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  • 📸 Inside the Elon vs. Sam saga — secret memos, AI power plays, and a near Anthropic merger.

📸 Inside the Elon vs. Sam saga — secret memos, AI power plays, and a near Anthropic merger.

A 62-page deposition just cracked open the truth behind OpenAI’s boardroom coup — from Ilya Sutskever’s secret memo to Anthropic’s attempted merger. Meanwhile, Geoffrey Hinton warns that only a near-catastrophe might make the world take AI safety seriously. Plus, Amazon’s legal showdown with Perplexity and a 30-second tutorial to build your own AI app with Base44.

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My fellow AI explorers

While teams ship new agentic features and retailers wire up AI shopping, the real drama is unfolding in depositions: Musk v. Altman just surfaced a trove of receipts from Ilya Sutskever.

In today’s edition:

  • ⚖️ The deposition bombshells: Sutskever’s 52-page memo, board dynamics, and a near-miss OpenAI–Anthropic merger

  • 🧠 Hinton’s “Chernobyl-for-AI” warning: why safety urgency is rising again

  • 🛒 Amazon vs. Perplexity: the first big AI-shopping agent fight (and what it means for the web)

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Musk vs Altman

A newly surfaced 62-page deposition transcript from Ilya Sutskever’s October 1, 2025 testimony opens a rare window into OpenAI’s internal chaos during Sam Altman’s 2023 ouster — and the week-long whirlwind that brought him back. The document confirms a year-long buildup, a detailed case for termination, and even discussions of a merger between OpenAI and Anthropic amid the crisis.

What stood out (and why it matters):

  • The 52-page memo. Sutskever compiled a confidential dossier for independent board members — reportedly with help from Mira Murati — alleging a “pattern of lying” and executive manipulation. He admitted he avoided sending it to Altman because Sam would “make [the discussions] disappear.”

  • A rushed process and inexperienced board. Sutskever said the firing was “rushed” and that the board lacked experience in corporate governance, setting up the conditions for Altman’s rapid reinstatement.

  • Anthropic’s near-merger proposal. During the turmoil, Anthropic expressed interest in merging with OpenAI and taking leadership. Sutskever opposed it, while Helen Toner reportedly supported the idea.

  • Legal-fee mystery. Pressed on who covered his legal fees, Sutskever said he “thinks probably OpenAI,” but wasn’t certain — a rare admission under oath.

What this could lead to:

  • Governance templates: Expect hybrid nonprofit/for-profit AI structures to adopt tighter “AGI-risk triggers” and documented board procedures.

  • Deal shields: The Anthropic episode shows why crisis governance and veto rules will appear in future lab term sheets.

  • Research continuity: Labs will invest in “continuity architectures” — artifact workspaces, eval pipelines, decision logs — so science survives executive meltdowns.

Prediction: Frontier labs will start building “deposition-ready” governance logs as a standard practice. In the AI era, transparency is not just PR — it’s protection.

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AI Safety

Hinton’s Hard Reset: “We may need a near-miss to wake up”

Geoffrey Hinton — the “Godfather of AI” — returned to 60 Minutes with his most sobering warning yet: humanity might only take AI safety seriously after a crisis. He calls it a possible “Chernobyl-for-AI” moment — a near-miss that forces global cooperation.

Key takeaways:

  • Safety over speed? Hinton credits Anthropic, DeepMind, and Google Research for taking alignment seriously, but warns the trillion-dollar race for dominance is eclipsing prudence.

  • Economic fallout. He predicts widespread job replacement as the main profit engine for large AI investments — echoing his concerns that society is unprepared for “the productivity paradox.”

  • New control metaphor. Forget the CEO-assistant model; Hinton proposes a “baby-mother” relationship — humanity as the dependent, superintelligence as the caretaker. It’s uncomfortable, but possibly realistic.

Prediction: Within a year, regulators could push for mandatory safety disclosures — real-time model evaluations, independent audits, and “safety budget floors” pegged to R&D spend. The post-GPT-5 world will not only compete on intelligence, but on containment.

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Other Relevant AI News!

🛒 Kroger and Instacart deepen ties and roll out an agentic Cart Assistant to plan meals and build baskets—an at-scale test of conversational shopping. Read the release.

💼 IBM plans to cut a low single-digit % of its workforce as it pivots harder to AI-driven software and hybrid cloud. See the report.

🎮 Krafton (PUBG/Subnautica) declares itself AI-First, funding bigger GPU capacity and agentic pipelines to accelerate in-game creation. Full coverage.

🧭 Perplexity vs. Amazon escalates over Comet’s auto-purchase tool—potentially the test case for agent access on retail platforms. Quick summary.

🚗 Pony.ai prices its Hong Kong listing at HK$139 per share, seeking up to $864M to scale L4 robotaxi/robotruck pilots. Watch a short clip.

Golden Nuggets

  • ⚖️ Board governance will become a first-class safety mechanism at frontier labs—not just a formality.

  • 🧠 Hinton’s call suggests new alignment metaphors (care, incentives) may matter more than smarter prompts.

  • 🛍️ Agentic commerce is here; site-level agent policies will shape who owns the checkout in 2026.

Would love to hear your thoughts on ChatGPT Atlas! Send me your thoughts by replying to this email (yes, I read them all :)

Until our next AI rendezvous,

Anthony | Founder of Uncover AI