"Verify candor before trusting high-stakes commitments Casey Newton raised a documented pattern about Sam Altman: 'a criticism he has gotten from his former co-workers is he tells people what they want to hear,' a pattern Newton said was 'at the root of him being fired in 2023' when co-workers said 'this guy is not being consistently candid and he's just sort of leaving me in this state of perpetual confusion.' The higher the stakes of a commitment — in this case, whether a Pentagon AI deal actually prevents mass domestic surveillance — the more that pattern of telling people what they want to hear becomes dangerous rather than merely frustrating. Before trusting a leader's assurance on a consequential decision, look for historical evidence of whether their stated positions have held under pressure. Source: Casey Newton, Hard Fork, 'Anthropic vs. the Pentagon'"