution has been accompanied by iterations of governance models. Nuclear energy brought about the International Atomic Energy Agency and the non-proliferation regime. The internet brought about data protection and cybersecurity regulations. Every technology capable of changing power structures forces humanity to establish new institutional frameworks to manage it.

AGI is the first technology capable of changing civilization without an effective governance framework established for it. This framework cannot rely on the personal virtues of any founder or the self-commitment of any company. It must be a structural, checks-and-balances system that does not depend on anyone's voluntary compliance.

And we do not have that yet.

Regarding the seventy-page memorandum from Ilya Sutskever, The New Yorker investigation restored its core content: Ilya clearly expressed to the board his judgment—that he believed Altman should not be the one holding the AGI button.

This document became the spark for the OpenAI "palace intrigue" that shocked the world in 2023. The board did indeed make the decision to dismiss him based on it. But in the following five days, the entire power structure of the industry made its choice.

This is not a story about good people overcoming bad people or bad people defeating good people. This is a story about institutions. Under a good institution, some of Altman's behaviors would be constrained; under a malfunctioning institution, even the most well-intentioned whistleblowers can be bitten by power.

Humanity is entering an era where AGI could change civilization. Yet the institutions we use to manage this era remain stuck in the 19th century.

This is not the failure of any one person. This is a classic failure case of institutional design.

And the real lesson is not "Do not trust Altman"—but rather to establish a system that can be questioned, checked, and cannot escape transparent constraints for anyone.

Trust is necessary. But in the age of AI, trust is far from enough. What we need is a system that makes trust unnecessary.

(This article is based on The New Yorker’s April 6, 2026 investigative report, OpenAI's official statements, and public data compilation. Data as of April 2026.)

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