Updates as of November 2024: I’ve added in a substantial amount of new information that Annie and other sources have provided since the day that I originally made this post (October 7, 2023.) I added some in-text citations so it’s easier to see how I’ve constructed the Timeline below. I also changed my Twitter username for reasons I provided here. If you want to see what this post looked like before I made these updates, it’s available here on the Internet Archive.
Content warning: Sexual assault, abuse, child abuse, suicidal ideation, severe mental illnesses/trauma, graphic (sexual) language.
This post aims to aggregate a collection of statements made by Annie Altman, the (lesser-known) younger sister of Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI.
In these statements, Annie asserts that she has suffered various severe forms of abuse from Sam Altman throughout her life, including being sexually abused by him as a child. She also states that she has experienced abuse from her other brother Jack Altman, though to a lesser extent.
Annie has stated that the forms of abuse she’s endured include sexual, physical, emotional, verbal, financial, technological (shadowbanning, hacking), pharmacological (forced Zoloft), and psychological abuse.
I do not attempt to speak for Annie; rather, my goal is to provide an objective and unbiased aggregation of this situation, and the claims Annie has made.
I have made this post because I think that it may be important to be aware of the existence of the claims that Annie has made about Sam, given his strong influence over the development and alignment of increasingly powerful AI models. I have also made this post because I think that Annie’s claims are not covered well elsewhere—at least, at the time of this post’s writing.
Disclaimer: I have tried my best to assemble all relevant information I could find related to this (extremely serious) topic, but this is likely not a complete collection of information regarding the Sam Altman’s alleged abuse of Annie Altman.
An outline of this post
Note: I am awe that this post is rather long. However, most of the content is summarized in the Timelinesection (~20 minute read.)
The Timeline section gives my attempt at a timeline detailing Annie’s claims in chronological order. It provides a summary of most the information in the post. After the Timeline section, I then provide other sources & references, and excerpts from them, which I used to create the Timeline.
This post provides my understanding of Annie’s claims, and the situation. It’s definitely possible that I’ve (unintentionally) gotten things wrong, misinterpreted things, or been biased in how I’ve covered this situation, despite my best efforts not to be.
Unlike other journalists & reporters who’ve covered Annie’s allegations, I’ve never personally met or interviewed Sam, Annie, or any of their family in-person. Everything in this post is just information that I found on the Internet.
I’ve used citations & links heavily throughout the post, in an attempt to make it clear how I’ve come to my current understanding. By all means, go look at the source material and references yourself, and form your own understanding.
In an attempt to make this post clearer and easier to read, I’ve used “collapsible” sections, like this one.
You can click on the little ▶ triangle icon at the top-left of each collapsible section to un-collapse it, and reveal its hidden content. You can then click the ▼ icon again to re-collapse the section, and hide its content.
Note: there is still important information in many of the “dropdown” parts. A few of them are empty, and a few contain less-important information, but most actually do have additional information that you should read.
In other words—don’t misread this as “the information in the dropdown sections is redundant/irrelevant.”
You should still read the information in all of the dropdown sections.
My ideal form of the content in this post would be a giant bullet list where you can “toggle” or “collapse” a single bullet point and sub-bullet point.
However, LessWrong (understandably) doesn’t offer this feature. (It’s more something you’d find in a note-taking app or something.)
So, using these dropdown sections is the closest I can get to that ideal.
I’ve also added some in-text citations.
I’ve included them so that you can more easily see how I’ve constructed this timeline from the source material that I reference throughout this post (e.g. news articles, posts on social media, etc.)
Each in-text citation is linked to a different part of this post where I’ve provided the corresponding reference.
The first two upper-case letters stand for the first and last name of the author of the reference.
Example: “AA” for “Annie Altman”.
The two numbers that follow give the year in which the reference was authored.
Example: “19” for “2019″.
The final lower-case letter doesn’t have a specific meaning. It’s just for distinguishing between different in-text citations that would otherwise look the same.
Example: “[AA19c]” vs “[AA19b]”.
Note: some of the links on these in-text citations are currently outdated and/or don’t work. For now, just use Command-F/Control-F, or scroll down manually, to see the corresponding refernece for each in-text citation.
I’ve purposefully aired on the side of potentially adding a bit “too much” detail in this timeline, as I’d rather do that than accidentally leave out information in a way that makes it hard to understand other events in the timeline.
There are various events in the timeline that, when you first read them, may seem “unnecessary” or “not relevant.” But, generally, I include things in the timeline for a reason. Often, in this timeline, earlier events sort of “set up” events that follow years later. You often need to understand various events that occur earlier on in the timeline before you can understand various events that come later.
Throughout this post, I’ve bolded various segments that I feel are particularly important or relevant.
Timeline
April 22, 1985: Sam Altman is born, to parents Connie Gibstine (mother) and Jerry Altman (father.)
Beginning when Annie is a baby [AA24n] -- i.e. beginning somewhere between ~1994 and ~1997 -- Annie repeatedly experiences various forms of abuse from her biological siblings. That is, from her 3 brothers: Sam Altman, Jack Altman, and Max Altman. It seems that most of the abuse that Annie has experienced from her 3 brothers has come from Sam.
On November 13, 2021, Annie wrote: “I experienced sexual, physical, emotional, verbal, financial, and technological abuse from my biological siblings, mostly Sam Altman and some from Jack Altman.” [AA21a]
September 10, 2022, Annie wrote: “Sam and Jack, I know you remember my Torah portion was about Moses forgiving his brothers. “Forgive them father for they know not what they’ve done” Sexual, physical, emotional, verbal, financial, and technological abuse. Never forgotten.” [AA22a]
Somewhere between ~1994 and ~1997, (Annie’s brothers, I presume?) play “dwarf tossing” with Annie when she is a baby [AA24n]. Annie’s grandmother witnesses this, and condemns it. [AA24n]
“Things Grandma was right about...”dwarf tossing” with my baby body was wrong” [AA24n]
Note on how I determined “between ~1994 and ~1997”:
It seems that definitions vary regarding the age range in which a human is considered a “baby”.
So, I just went with the conservative definition of “0-3 years.”
Thus, because Annie was born in ~1994, the abuse, which perhaps started with “dwarf tossing” of Annie when she was a baby (0-3 years old), and then escalated over time, must have began between ~1994 and ~1997.
Annie has also written that her grandmother (who I think was Marjori Mae “Peggy” Francis Gibstine) reprimanded Connie for neglecting Annie—see [AA24p].
~1996: Sam and Jack’s grandmother gets each of them some stock in a company related to something they like. Sam is given stock in Apple, given his interest in computers. Jack is given stock in Applebee’s, given that he was, as he puts it, “heavier as a child, as {Sam} like{s} to point out” [YC16a].
In one of the Altman family pictures above, from when Jack was younger, Jack does indeed look a bit heavier:
~August 1997: Sam, age 12, begins his time at the John Burroughs School (JBS) in St. Louis, Missouri, staring 7′th grade.
Timeline:
August 1997 - June 1998: 7th grade (for Sam, at JBS)
August 1998 - June 1999: 8th grade
August 1999 - June 2000: 9th grade
August 2000 - June 2001: 10th grade
August 2001 - June 2002: 11th grade
August 2002 - June 2003: 12th grade
I (inductively) estimated the month and year in which Sam started and ended each grade at JBS using the dates available on the calendar on JBS’s website.
I don’t know for sure that Sam did grades 7-12 there, but that’s just what I’m guessing, since JBS says they’re “for grades 7-12” in their X (Twitter) account bio.
Sources indicating that Sam graduated in 2003: here, here.
There are numerous sources that indicate that Sam attended JBS: here, here, here, here, etc.
In ~1998 or 1999, when Annie Altman is 4 years old and Sam Altman is 13 years old, Sam sexually abuses Annie [AA23a, AA—f] -- repeated molestation [AA23w] and touching her in private areas. [AA23x]
Annie has stated that:
Sam was something like her “first {sex work} client” [AA23j]
Sam used her to “help him figure out his sexuality” [AA23a]
(implied: in an inappropriate / nonconsensual way that would be classified as sexual abuse.)
I estimate the year in which the alleged sexual assault occurred from the fact that Annie claims that Sam was 13 when the alleged sexual assault occurred [AA23a]. Sam’s birthday is April 22, 1985, and thus, for him to have been 13 at the time of the alleged sexual assault, the alleged sexual assault must have taken place in the range April 22 1998 -- April 22 1999.
From the birthdays I listed above—at this time, the ages of the Altman siblings are as follows:
Sam is 13 years old
⟹Max is ~11
⟹Jack is ~9
Annie is 4
~1998-1999: Annie’s 4-year-old mind represses her memories of these abuses [AA18b, AA23k, EW23a].
For the next ~20 years (~1998-2018) Annie’s mind continues to repress her full memories of being abused. However, throughout those 20 years, Annie does recall bits and pieces of her memories of being sexually abused. These partial-memories confuse and disturb Annie, and she doesn’t fully understand them when they recur to her. Crucially, Annie also doesn’t remember that it was Sam who sexually abused her.
Also, over the next 20 years (~1998-2018), Annie experiences a variety of mental health issues, eating disorders, and other disturbing experiences (e.g. projectile vomiting during consensual sex), all caused by the abuse she experienced at a young age.
However, beginning in 2018, a sort of “perfect storm” of events unfold that cause Annie to gradually start recalling her full memories of being abused. This gradual process of Annie recalling her full memories of abuse occurs from ~2018-2021. I’ll detail these events later on in this timeline.
My understanding is that this occurred as part of 4-year-old Annie’s subconscious/automatic trauma response and/or as a mental defense mechanism.
That is, I think Annie’s 4-year-old mind repressed the memories of this event because she was extremely young, and the event was extremely traumatic for her younger self in a way that was hard for her to even conceptualize, much less fully understand and remember.
Annie does not begin to fully recall her repressed memories until decades later, in a gradual process that intensifies from mid-2018 onwards (as the rest of this timeline describes.)
Decades later, about her gradual process of recalling her repressed memories, Annie would write:
On 11-8-2018: “With all the casual profundity of a yoga teacher, Joe asked, what is your earliest memory?′ Without pause for an inhale I responded, ‘probably a panic attack.’...I began having panic attacks at a young age. I felt the impending doom of death before I had any concept of death.” [AA18b]
On 4-21-2023: “I had a history since childhood of OCD, anxiety, depression, IBS, disorder eating—all covers for PTSD...”After quitting my dispensary job, my relatives find a loophole to withhold said money. They knew the health conditions and my plan, and they’re millionaires. I sell some things, go back to an older job, and eventually ask (for the first time ever) my millionaire relatives for financial help and am essentially told to “work harder.” I got $100 for an ankle MRI copay, after much ‘discussion’”...I do two family therapy sessions and am professionally advised to stop doing family therapy sessions...{in 2020} I’m offered {by Sam} a diamond made from Dad’s ashes instead of money for rent or groceries. Dad just wanted cremation. I go for no contact with relatives...I have two years of remembering horrific things I’d buried and told myself I made up, and experience adult SAs that brought up even more memories.” [AA23k]
On 10-15-2023: “I had only fuzzy memories of sexual abuse until I went no contact {with Sam and her other relatives}, because of the emotional and financial and other abuses. I was unpacking my own sexual health, both by myself and in therapy, since 2012. Attempting to understand experiences like mid-sex projectile vomiting.” [AA23u]
On 3-27-2024, Annie wrote: “{In summer 2020} I decided to go full no contact with my relatives {Sam, Jack, Max, and Connie.}...After a couple months, I had to stop work trading on the farm because of {health issues with} my ankle again. Even small plantings and weeding was too much...I scrambled with my legs up the wall in constant ankle and knee pain...{In September 2020} my body was physically hurting in so many ways...I was still too sick to teach yoga. I had considered and attempted various mindless computer jobs, and found myself completely incapable. After going no contact because of financial and emotional abuse, I was flooded with memories of sexual abuse I had repressed. I had flashbacks of the sexual and physical abuses my whole life, though it wasn’t until the silence of no contact that I had the space to connect the dots. In college and after, I had projectile vomited multiple times during sex with men I loved and trusted. I remember talking about this and related things with therapists, unable to wrap my mind around how violently my body had responded. *Now, literally on my ass from tendon and nerve and hormonal and digestive and ovarian cyst pain, I had a lot of time to remember the flashbacks’ details*...Most of my emotional and thought space was on various sexual healings of my own...My days were hazes of PTSD flashbacks with whatever grounding exercises I could do, whatever floor yoga and stretching I could do, and physical therapy...I had two adulthood sexual assaults while living on Maui that triggered more flashbacks. I’m grateful for those assaults in a fucked up way, for the clarities they gifted me. Half awake feeling unequivocally, “I’ve experienced exactly this before.” Though I was more set back emotionally and financially, managing even more flashbacks of old memories flooding in and incapacitating me...My last escorting experience was with a man who was experimenting with his queerness, and wanted me to bring another man in. I invited a filming partner, as I had started making hardcore porn on OnlyFans and PornHub at that point. Before the filming partner came over, the client said “I’m so gay!” — while his dick was in my mouth between words of the dick about to be in his mouth — followed by “omg I’ve never said that before” and a distant stare. I felt that stare, back to a stare I’d experienced decades ago.” [AA24b]
“I survived listening to my body fall apart as it told me the stories I had not yet been ready to hear the full depths of.” [AA—f]
It seems that, before Annie started to recall her repressed memories, she only remembered that Sam had “read her books at bedtime.” [EW23a] Only decades later did her recollection change: “As Annie tells her life story, she felt special and loved when, as a child, Sam read her bedtime stories. Now those memories feel like abuse.” [EW23a].
Note: when I first learned of Annie’s story, I was confused by, and didn’t fully understand, some of her symptoms. I’ve since learned more about common symptoms in people who experienced sexual abuse as a child.
Annie displays many of these symptoms, including:
- panic attacks beginning at a young age - waking up in the middle of the night needing to take a bath to calm her anxiety - suicidal ideation beginning at age 5-6 - “rationalizing away” and/or not understanding partial flashbacks (to the sexual abuse she experienced) that occurred earlier in her life - PTSD - developing eating disorders and body image problems from a young age - developing many mental illnesses (including suicidal ideation, anxiety, depression, OCD, and more) from a young age - (initial) repression of the (full) memories of the abuse (as an automatic trauma response in the brain) - many more symptoms
From saprea.org, (Saprea seems to be a 501(c)(3) nonprofit public charity that “exists to liberate individuals and society from child sexual abuse and its lasting impacts”:
From saprea.org, (Saprea seems to be a 501(c)(3) nonprofit public charity that “exists to liberate individuals and society from child sexual abuse and its lasting impacts”:
At age 5 (~1999), Annie tells her mother, Connie Altman, that she wants to end her own life and that she was “touched by older siblings”, and Connie “decided to instead protect her sons and demand to receive therapy and chores only from her female child.” [AA24f]. In particular, (it seems) Connietells Annie to keep the sexual assault a secret [AA23m].
Decades later, Annie would write:
“I have experienced drama like the OpenAI drama — I grew up in it. I was repeatedly told “not to talk about it,” and to allow another person to remove my human agency.” [AA23m]
“Child-me...was told to stay quiet about other people’s secrets—even when it made me physically ill.” [AA23m]
{I presume that it was Annie’s mother who told her to stay quiet, though it’s not fully clear.}
“At age 5 {~1999}, {Annie} began waking up in the middle of the night, needing to take a bath to calm her anxiety. By 6 {~2000}, she thought about suicide, though she didn’t know the word” [EW23a].
Annie writes, “I had a history since childhood of OCD, anxiety, depression, IBS, disorder eating—all covers for PTSD.” [AA23k]
By “PTSD”, I think Annie is specifically referring to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) caused by the abuse she experienced (mostly) from Sam and (some) from Jack. [AA21a]
Annie writes in [AA18b]: “I began having panic attacks at a young age. I felt the impending doom of death before I had any concept of death...I define panic attacks as feeling “too alive,” like diving off the deep end into awareness of existence without any proper scuba gear or knowledge of free diving. Panic attacks, I’ve learned, come like an ambulance flashing lights and blaring a siren indicating that my mind and my body are… experiencing a missed connection in terms of communication — they’re refusing to listen to each other. More accurately: my mind is disregarding the messages from my body, convinced she can think her way through feelings, and so my body goes into panic mode like she’s on strike.”
I inferred the year that Annie graduated from JBS by looking closely at the bottom-right corner of the pictures she posts in [AA24i]:
This implies:
August 2006 - June 2007: 7th grade (for Annie, at JBS)
August 2007 - June 2008: 8th grade
August 2008 - June 2009: 9th grade
August 2009 - June 2010: 10th grade
August 2010 - June 2011: 11th grade
August 2011 - June 2012: 12th grade
I made the same assumptions/used the same reasoning to make the esitmates here as I did (above) with my estimates regarding Sam’s time at JBS.
In 2005, Sam begins working on his startup, “Loopt” (formerly named “Radiate”). During his sophomore year at Standford (also in 2005), Sam meets Paul Graham. Paul Graham is quite impressed by Sam, and Loopt is accepted into Y Combinator’s first cohort.
Graham spoke highly of Sam:
-- October 2006: “Sam Altman, the co-founder of Loopt, had just finished his sophomore year when we funded them, and Loopt is probably the most promising of all the startups we’ve funded so far. But Sam Altman is a very unusual guy. Within about three minutes of meeting him, I remember thinking “Ah, so this is what Bill Gates must have been like when he was 19.”″
-- August 2008: “When we predict good outcomes for startups, the qualities that come up in the supporting arguments are toughness, adaptability, determination. Which means to the extent we’re correct, those are the qualities you need to win. Investors know this, at least unconsciously. The reason they like it when you don’t need them is not simply that they like what they can’t have, but because that quality is what makes founders succeed. Sam Altman has it. You could parachute him into an island full of cannibals and come back in 5 years and he’d be the king. If you’re Sam Altman, you don’t have to be profitable to convey to investors that you’ll succeed with or without them. (He wasn’t, and he did.) Not everyone has Sam’s deal-making ability. I myself don’t. But if you don’t, you can let the numbers speak for you.”
—April 2009: “I was told I shouldn’t mention founders of YC-funded companies in this list. But Sam Altman can’t be stopped by such flimsy rules. If he wants to be on this list, he’s going to be. Honestly, Sam is, along with Steve Jobs, the founder I refer to most when I’m advising startups. On questions of design, I ask “What would Steve do?” but on questions of strategy or ambition I ask “What would Sama do?” What I learned from meeting Sama is that the doctrine of the elect applies to startups. It applies way less than most people think: startup investing does not consist of trying to pick winners the way you might in a horse race. But there are a few people with such force of will that they’re going to get whatever they want.”
During Sam’s time at Loopt, a group of senior Loopt employees “twice urged board members to fire him as CEO over what they described as deceptive and chaotic behavior...Senior executives {at Loopt} approached the board with concerns that Altman at times failed to tell the truth—sometimes about matters so insignificant one person described them as paper cuts. At one point, they threatened to leave the company if he wasn’t removed as CEO.” [WSJ23a]
Sam also helps orchestrate an elaborate, multi-year plan to seize control of Reddit, by slowly diluting the ownership Condé Naste (who’d acquired it) until Reddit was effectively owned, once again, by its original founders, who’d also been part of Y Combinator’s first cohort. (The plan succeeded.)
(If the story told by Yishan Wong (former Reddit CEO) here on Reddit is to be believed:) Beginning sometime in the late 2000′s, Sam and some of his associates at Y Combinator begin the execution of a years-long effort to dilute Condé Nast’s ownership in Reddit, and return Reddit to the control of YC & Reddit’s original founders. (This effort seems to have ultimately succeeded.) --
The Reddit comment thread, in response to an original post on r/AskReddit asking “What’s the best ‘long con’ you ever pulled?”, is available here.
~2007: At age 13, Annie starts using Zoloft to help with symptoms of OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder), anxiety, and depression. [AA19b].
Annie eventually tapers herself off of Zoloft at age 22 (in ~2017) [AA19b, EW23a].
~2009: At age 15, Annie starts using birth control pills. [AA19b].
(I only include this because it becomes relevant later on, in the context presented in “Period lost, period found” [AA19b].)
Annie stops taking birth control pills at age 22, just before her 23rd birthday (~2017.)
Years, later, Annie wrote the following about her time in college (i.e. ~2012-2016):
On 10-15-2023, Annie wrote: “I had only fuzzy memories of sexual abuse until I went no contact {with Sam and her other relatives}, because of the emotional and financial and other abuses. I was unpacking my own sexual health, both by myself and in therapy, since 2012. Attempting to understand experiences like mid-sex projectile vomiting.” [AA23u]
On 3-27-2024, Annie wrote: “I had flashbacks of the sexual and physical abuses my whole life, though it wasn’t until the silence of no contact that I had the space to connect the dots. In college and after, I had projectile vomited multiple times during sex with men I loved and trusted. I remember talking about this and related things with therapists, unable to wrap my mind around how violently my body had responded.” [AA24b]
The flashbacks Annie describes {to the sexual abuse she experienced from Sam during her childhood} will re-appear later on in this timeline.
2012: Sam sells Loopt to Green Dot $43.4 million, coming away with $5 million himself. Sam uses that $5 million, along with money provided by Peter Thiel, to launch his own venture fund, Hydrazine Capital, with his brother Jack Altman. [EW23a]
“{Sam} also took a year off, read a stack of books, traveled, played video games, and, “like a total tech-bro meme,” he said, “was like, I’m gonna go to an ashram for a while, and it changed my life. I’m sure I’m still anxious and stressed in a lot of ways, but my perception of it is that I feel very relaxed and happy and calm.”″ [EW23a]
From a recent (September 24, 2024) podcast he did, it seems that Sam did a “weekend-long retreat in Mexico” where he did psychedelics, and that this retreat & the psychedelics he took significantly changed his inner state, helping him become more calm (he was more anxious before).
Sam Altman—Wikipediais where I got the information that Sam co-founded Hydrazine Capital with his brother Jack Altman.
On March 30, 2015, Annie submits an appeal letter [AA15a] to a Dean at Tufts University asking if Tufts will allow her to graduate early at the end of the semester {which would have been May 17, 2015} since, by that time, Annie would have completed all of her graduation requirements, except for Tufts University’s “residency requirement.”
In this letter, Annie states that:
For the first time, during her current semester {her 6′th semester}, she has started to consider not going to medical school (e.g. to get a MD or DO degree}, and has instead started to consider other (related) career options, such as becoming a nurse, physician’s assistant, or a therapist.
She wants to have a “summer of my own therapy: taking counseling seriously in a way I have never before felt ready to...working towards whatever euphemism you prefer for “getting my head on straight” or “re-centering.””
Annie’s request to graduate early (in 6 semesters) is denied.
Annie still ends up finishing college early—just in 7 semesters [EW23a], rather than 6. She graduates with a degree in Biopsychology (in ~2016).
Upon graduating, Annie is extremely depressed [EW23a], and she does not pursue medical school [AA19b] as she’d initially intended to [AA15a].
In Annie’s own words: “I majored in Biopsychology in college, with a minor in dance, and took all the prerequisite courses for medical school. Then I noped out of the pre-med route to focus on movement, writing, comedy, music, and food. I got certified as a yoga teacher, worked for an online CSA (community-supported agriculture) company, began writing more frequently, started slowly going to open mic nights and putting videos on YouTube, and began a podcast and this blog {i.e. her blog on Medium.}” [AA19b].
From [EW23a]: “{Annie} left college early...She had completed all of her Tufts credits, and she was severely depressed. She wanted to live in a place that felt better to her. She wanted to make art. She felt her survival depended on it. She graduated after seven semesters.”
From [BB24d]: “Annie, on the other hand, was not part of the Altman family brand. With each new step in her life, she seemed to veer farther away from the path she felt was expected of her. She completed pre med requirements, but decided not to pursue that further. She did improv classes, stand up comedy, yoga, teacher training. She said her dad was supportive of this turn away from a more traditional path. Her mom, who was a physician, was less excited.” Annie Altman: “My siblings and mother were very judgmental about the shift and also very “This is just a phase.” I was an am at total daddy’s girl. With my mother, there was closeness only when I was doing what she wanted me to do, which is a story {that} sadly, I feel like a lot of people can relate to.”″
At some point before October 3, 2016 [TF16a] - Jerry and Connie get a martial separation [AA23r, EW23a] --not a divorce, just a separation [AA23r].
Thus, legally, they remain married, even though they are separated [AA23r.]
(As with other events in this timeline, there’s a reason I’m including this. Later on, this enables Connie to block Annie from receiving the funds her deceased father left to her.)
I infer that the separation (or divorce?) between Jerry and Connie occurred before the date that “Sam Altman’s Manifest Destiny” [TF16a] was published in the New Yorker because, in that article, Connie is referred to as “Connie Gibstine” (rather than “Connie Altman”), which implies that, by the date of the article’s publication, Connie had separated or divorced from Jerry.
October 3, 2016: “Sam Altman’s Manifest Destiny” [TF16a] is published in the New Yorker. The author, Tad Friend, includes anecdotes from his time spent observing Sam’s day-to-day activities, as well as quotes from Sam, his brothers, and their mother (Connie.)
“A blogger recently asked Altman, “How has having Asperger’s helped and hurt you?” Altman told me, “I was, like, ‘Fuck you, I don’t have Asperger’s!’ But then I thought, I can see why he thinks I do. I sit in weird ways”—he folds up like a busted umbrella—“I have narrow interests in technology, I have no patience for things I’m not interested in: parties, most people. When someone examines a photo and says, ‘Oh, he’s feeling this and this and this,’ all these subtle emotions, I look on with alien intrigue.” Altman’s great strengths are clarity of thought and an intuitive grasp of complex systems. His great weakness is his utter lack of interest in ineffective people, which unfortunately includes most of us. I found his assiduousness alarming at first, then gradually endearing. When I remarked, after a few long days together, that he never seemed to visit the men’s room, he said, “I will practice going to the bathroom more often so you humans don’t realize that I’m the A.I.””
““Well, I like racing cars,” Altman said. “I have five, including two McLarens and an old Tesla. I like flying rented planes all over California. Oh, and one odd one—I prep for survival.” Seeing their bewilderment, he explained, “My problem is that when my friends get drunk they talk about the ways the world will end. After a Dutch lab modified the H5N1 bird-flu virus, five years ago, making it super contagious, the chance of a lethal synthetic virus being released in the next twenty years became, well, nonzero. The other most popular scenarios would be A.I. that attacks us and nations fighting with nukes over scarce resources.” The Shypmates looked grave. “I try not to think about it too much,” Altman said. “But I have guns, gold, potassium iodide, antibiotics, batteries, water, gas masks from the Israeli Defense Force, and a big patch of land in Big Sur I can fly to.””
“Altman’s mother, a dermatologist named Connie Gibstine, told me, “Sam does keep an awful lot tied up inside. He’ll call and say he has a headache—and he’ll have Googled it, so there’s some cyber-chondria in there, too. I have to reassure him that he doesn’t have meningitis or lymphoma, that it’s just stress.” If the pandemic does come, Altman’s backup plan is to fly with his friend Peter Thiel, the billionaire venture capitalist, to Thiel’s house in New Zealand. Thiel told me, “Sam is not particularly religious, but he is culturally very Jewish—an optimist yet a survivalist, with a sense that things can always go deeply wrong, and that there’s no single place in the world where you’re deeply at home.”
“One evening at Altman’s house, his younger brothers, Max and Jack, were teasing him that he should run for President in 2020, when he’d be thirty-five: just old enough. Max, twenty-eight, said, “Who better than you, Sam?” As Altman tried not very vehemently to change the subject, Jack, twenty-seven, said, “It’s not purely little-brother trolling. I do think tech needs a good candidate.” “Let’s send the Jewish gay guy!” Altman said. “That’ll work!” Jack eyed a board game called Samurai on the bookshelf and said, “Sam won every single game of Samurai when we were kids because he always declared himself the Samurai leader: ‘I have to win, and I’m in charge of everything.’ ” Altman shot back, “You want to play speed chess right now?,” and Jack laughed.”
“Max was working at the Y Combinator company Zenefits; Jack co-founded a performance-management company, Lattice, which had just gone through YC. The two brothers moved in with Altman temporarily three years ago and never left. Altman recently hired a designer to upgrade his gray IKEA sofas to gray SummerHouse sofas, and he hung some handsomely framed photographs taken from space, but the house maintains an upscale-student-housing vibe. His mother told me, “I think Sam likes having his brothers around because they knew him when, and can give him pushback in ways that other people can’t. But it’s tricky, with the power dynamic, and I want it to end before it explodes.””
~2017: At age 22, just before her 23rd birthday, Annie stops taking birth control pills. Around this same time, she also finishes tapering off of Zoloft. She also drastically alters her diet. [AA19b]
As a result, Annie loses her period for a year. [AA19b]
(I only include this because it becomes relevant later on, in the context presented in “Period lost, period found” [AA19b].)
November 29, 2017: Sam returns to John Burroughs School, where he speaks to students about “development of startups and AI...and our collective responsibility to make sure they benefit everyone.” [JBS17a]
At point in time {it seems to me}:
Jerry (Sam’s dad) is still living and working (overtime) in St. Louis (with a heart condition) [AA24c]
Annie has been (repeatedly) asking Sam to provide money and resources to Jerry {i.e. to help with his heart condition, or so he doesn’t have to work overtime in his late 60′s, or so he can retire.} [AA23q]
From what I can tell, Sam has not provided Jerry with money or resources. [AA24c]
January 2018: Jerry sends Annie a text, part of which reads, “And just for clarification, I don’t just support your lifestyle now or your physical and emotional endeavors now; I support your life. I will always support your life. These are aspects of your life, so I support those too. And there is not a “now”, as Yoda might say. There is only life, for as long as that may be.” [AA18a]
You may be thinking, “Why are you including this? This doesn’t seem relevant.”
I am including this because, as I cover later on in the Responding to Objections/Comments I’ve Seen From Others section, someone noted than Annie has “ate only beige foods for most of her life”, with the implied argument being that Annie is sort of “crazy.”
I don’t think this is a convincing argument for Annie being “crazy.” To clarify: it is relatively common for some people, especially during childhood, to be sort of a “picky eater” and only want to eat “beige foods”, i.e. foods whose color is generally white or beige. {More on this in a bit.}
Also—as I understand it, Sam’s sexual abuse of Annie when she was 4 years old was the reasonwhy she developed unusual eating patterns in the first place.
Annie, in [AA23k]: “I had a history since childhood of OCD, anxiety, depression, IBS, disorder eating—all covers for PTSD. Also tonsillitis yay”
Annie (starting at 1:09 in the video): “I was a very picky eater for most of my life. I was a vegetarian by choice as a little kid...I chose {to do this} in kindergarten...I also was very picky, and a very controlling type {of} person, and so food became a thing to control...and it also became a really physical, textural thing. The textures of different foods were really freaking me out, and I had all of these taste aversions, and very real reactions...so basically for the first two decades of my life I subsisted on eggs, and cheese, and peanut butter, and bread, and potatoes, and rice, and tortillas. And a lot of those things, for the majority of that time, weren’t like...”good” quality. It was {like} Wonderbread...so I would say, up until the end of high school, sof or the first 18 years of my life, I ate no green things. I started incorporating Caesar salads, and that was a huge deal to eat greens, to give you a show of it. And then in college I got more into cooking and I would, you know, put vegetables and things in muffins, and I’d find ways to incorporate it and get myself to eat these things...{but} I was still like {mainly eating} eggs, cheese, grains...”beige” foods...{but} I still held on to this. I was like...”One day, you’re gonna crave broccoli”...If you’ve dealt with picky eating, you understand when you have something and it’s great and it just shifts your whole mindset, of...”I’ve been missing out on that for that long?” And over my first year into transitioning {to a} plant-based {diet} it was just eating more and more of these fruits and vegetables that, for so long, I hadn’t been interested in eating...my body, I think, was so excited that I was finally giving it fruits and vegetables.”
“It might seem strange, but it’s common for picky eaters to eat only white or beige foods and refuse most other colors of food. But, there’s a good reason why and ways to get them eating more colors of the rainbow...”
“For some picky eaters, color of food is a big deal! We often don’t think about food color. You might not even notice that your child is choosing only certain colors of foods, especially if they’re younger. But it’s something I teach my students to be on the look out for, because it can’t be ignored. Jade had notified the pattern, but her daughter, at the age of 7 had begun to verbalize it too. If your child is 3, they likely won’t tell you they don’t want to eat that ham because it’s pink, but that could very well be what’s going on! ”
“Do All Picky Eaters Only Eat 1 Color of Food? Definitely not. In fact, it’s usually the more severe picky eaters that notice and select foods based on their color. An extreme picky eater typically eats less than 20-25 foods on a regular basis. They’ll also gag, tantrum, yell, or even throw up if you try to get them to eat, look at, touch, or tolerate a new food on their plate. Extreme picky eaters also won’t eventually eat a new food if you refuse to give them their favorites. Instead, they’ll go hungry and even make themselves sick...Eating only one or a few colors of food is another common trait of the extreme picky eater.”
“What’s a Picky Eaters Favorite Food Color? There tends to be one color that most extreme picky eaters gravitate towards: white. It’s highly unlikely that a picky eater will choose green, red, blue, brown, or purple as the color of food that they’ll consistently eat. Instead, feeding therapists like myself consistently see children that only want foods that are shades of white or beige. At first, that may seem strange, but there’s actually a few really good reasons why…”
“3 Reasons Why Picky Eaters Love White and Beige Foods
#1: It looks non-threatening At one point in human history, children needed to have certain defensive mechanisms to survive in the wild. They needed to avoid eating anything poisonous. Green foods in particular are a signal in their child brain that the food might not be safe. Since white food is void of all color, it naturally looks very safe to them. All this decision making about food color happens on a sub-conscious level for most children.
#2: It’s the color of lots of kid’s favorite foods In today’s culture, A LOT of processed foods that picky eaters love happen to be white or beige. Maybe that’s not totally on purpose. These are some common white and beige foods that picky eaters tend to accept:
bread • crackers • mozzarella cheese sticks • chicken nuggets • popcorn • french fries • cheerios and other cereals • applesauce • peeled apple slices • white macaroni and cheese
Some picky eaters will also branch out into yellow or orang-ish foods like cheese curls, Cheez It’s, yellow cheese, carrots, and traditional mac and cheese. When you think about it, this makes sense, yellow is the most similar color to white.
#3: They trust the color When a child is struggling with picky eating, it’s for a reason. Eating may be difficult because of different textures of food, it could make their tummy hurt, or be too hard to chew. Kids usually don’t verbalize these difficulties, but with extreme picky eating, they almost certainly exist. Once your child is eating a few white, beige, or even yellow foods, they deem the food safe. Safe that the food won’t feel weird or hurt. Again, probably subconsciously, they identify the color as safe and will be most likely to eat other foods that are the same color, while refusing foods that are a different color.”
February 2, 2018: Sam tweets, “Check out my sister on youtube!” [SA18a]
At some point in 2018, Annie visits Sam in San Francisco, while Sam has some friends over. One of Sam’s friends asks Annie to play a song she’d written. Annie begins to play the song on her ukulele. While she is playing the song, Sam abruptly, wordlessly gets up and walks upstairs to his room [EW23a].
From [EW23a]: “The next day, she {Annie} told him {Sam} she was upset and asked him why he left. “And he was kind of like, ‘My stomach hurt,’ or ‘I was too drunk,’ or ‘too stoned, I needed to take a moment.’ And I was like, ‘Really? That moment? You couldn’t wait another 90 seconds?’””
On May 25, 2018, Annie’s Dad, Jerry Altman, has a heart attack while rowing on Creve Coeur Lake outside St. Louis, and dies at the hospital soon after, at age 67 [EW23a].
From [EW23a]: “That same year, Jerry Altman died. He’d had his heart issues, along with a lot of stress, partly, Annie told me, from driving to Kansas City to nurse along his real-estate business. The Altmans’ parents had separated. Jerry kept working because he needed the money.”
Note: In my opinion, Annie and Sam tell stories about their dad’s death that, to me, seem rather different and hard to reconcile --
Annie says:
{Jerry was} “working overtime, with known heart conditions. The dream he expressed to retire in Costa Rica was never fulfilled by his millionaire son, who could have retired our father that he claimed to love.” [AA24c]
“What would have been our last family trip, I chose not to go for various reasons. I asked our Dad to be given a check for whatever would have been spent on my fancy plane ticket and accommodations. Dad didn’t ever tell me about getting money from Sam, and got quiet about his Costa Rica dream” [AA24d]
“I asked for money and resources to be given to our Dad numerous times before he died.” [AA23q]
“”One time I found a $500k watch at my oldest siblings’ place {Sam’s place}, casually in an open kitchen cabinet. Another sibling told me how much the watch was, and then got bullied for disclosing to me. I asked why our 60-something Dad (with heart conditions) was making rent and car payments. Surely retiring the father you claimed closeness with was more valuable than a watch???????? If our Dad had his needs taken care of, I would have supported multiple fancy watches” [AA24m]
It seems that, as of May 23, 2018, Sam also owned a ~$100K Philippe Patek Perpetual Calendar Ref. 1526 watch, which he posted a picture of to Reddit (on May 23, 2023):
The picture of the watch is not currently shown in the Reddit post. I found a link to it in the post’s source code (using Inspect Element):
I also found the date & time of the post’s creation in its source code:
(Note: as I noted on Twitter, I originally got this date wrong, accidentally mistaking the date and time at which a comment on the post was made for the date and time at which the post itself was made. Sorry about that.)
Close-up of the watch Sam wore while testifying to Congress about AI.
A side-by-side comparison (which I’ve color-annotated) of the watch Sam was wearing (left) with a clearer picture of a Patek Philippe, Perpetual Calendar, Ref. 1526 (right; image source: here). You can make out the distinctive “moonphase window” [SW22a] (annotated in green, where I’ve traced segments along the boundary of the moonphase window itself in red), calendar info with the day and month (annotated in orange), the pure 18k yellow gold [SW22a] crown (annotated in blue), along with three of the watch’s golden numerals: 12 (at the top of the dial just above the calendar info, annotated in grey), 2 (annotated in light/aqua blue), and 4 (annotated in pink).
Sam says:
(32:28-33:49) “AGI and my family are the two main things I care about, so losing one of those is like...so yeah I mean it was just like unbelievably painful. The only comparable set of life experience that I had, and that one was of course much worse, was when my dad died. And that was like a very sudden thing. But the sense of like confusion and loss...in that case, I felt like I had a little bit of time to just like feel it all. But then there was so much to do. Like it was like so unexpected that I had to pick up the pieces of his life for a little while. And it wasn’t until, like, a week after that I really got a moment to just, like, catch my breath and be like, holy shit, like, I can’t believe this happened. So yeah, that was much worse.” [SA23a]
Charles Johnson claims—here, at around ~6:30 and ~13:18 -- that, after Jerry’s death, Sam Altman “started doing a lot more drugs.”
I am aware that Charles Johnson is not always a reliable source of information. But it seems that Charles Johnson had ties with Peter Thiel around that time (2018), so I think Johnson’s claims that he repeatedly interacted with Sam in person and at his house are plausible.
I repeatedly asked (here, here, here, here, here, and here) Charles Johnson on Twitter to comment/elaborate on the claims that he made, but he didn’t. (Some of my replies were getting marked as “spam” or “offensive” (which confused me, as I don’t think they were “spam” or “offensive”), so that probably didn’t help.)
After Jerry’s death, Sam, Jack, Max, and Connie see Jerry’s Will. They purposefully withhold it from Annie for a year. Annie only finds out about this a year later (in 2019) [AA24b].
Annie writes, “My Dad {Jerry} died in May 2018, and access to his Will was withheld from me by my mother {Connie} and three older siblings {Sam, Jack, Max} for an entire year.” [AA24b]
She indicates that her Dad and her were very close, especially in the last few years before he died. {c.f. [AA18a] for more details.}
In [EW23a], Elizabeth Weil writes, “At the funeral, Annie told me, Sam allotted each of the four Altman children five minutes to speak. She used hers to rank her family members in terms of emotional expressivity. She put Sam, along with her mother, at the bottom.”
Quotes from Annie’s speech:
“”My dad trusted my intuition more than I ever have. He often reminded me of the strength of my mind-body connection, a concept I am both extremely passionate about and skilled at underestimating. He created and held space for all of my feelings, and those of you who have talked to me ever know that I have more than a few of those all of the time.” [AA18a]
“Sam said we could each talk for about five minutes, less if possible to not make you lovely people sit here all day, and Jack correctly pointed out how I will definitely be using all five of my minutes.” [AA18a]
“You may know that I come from a family that loves to rank things in order to make meaning of them. I love that too, and I also love talking about feelings, as someone who has so many of them. This led me to make a list about a year ago ranking my immediate family in terms of emotional expressivity, from most to least. Obviously I take “first place” on this list, which is probably part of why I wanted to make it. Next comes my dad, then Max, then Jack, and then Sam and mom alternate what would be first place if this list went from minimal to Annie levels of emotional expression. As I typed this out last night, Jack immediately questioned my list and checked in with Julia, his wife, for her opinion. (She agreed with my list, for the record.) It led to an interesting discussion on how different people express different emotions, which my dad knows is, along with family movie night, pretty much all I’ve ever wanted from my family. Also Jack last night, “I can just keep talking if you want me to write your speech, just keep it really meta, you can have my five minutes, it’ll be great.” Sam, I may really need Jack’s minutes here as when I read this out loud it was about 8 minutes — I’ll do my best to talk a little faster.” [AA18a]
The week Jerry dies {in May 2018}, Annie has one of the worst panic attacks of her life: “The most recent panic attack, and perhaps darkest one I’ve experienced, happened the week he died.” [AA18b].
C.f. [AA18b] for more details. It seems that Jerry’s death may have been what triggered, or intensified, Annie’s gradual process of recalling her repressed memories.
June 12, 2018: The first docket entry in the legal case relating to Jerry’s death, Will, and Testament (my wording here may not be the most accurate, as I’m not an expert in probate court terminology).
Connie Francis Gibstine (Jerry’s wife, and mother to Annie, Jack, Max, and Sam) is the independent personal representative. Annie Altman, Sam Altman, Jack Altman, and Max Altman are heirs.
Peter Palumbo is Connie’s attorney. Remember his name—he shows up later (in an email from Sam to Annie in 2019 -- I’ll cover this later in this timeline.)
See the images below.
I found the legal case relating to Jerry (full name: Jerold Donald Altman)’s death on the official Missouri courts government website that seem to corroborate this:
”The clerk, as soon as letters testamentary or of administration are issued, shall case to be published in some newspaper a notice of the appointment of the personal representative, in which shall be included a notice to creditors of the decedent to file their claims in the court or be forever barred. The notice shall be published once a week for four consecutive weeks. The clerk shall send a copy of the notice by ordinary mail to each heir and devisee whose name and address are shown on the application for letters or other records of the court, but any heir or devisee may waive notice to such person by filing a waiver in writing. The personal representative may, but is not required to, send a copy of the notice by ordinary mail or personal service to any creditor of the decedent whose claim has not been paid, allowed or disallowed as provided in section 473.403. Proof of publication of notice under this section and proof of mailing of notice shall be filed not later than ten days after completion of the publication.”
In my (amateur) understanding, this means that Annie, being one of Jerry’s heirs, should have received a notice, by mail, of the appointment of the personal representative (her mother Connie Gibstine) in July 2018?
But it seems to me that Annie didn’t learn of her father’s will until late 2019?
~August 2018: Connie kicks Annie off of her health insurance [AA24h].
“For context: Connie (biological mother) kicked me off her health insurance less than three months after Dad died, when I was 24 and could have stayed on her work one for two more years” [AA24h]
Annie experiences “6 months of hacking into all her accounts” [AA23d] after starting her podcast.
”″ [RE23a]
On 12-19-2019, Annie wrote: “In this calendar year I...had almost all of my personal accounts have attempted or successful logins, had people logging on my wifi and other wifi issues (4 new modems, had excessive cell phone service issues, the pity-party list continues. I’m beyond my capacity of what I can handle alone.” [AA—g]
Annie also had “a third or more” [RE23a] of her podcast ratings get deleted within a “few months” [RE23a] of starting her podcast. “When I started the podcast, before I did sex work or any other things that increased shadowbanning, I had shadowbanning immediately, and I had podcast ratings get deleted when it {the podcast} was called ‘True Shit’ right when I started it.” [RE23a]
At some point (before Annie begins sex work): Annie experiences shadowbanning on her social media accounts.
From [AA—h]:
”Almost all of my social media accounts have been/are shadowbanned...OpenAI would be tagged here also if they had a account.
{This shadowbanning} It started for me before any swork {sex work} started. I don’t mean that this account would be at 100K or some set number. I do mean it makes no sense to be unable to pass 1K, with over 100 podcasts and other creations, and consistent posting.
Old videos...get reduced to something like 2 views on @instagram and @youtube , podcast rating get frequently deleted on @apple @applepodcasts , people will get automatically unfollowed, posts will be restricted in who sees them, and more.”
In ~September 2018, Annie meets with a yoga teacher named Joe [AA18b] to record a podcast episode.
Joe asks Annie, “what is your earliest memory?”. Annie immediately responds, “‘probably a panic attack’” [AA18b].
Then, as Annie writes, “Laying in bed later that night, Joe’s question popped back into my consciousness with a kind “please make your way into child’s pose.” I realized I had deceived myself (classic humaning) with my response to his question, “what is your earliest memory?”” [AA18b]
The general idea (to me) is that Annie starts to process/realize that a panic attack is not her earliest memory. c.f. 2 bullet points below.
In ~October 2018, Annie attends a sound bath at a yoga studio: “I went to a sound bath at the yoga studio about a month ago, the second sound bath I’ve ever attended. (I cried at both and if you know me you know that I am happy about things that help me cry.) Sound baths are a guided meditation where you lay in corpse pose and receive sounds of specific frequencies, allowing vibrations to “wash” over and through you. Some shit is bound to surface in the tides.” [AA18b]
Reading [AA18b] in its entirety makes the connections a bit more clear here. The piece basically details Annie’s gradual process, from the time of her Dad’s death in May 2018, to the date of [AA18b]’s publication on November 8, 2018, of remembering/realizing that a panic attack is not her earliest memory. {Presumably, her earliest memory is her memory of being (sexually) abused by Sam, but it takes Annie a bit to fully process this memory, because it’s so traumatic, and her brain repressed the memory as a defense mechanism when she was 4 years old.}
To me, if you look through Annie’s writings over time, in chronological order, they seem to reflect a gradual process of Annie remembering that Sam sexually abused her when she was 4. Here is a sample of her writings, in which you can see how her writing changes over the course of nearly 6 years. To me, the progression encapsulates a gradual process of remembering.
“Two months ago I met with Joe K, the owner of Urban Exhale Hot Yoga, to discuss the podcast episode we were going to record together. (I have since recorded podcasts with four other teachers at the studio and am completely unsure how to express my gratitude to Joe — honestly perhaps less words about it?) While I would be the one asking Joe questions on the podcast, he had an important question for me. With all the casual profundity of a yoga teacher, Joe asked, “what is your earliest memory?”
“Without pause for an inhale I responded, “probably a panic attack.” I feel like Joe did his best asana poker face, based on projecting my own insecurities and/or the hyper-vigilant observance that comes with anxiety.”
“I began having panic attacks at a young age. I felt the impending doom of death before I had any concept of death. (Do I really have any concept of death now, though? Does anyone??) I define panic attacks as feeling “too alive,” like diving off the deep end into awareness of existence without any proper scuba gear or knowledge of free diving. Panic attacks, I’ve learned, come like an ambulance flashing lights and blaring a siren indicating that my mind and my body are… experiencing a missed connection in terms of communication — they’re refusing to listen to each other. More accurately: my mind is disregarding the messages from my body, convinced she can think her way through feelings, and so my body goes into panic mode like she’s on strike.”
“I went to a sound bath at the yoga studio about a month ago, the second sound bath I’ve ever attended. (I cried at both and if you know me you know that I am happy about things that help me cry.) Sound baths are a guided meditation where you lay in corpse pose and receive sounds of specific frequencies, allowing vibrations to “wash” over and through you. Some shit is bound to surface in the tides.”
“My dad died five months ago now, and to say I’ve learned a lot is an enormous understatement. I was and am a “daddy’s girl.” The most recent panic attack, and perhaps darkest one I’ve experienced, happened the week he died. My dad was one of the most genuinely positive people I’ve ever come across. He had an incredible capacity to continually focus on the light, the good, what was “right” in any situation. I felt his presence during parts of the sound bath — a concept past me would have rolled her eyes about.”
“Laying in bed later that night, Joe’s question popped back into my consciousness with a kind “please make your way into child’s pose.” I realized I had deceived myself (classic humaning) with my response to his question, “what is your earliest memory?”
“Joe, and whoever is reading, I would like to formally change my answer. I am also without an exact answer. I am non-sarcastically “trusting the process” to potentially receive one. I know that a panic attack is not my answer, and my ego likes to remind itself that knowing what is not my truth leads me at least somewhat closer to said truth.”″
“I can reflect on and connect with feelings of panic and still have space to choose a positive perspective. Searching for ways to cope with existence has lead me to yoga, dance, singing, ukulele, cooking, baking, writing… to asking all the questions I know to ask so that I can open myself up to knowing just how many more questions life has to offer. Without panic attacks, I may have lived my whole life without starting a YouTube channel, a podcast, or this blog.”
“Emotions come and go, so it keeps seeming. Emotions and memory are directly linked, re: the amygdala. I have little to no control over my emotional response; I do have control over my reaction and subsequent actions.”
“I write my own history. Though TBD on the first memory of that history. Here’s to exploring.”
The show begins with Annie providing an introduction to the her podcast and some thoughts about honesty and truth, and then thaking her brothers for coming on her podcast. Her brothers call her “Cannie.” (“Cannie”, short for “Trash Can” [AA24o], is their nickname for her.)
Annie: “Hello. My name is Annie Altman, and I’ve spent my life on a quest for true shit. Welcome to Episode 5 of Podcastukkah. So far, I’ve learned that ‘the truth hurts’ is some true shit, and there is no ultimate true shit, because my truth is different from someone else’s truth, and my truth now is different from my truth a year ago. Some true shit that has held up over time: one, be honest, the truth will come out eventually, and lying only complicates things. Two, the truth is simple, and lies are complicated. Three, be kind, and treat people how you want to be treated. If you are uninterested in someone else imposing their true shit on to you, do your best to be mindful about imposing your true shit onto others. This show is basically an opportunity for me to shoot the shit about things I want to shoot the shit about with people I want to shoot the shit with. Thanks for listening to me practice “human”-ing. In this episode, I’ll be discussing projection with all three of my older brothers. Sam, Max, and Jack Altman, I’m very grateful and privileged that you were all willing to take some time during this Thanksgiving holiday to circle around a microphone and record some thoughts on projection. Thank you all for coming.”
Sam: “Thanks for having us on, Cannie.”
Jack: “Thrilled to be here, Cannie.”
...
Note: in my opinion, there’s sort of a pattern throughout the episode: Annie brings up something she wants to talk about, often related to projection, feelings, or working through challenging emotions; her brothers cut her off or subtly alter the topic of conversation away from what Annie originally brought up, instead discusing topics that are...less sensitive, basically. It’s sort of hard to describe. I’d recommend listening to the episode yourself—I think you’ll sort of see what I’m talking about. (This is just my interpretaiton, of course, You may disagree, and that’s understandable.)
During the episode, Annie starts to talk about projection (in psychology), as well as how people are “wired to remember painful experiences.” Sam interjects and cuts her off, moving the topic of conversation away from “remembering painful experiences” to “hypocrisy”, and then detours the topic of conversation even further away from projection & memory to “giving feedback {at work}.” Mutliple times, Annie starts to return to the topic of projection; each time, the Altman brothers interject and start talking about “feedback”, specifically in work-related contexts. (Note: perhaps this interpretation of mine is biased. This was the impression I got after listening to the podcast, specifically from 24:30 -- 39:05 (the end of the podcast.) As always, I’ve linked the source material, and you can go listen yourself and see what you think.)
Annie (24:30): ”...in some ways, we’re wired to remember painful experiences so that we do learn from them...to remember negativity, and remember those things—”
Sam (interjecting) (24:55): ”—more than that, I think one thing we’re particularly wired for, I don’t know why, is to not like hypocrisy. That’s like a very deep thing...”
In [EW23a], Elizabeth Weil writes, “Among her various art projects, Annie makes a podcast called All Humans Are Human. The first Thanksgiving after their father’s death, all the brothers agreed to record an episode with her. Annie wanted to talk on air about the psychological phenomenon of projection: what we put on other people. The brothers steered the conversation into the idea of feedback — specifically, how to give feedback at work.
After she posted the show online, Annie hoped her siblings, particularly Sam, would share it. He’d contributed to their brothers’ careers. Jack’s company, Lattice, had been through YC. “I was like, ‘You could just tweet the link. That would help. You don’t want to share your sister’s podcast that you came on?’” He did not.“Jack and Sam said it didn’t align with their businesses.”” [EW23a]
I also think it’s worth noting that, at this point in time (December 7, 2018), Sam, Jack, and Max (and Connie) have seen Jerry’s Will, and are aware that it stipulates an inheritance for Annie, but are purposefully withholding this information from Annie [AA24b].
Again: as I understand it, at this point in time, Annie still has not yet fully remembered the abuse she experienced Sam (and her other brothers) during her childhood. This is why she is ok with doing this podcast episode with Sam and her other brothers.
“I started taking birth control pills at the age of 15 (I’m currently 25) and decided to stop taking them right before my 23rd birthday {~2017}. Also around this same time {~2017} I finished tapering off of Zoloft, which I started taking at age 13 {~2007} to help with symptoms of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Anxiety, and Depression. Also also around this time {~2017} I drastically altered my diet...I promptly lost my period and learned that changes relating to diet, hormonal birth control, and psychiatric medications are three of the main factors that can disrupt hormonal balance (stress being the baseline factor).”
“I’m experiencing a second puberty, or maybe an aftershock of sorts from first puberty and/or a year without my period. It feels like a hormonal “do-over” filled with moments of deja-vu: three new crushes in one week, intense crying and laughter in the same hour, and generally going about my day acting like I’m far less confused by all this internal “shifting” than I’m actually feeling. Plus days that feel exceptionally “average” leaving me extra confused about how dramatic life felt the day before. I’m fortunate to have received a liberal education and even so there were inevitable gaps in the information I was given, and open to receiving, about puberty.”
“I majored in Biopsychology in college, with a minor in dance, and took all the prerequisite courses for medical school. Then I noped out of the pre-med route to focus on movement, writing, comedy, music, and food. I got certified as a yoga teacher, worked for an online CSA (community-supported agriculture) company, began writing more frequently, started slowly going to open mic nights and putting videos on YouTube, and began a podcast and this blog. I’m learning to give myself space to explore what genuinely excites me without justification and I’ve felt levels of self-consciousness around my career swerve that I had not experienced since first puberty. HOW will I get my intellectual ego stroked without constant science classes? How can art really have no “right” answer? Am I really the only one who can validate how my feelings feel??”
“It’s been almost a year now since I got my period back and I feel I’ve been going through a sort of spiritual and scientific second puberty, to continue the soap operatics. A year extra filled with learning about my body’s cycle(s) and signals. Witnessing my hormones re-regulate has felt parallel to to self-soothing, not that I consciously remember learning that, and my first time with “my moon.” I started eating eggs again, including runny yolks for the first time, and ate fish for the first time in my life because my body very literally demanded them. A year without my period, after a decade of having it, felt like equal parts reset and emptiness.”
“I believe a large portion of shame takes root during puberty and then manifests as sexual repression, (sexual) aggression, body dysmorphia, addiction, and/or mood disorders. I can say for certain that has been my experience. Shame encourages ignorance by stifling conversations. Additionally, shame creates a feedback loop where ignorance is shamed and so questions and curiosity are discouraged.”
~March 2019: Sam Altman—at the time, president of Y Combinator—is asked to resign by the firm’s leaders, as well as by Paul Graham and (especially) his wife Jessica Livingston. [WSJ23a] Sam leaves Y Combinator in March 2019. See [WSJ23a] for details.
In ~summer 2019, about a year after the death of her Dad (Jerry), Annie is notified about being the primary beneficiary of her Dad’s 401K. [AA23m, AA24a, AA24b]
In light of these situational factors, Annie makes a plan to quit her job for 6 months [AA—c] to focus on her health, expecting that she’d receive money that Jerry had left for her, which would cover her financial needs during that time. She notifies her relatives of this plan, [AA24b, AA23k, AA23m, AA24a]. She notifies her relatives that she is sick. [AA18b]
As I understand it, the relatives that Annie notifies are, specifically: Sam Altman, Jack Altman, Max Altman, and Connie Altman. [AA23m]
In the summer of 2019, Annie carries out her plan as intended, and quits her job at a dispensary [AA24b]. Annie quits her job while in the middle of a process of completing paperwork that she had to complete to receive the money. That is, she hadn’t yet received the 401K money when she quit her job, but was expecting to receive it soon {once the paperwork was completed.} [AA23r]
However, after quitting her job, while in process of completing the rest of the necessary paperwork to receive the money that Jerry left to her in his 401K, Annie discovers, to her surprise, that the money Jerry left for her in his 401K is going to be withheld until Annie {currently ~25} is in her 60′s [AA23m].
It turns out that her mother Connie used, as Annie describes it, a “legal loophole” [AA23k] of sorts to override Jerry’s wishes and block Annie from receiving the 401K funds Jerry had left to her. [AA24b, AA23k, AA23m, AA23r]
In [AA23m], Annie writes, “Though separated, my parents were still legally married and so my mother had the “surviving spouse” option to ignore Dad’s wish to make me the primary beneficiary of his 401K.”
Thus, Annie ends up with a set of serious health issues that make it hard for her to stand and hard to work, and also unemployed and low on money.
Finding herself in an increasingly-desperate financial situation, Annie starts selling some of her possessions (furniture [BB24d] and clothes [AA24b]) for money. Eventually, for the first time in her life, Annie asks her mother Connie for financial help. Connie refuses to provide help [BB24d]. Annie then asks Sam for financial help; he was “told to say no because of her {Connie} wanting him to say no.” [BB24d] See also: [AA23k, EW23a]
“She {Annie} quit her job at a dispensary because she had an injured Achilles tendon that wouldn’t heal and she was in a walking boot for the third time in seven years. She asked Sam and their mother for financial help. They refused. “That was right when I got on the sugar-dating website for the first time,” Annie told me. “I was just at such a loss, in such a state of desperation, such a state of confusion and grief.” Sam had been her favorite brother. He’d read her books at bedtime. He’d taken portraits of her on the monkey bars for a high-school project. She’d felt so understood, loved, and proud. “I was like, Why? Why are these people not helping me when they could at no real cost to themselves?””″ [EW23a]
Sunday, September 22, 2019, 1:55PM: For the first time, Sam provides Annie with access to Jerry’s will, which had been withheld from Annie for over a year following Jerry’s death {on May 25, 2018} by Sam, Connie, Jack, and Max.
Recall: Pete—i.e. Pete (Peter) Palumbo—from earlier. He’s the lawyer Connie hired in the legal (probate) case for Jerry’s death.
First: notice the wording: “Pete—Please meet my sister Annie.” This implies that:
Pete has not previously met Annie, but
Sam had previously met Pete
Second: Sam is asking Pete to send Annie a copy of Jerry’s will. This implies that: Annie had not yet seen the will, even though:
Connie (and Sam) already had seen the will
It had been about a year and a half since Jerry’s death.
i.e. from the date on the email (September 22, 2019).
Third: Sam and Connie had both seen Jerry’s Will, even though Annie hadn’t. Neither of them had told Annie about the Will. This implies collusion between Sam and Connie to keep the Will hidden from Annie.
Fourth: From the images above (the Docket Entries from the Missouri Courts website), Annie was a one of Jerry’s legal Heirs. It doesn’t seem right that Annie only sees the will for the first time nearly a year and a half after Jerry’s death.
In December 2019, while living in LA, Annie, running low on money, goes on the SeekingArrangements.com website—a website for sugar dating and escorting—for the first time. [AA24b]
Ellen Huet: “Now, Sam and his family have given Annie money at times, but she says it always came with heavy conditions that made her nervous. At one point, Sam wanted her to get back on Zoloft, an antidepressant, which she had started as a teen but had stopped later on. She {Annie} forwarded me an email from Sam where he asked her to share her bank statements and to allow him and his mom to sit in on some of her therapy sessions in exchange for her rent and medical expenses being covered. She felt like it was his way of exerting leverage or power over her. Of course, Sam can spend his money as he pleases, but again, he’s on stage espousing the virtues of universal basic income—giving money away for free, unconditionally, -- and Annie says he didn’t do the same here for her. There were times when I’d gone back and forth about what to include from Annie’s story. It’s a very personal, messy family situation, and I’ll confess that on occasion I’ve doubted some unrelated things she’s told me. But also, I’ve looked through corroborating emails and documents. We drove to a lot of places Annie lived, and I met people she lived with. So in late 2019, when she asked for help and says she was told no, she turned to something she considered a last resort. To make money, she started sex work. She made an account on a sugar daddy dating website where people trade money for companionship and often sex.”
Annie: “I was just...I was in a desperate place. I mean...people who have been in a position like this ever know that when you’re in a place of selling furniture, you’re in a desperate position of “I’m out options.” This is a ‘plan Z’ I would not be doing this if plans ‘A’ through ‘I’ had worked out in any capacity.”
Ellen Huet: “The first thing she tried was video chatting with a middle-aged man. She flashed him on camera and he sent her money over Zelle. She posted videos on OnlyFans and PornHub.
[AA24b] (~January 2020, I think), Annie does two in-person sessions with a family therapist with Sam and Connie. The therapist is made aware of Annie’s situation—i.e. that Annie is sick with multiple illnesses that make it hard for her to work, low on money, and is still grieving the death of her father (Jerry.)
Connie, however, tells the family therapist that she thinks it would be “best for Annie’s mental health” if Annie fully financially supports herself. Sam agrees.
The family therapist is shocked, considering Sam’s extreme wealth.
The therapist convinces Sam and Connie to agree to provide Annie with 6 months of financial support for Annie’s basic needs (i.e. rent, food, medical bills) [AA24b].
Sam and Connie end up not honoring their agreement. They send money late, or send less money than was originally agreed, or force Annie to “grovel” [AA24b] for the money.
(At this point in time, Sam’s net worth is likely in the 10′s of millions of dollars.)
Annie writes, “I sat in my therapist’s office, in my walking boot and hormonal sweat, with my oldest sibling {Sam} there in person holding his phone with our mother {Connie} on FaceTime. The woman who bore me {Connie} told the therapist that it would be “best for Annie’s mental health if she fully financially supported herself,” and my multi-millionaire sibling {Sam} agreed. The therapist was utterly shocked, I was only half-surprised.
Perhaps with her {the therapist} highlighting that I never asked them {Sam, Connie} for financial help until very ill, and it still being so early in grieving our Dad {Jerry}, and with her {the therapist} highlighting their enormous wealth, the therapist somehow persuaded them to give short-term help for my basic needs...
My mom {Connie} and my brother {Sam} didn’t honor the therapist’s plan for six months of financial support, and my rent money was late or less-than-agreed or had-to-be-groveled-for.” [AA24b].
In [AA23s], Annie specifies, “I was given some rent money for a few months in LA before moving back to Big Island for a work trade. We made a plan with the family therapist (we did two sessions with) for Sam and my mother {Connie} to help with my basic needs while I was sick. That plan was not followed.” [AA23s]
“That financial “help” became inconsistent and/or attached to strings. It would be less than the amount agreed on with the therapist, late for me to actually pay rent so I had to keep asked repeatedly, etc.” [AA23t]
My note: I’ve estimated that the family therapy session occurred in ~January 2020 based on:
Max Altman’s text message in [AA24r], where he tells Annie that he, Sam, Jack, and Connie “think it’s best” if Annie “pay{s} for things in June {herself}”, i.e. if Max, Sam, Jack, and Connie don’t adhere to the plan to pay for Annie’s basic living, food, and medical expenses that they’d previously agreed to during the sessions they did with Annie with a family therapist, and
Annie’s statement that Connie and Sam were withholding the “final month of a six month plan for basic life support...while offering a diamond Dad didn’t ask to become to be sent to a rural mailbox” [AA24b]
Somewhere around this time (I think?), Sam tells Annie he wants her to start taking Zoloft again [EW23a], which she had stopped taking at age 22 (i.e. in 2016) [AA19b] because she “hated how it made her feel” [EW23a]. Sam later tells Annie that she will only receive money {from him} if she goes back on Zoloft [AA23c].
”At one point, Sam wanted her {Annie} to get back on Zoloft, an antidepressant, which she had started as a teen but had stopped later on. She {Annie} forwarded me {Ellen Huet, reporting for Bloomberg—see [BB24d]} an email from Sam where he asked her to share her bank statements and to allow him and his mom to sit in on some of her therapy sessions in exchange for her rent and medical expenses being covered. She felt like it was his way of exerting leverage or power over her.” [BB24d]
From [BB24d]:
Ellen Huet: “Now, Sam and his family have given Annie money at times, but she says it always came with heavy conditions that made her nervous. At one point, Sam wanted her to get back on Zoloft, an antidepressant, which she had started as a teen but had stopped later on. She {Annie} forwarded me an email from Sam where he asked her to share her bank statements and to allow him and his mom to sit in on some of her therapy sessions in exchange for her rent and medical expenses being covered. She felt like it was his way of exerting leverage or power over her. Of course, Sam can spend his money as he pleases, but again, he’s on stage espousing the virtues of universal basic income—giving money away for free, unconditionally, -- and Annie says he didn’t do the same here for her. There were times when I’d gone back and forth about what to include from Annie’s story. It’s a very personal, messy family situation, and I’ll confess that on occasion I’ve doubted some unrelated things she’s told me. But also, I’ve looked through corroborating emails and documents. We drove to a lot of places Annie lived, and I met people she lived with. So in late 2019, when she asked for help and says she was told no, she turned to something she considered a last resort. To make money, she started sex work. She made an account on a sugar daddy dating website where people trade money for companionship and often sex.”
Annie: “I was just...I was in a desperate place. I mean...people who have been in a position like this ever know that when you’re in a place of selling furniture, you’re in a desperate position of “I’m out options.” This is a ‘plan Z’ I would not be doing this if plans ‘A’ through ‘I’ had worked out in any capacity.”
Ellen Huet: “The first thing she tried was video chatting with a middle-aged man. She flashed him on camera and he sent her money over Zelle. She posted videos on OnlyFans and PornHub.
In May 2020, Annie moves back to the Big Island of Hawai’i, where she’d lived before living in LA. Annie writes, “This was my plan Y — find a low-labor work trade. I found a farm with a potential for a work trade, and despite being only a couple months out of the walking boot felt it was overall more healing than staying in a studio apartment I may or may not have enough rent money for, across from a park that was taped off due to Covid restrictions. When I notified one of my siblings of finding a farm work trade, he notified the rest of the relatives who group messaged me they would not be providing any of the final month of support agreed on with the therapist. I had planned to use the rent money for food.” [AA24b]
Annie will move again later, so it’s helpful to clarify this now for those who may not know: Hawai’i (aka Hawaii) is a state in the United States of America, located far away from the rest of the states, in the Pacific Ocean. It contains 8 islands: Big Island, Maui, and 6 others.
While Annie is work-trading on the rural farm (~June 2020), Sam messages Annie and asks her where he can send a diamond made from her Dad’s ashes, even though 1) Annie is low on cash, and could use cash much more than an expensive Dad-ashes-diamond, and 2) Annie recalls that her Dad wanted just cremation, and never indicated that he wanted to be turned into a diamond. Annie finds this to be a very odd/insensitive gesture. [AA24b, EW23a]
At this point, Annie decides to go “full no contact” with her relatives (Sam, Jack, Max, Connie), following the recommendation of the family therapist she’d done sessions with a few months earlier with Sam and Connie. [AA24b]
In [AA24b], Annie writes: “My Father never asked to become a diamond. I never sent my sibling the farm address. The mailbox was open, in a cluster of mailboxes in the middle of nowhere on the island. Plus, the most financially reasonable thing for me to have done with a diamond at that point was to pawn it for food money — and my sibling {Sam} was aware. I decided to go full no contact with my relatives. The family therapist we spoke with recommended I consider this more seriously, after telling me she could not professionally recommend doing more group sessions. She was not the first therapist to tell me to go no contact. Withholding the final month of a six month plan for basic life support, while I was very sick, while withholding money left to me from my Dad, while offering a diamond Dad didn’t ask to become to be sent to a rural mailbox, was my final straw to begin grieving all three of my siblings and my mother. A completely different and similar grieving process as grieving my Dad. The distinctions between “family” and “relatives” became more clear everyday.”
My note: I’ve estimated that this occurred in June 2020 based on:
Max Altman’s text message in [AA24r], where he tells Annie that he, Sam, Jack, and Connie “think it’s best” if Annie “pay{s} for things in June {herself}”, i.e. if Max, Sam, Jack, and Connie don’t adhere to the plan to pay for Annie’s basic living, food, and medical expenses that they’d previously agreed to during the sessions they did with Annie with a family therapist, and
Annie’s statement that Connie and Sam were withholding the “final month of a six month plan for basic life support...while offering a diamond Dad didn’t ask to become to be sent to a rural mailbox” [AA24b]
Thus, it seems that the 6-month plan was for the months of January 2020 through June 2020, and that Sam offered to send the $5,000 diamond he made out of Jerry’s ashes during the final month of that plan, i.e. June 2020 -- the same month that he withheld the money he’d previously agreed to send to Annie such that she could afford rent, groceries, and medical expenses.
I think this is why Annie says that Sam was “was aware” [AA24b] that “the most financially reasonable thing for {Annie} to have done with a diamond at that point was to pawn it for food money” [AA24b].
~August-September 2020: A few months after going full no contact with her relatives (Sam, Jack, Max, Connie) Annie begins having health issues with her ankle again, which make it hard for her to stand/walk, forcing Annie to stop work-trading on the farm. An owner of the farm gives Annie some computer work, that she can do while seated, for him.
Annie also applies for EBT food stamps and Medicaid.
Annie writes:
“After a couple months, I had to stop work trading on the farm because of my ankle again. Even small plantings and weeding was too much. One of the owners of the farm kindly and graciously found computer work for him for me to do seated, which gave me more time while I scrambled with my legs up the wall in constant ankle and knee pain. I had both an Etsy Shop and Patreon for my podcast, though they didn’t make enough to even cover my phone bill.” [AA24b]
“Still unsure how to rest and heal my body, I found a room rental in town and started OnlyFans. I applied for EBT food stamps and Medicaid, which felt so surreal while sharing DNA with millionaires. I had also applied for unemployment in California in April 2020, as at first I didn’t want to clog up the system for people who weren’t directly related to millionaires who could help them. I was one of the millions who had identity theft on their unemployment, and so had to go through paperwork and hearings for it to finally come through in November 2020.” [AA24b]
September 2020: Annie starts having PTSD flashbacks (to being sexually abused by Sam when she was 4.) [AA24b] These flashbacks continue for 18 months (i.e. from ~September 2020 to February 2022). [AA—f] (From [AA24p], it seems that Annie still has PTSD as of August 9, 2024.
)Annie writes: “I had considered and attempted various mindless computer jobs, and found myself completely incapable. After going no contact because of financial and emotional abuse, I was flooded with memories of sexual abuse I had repressed...I had flashbacks of the sexual and physical abuses my whole life, though it wasn’t until the silence of no contact that I had the space to connect the dots...My days were hazes of PTSD flashbacks with whatever grounding exercises I could do, whatever floor yoga and stretching I could do, and physical therapy. I had to budget basic things like grocery trips based on how much I could walk or carry...I was constantly stressing about my health and money, and feeling hopeless and powerless.” [AA24b
]As a “plan Z last resort” [AA24b], Annie starts posting content on OnlyFans.
(As with the rest of this post—read the dropdown section.)
“{In summer 2020} I decided to go full no contact with my relatives {Sam, Jack, Max, and Connie.}...After a couple months, I had to stop work trading on the farm because of {health issues with} my ankle again. Even small plantings and weeding was too much...I scrambled with my legs up the wall in constant ankle and knee pain...So back to September 2020, starting OnlyFans. I started very softcore, for all sorts of reasons. I was uncomfortable showing much of my body, both because of a history of eating disorders and body dysmorphia and because my body was physically hurting in so many ways. I enjoyed parts of posting, and being front-facing about it all. Sharing pictures and videos on my own terms felt healing for years of insecurities with my body and sexuality and preferences, like exposure therapy for all my conditioning to hide. It felt like a very specific art therapy project. I was confused about liking parts of something that was a plan Z last resort. I was still too sick to teach yoga. I had considered and attempted various mindless computer jobs, and found myself completely incapable.
After going no contact because of financial and emotional abuse, I was flooded with memories of sexual abuse I had repressed. I had flashbacks of the sexual and physical abuses my whole life, though it wasn’t until the silence of no contact that I had the space to connect the dots. In college and after, I had projectile vomited multiple times during sex with men I loved and trusted. I remember talking about this and related things with therapists, unable to wrap my mind around how violently my body had responded. *
Now, literally on my ass from tendon and nerve and hormonal and digestive and ovarian cyst pain, I had a lot of time to remember the flashbacks’ details.” [AA24b]
To me, this letter seems to be somewhat sarcastic. Annie is “thanking” her relatives in a way that carries subliminal criticisms.
Example: “Thank you for strengthening my sense of self. I am where I am and doing what I’m doing in part because of each of you. My tenacity and gentleness to take care of myself has increased because of you. The lessons I’ve received from my relationships with you have shifted my perspectives beyond their limitations. Thank you for providing contrast.”—What I think Annie is referencing here is how her relatives screwed her out of her money and (esp. Sam) abused her for a very long time. To this, she had to adapt by developing better ways to take care of herself, and was also forced to move around in a state of relative financial poverty.
As with the rest of the letter, Annie includes seemingly-upbeat, purposefully vague one-liners throughout the letter, such as “Thank you for providing me with contrast.” (The implied negative connotation isn’t too hard to infer.)
Annie experiences two sexual assaults. These sexual assaults intensify Annie’s PTSD flashbacks to the sexual abuse she experienced from Sam when she was 4 years old.
“I had two adulthood sexual assaults while living on Maui that triggered more flashbacks. I’m grateful for those assaults in a fucked up way, for the clarities they gifted me. Half awake feeling unequivocally, “I’ve experienced exactly this before.” Though I was more set back emotionally and financially, managing even more flashbacks of old memories flooding in and incapacitating me.” [AA24b]
“The two assaults were outside of in-person sex work, both right before I started and another final straw of sorts. Adulthood assault{s} are common triggers for remembering more childhood information, patterns get repeated until they are sorted.”
Annie gets on the SeekingArrangements.com website again. She starts escorting and in-person sex work, as a sort of last-resort means of obtaining the money she needs to survive. A particular experience with an in-person sex work client of hers causes Annie to have more PTSD flashbacks. (See: “How I Started Escorting” on Annie’s blog.)
(As with the rest of this post—read the dropdown section.)
“While deep in my own tendon and hormone and trauma healing, I turned to escorting. Most of my emotional and thought space was on various sexual healings of my own, so extending it to include others felt less intimidating. My days were hazes of PTSD flashbacks with whatever grounding exercises I could do, whatever floor yoga and stretching I could do, and physical therapy. I had to budget basic things like grocery trips based on how much I could walk or carry. I couldn’t carry heavy things or go on long walks, and could manage even shorter beach walks because of the uneven surface. I was constantly stressing about my health and money, and feeling hopeless and powerless. Being sick is very expensive, and also a very challenging state to be in attempting to make money.” [AA24b]
“My ankle and knee and hips would hurt extra some days, and it wasn’t for another year when I was referred to a pelvic floor physical therapist that I knew I was also managing nerve pain.” [AA24b]
“I decided to get on SeekingArrangements again, now living on Maui. My disabilities and desperation made me more open to navigate the website, and I figured it would be very different than in LA. It was different, though I was still resistant to actually meet anyone in person...{eventually,} I took the plunge to meet someone in person.” [AA24b]
“The first client I ever had was in an open relationship, where his partner gave him permission for “paid play partners” that she approved of. We met on video chat, then I met him for coffee, then a few days later he was at my place. We talked, we fucked, he sent me a Venmo, he left.” [AA24b]
“I logged on my computer and paid a bill I was behind on, immediately.” [AA24b]
“My last escorting experience was with a man who was experimenting with his queerness, and wanted me to bring another man in. I invited a filming partner, as I had started making hardcore porn on OnlyFans and PornHub at that point. Before the filming partner came over, the client said “I’m so gay!” — while his dick was in my mouth between words of the dick about to be in his mouth — followed by “omg I’ve never said that before” and a distant stare. I felt that stare, back to a stare I’d experienced decades ago.” [AA24b]
“In the shower after I prayed that would be my last experience in person, and I could switch to all virtual. I knew an article would be coming out soon quoting me in New York Magazine, and I prayed it would give me the exposure to support myself with OnlyFans.” [AA24b]
While deep in my own tendon and hormone and trauma healing, I turned to escorting. Most of my emotional and thought space was on various sexual healings of my own...My days were hazes of PTSD flashbacks with whatever grounding exercises I could do, whatever floor yoga and stretching I could do, and physical therapy......My last escorting experience was with a man who was experimenting with his queerness, and wanted me to bring another man in. I invited a filming partner, as I had started making hardcore porn on OnlyFans and PornHub at that point. Before the filming partner came over, the client said “I’m so gay!” — while his dick was in my mouth between words of the dick about to be in his mouth — followed by “omg I’ve never said that before” and a distant stare. I felt that stare, back to a stare I’d experienced decades ago.” [AA24b]
“”My last in-person client came out to me as gay followed with “omg I haven’t ever said that out loud before,” as I flashbacked and did my best to stay in “work mode.” Will be more/less something when less ptsd-y” [AA24q]
From [AA24j]: “Can you imagine how much more I’ll scare them now that I’m getting my tendon/nerve/ovaries cared for, not sucking dick for rent money while my Dad’s Trust was completely withheld, and learning it’s safe and allowed for me to share my story on my terms 🥰”
From [AA—b]: “Yeah I was super sick...and houseless...and sucking “parts” for...{money?}...and so now—well, first of all, ’cause that was some outrageously good fuckery (abuse), and—now I’m un-fuck-with-able!”
Annie, unable to afford a stable place to live, experiences a long period of housing insecurity, at times living with strangers from the internet, sleeping on the floor, and living in numerous places with no running water or electricity.
Ellen Huet {see [BB24d]}: “{Annie} also did in-person sex work for two years. She says she didn’t want to, but it was the work that she was able to fit into her unpredictable schedule of dealing with her health issues. Her lack of stable income, led to a long period of housing insecurity. At times, she lived with sex work clients, or even with strangers from the internet. Her sex work contributed to her precarious housing. She didn’t have pay stubs or regular income, which limited the kind of leases she could get. It felt like this interconnected web, exactly the kind of vicious cycle that something like universal basic income tries to break.” [BB24d] Annie Altman: “If I had a security deposit in my bank account - {I} never would have lived with this man, not, not even a little bit of a chance, would I have lived with this man. There’s some unhealthy sex work experiences, and I’ve also had very traumatizing experiences from in-person work that would not have happened if I had secure housing. I’m still in and, have been so long in, survival mode that it really shifts everything. It really shifts everything. Times when it’s been really like...places...like staying just for a week and a half {somewhere} and then the floor for a week, and then someone’s place for a night, and then a floor for a week—in those places of really moving that much in a short period of time, there’s no—I had no energy for anything else. Really feeling a sense of helplessness and powerlessness that I have never experienced, ever.” [BB24d]
More from [BB24c]:
Ellen Huet: “I’m driving through the lush green forests of Maui. Annie Altman, Sam Altman’s little sister is sitting in the passenger seat. You heard from her briefly in the first episode.” ... Ellen Huet: “We’re taking a tour of the different places Annie has moved around in the last couple of years, driving down dirt roads to look at cabins and houses hidden behind enormous tropical plants.” Ellen Huet: “For much of the past two years, Annie hasn’t been able to afford a stable place to live.” Annie Altman: “The place you just passed is one of the places I stayed at longer-term in all of the houselessness...{I spent} two months on a newly-built, {with} no running water or no electricity, house, at the far end, back, of the property.” Ellen Huet: “And I think she’s an important part of Sam’s story.” Annie Altman: “And at the time I had nowhere to stay and no rent money, certainly no deposit money, and barely enough room, barely enough money for rent.” Ellen Huet: “Recently, over the course of just a year, she moved twenty two times, and that’s on average about twice a month. Sometimes she has stayed places for a week at a time, or even just a night or two. Some of them have been illegal rentals without running water. She says she’s slept on floors and friends’ houses. She stayed with strangers when she didn’t have another option.” ... Annie Altman: “The man who lived in the front house messaged me on Instagram, and I stayed in his kids’ room the week that they weren’t there, and then slept on the floor in the common room the week that the kids were there. Annie Altman: “I was houseless. I didn’t have somewhere to go.” Annie Altman: “I stayed in this cabin with the slanty roof right there for three months.” {A podcast host}: “How many different places have you lived in that didn’t have running water?” Annie: “Maybe five-ish? Five or six? I don’t know.” Ellen Huet: “Meanwhile, thousands of miles away in San Francisco, her brother Sam was having a spectacular year in 2023. The success of ChatGPT had launched OpenAI into the stratosphere. Sam was named CEO of the Year by Time magazine. He spent months flying around the globe talking to world leaders about AI.” Ellen Huet: “It sounds wonderful, almost utopian. But Sam was saying on stage that everyone should have enough money, enough food, everyone should have a place to live, while his own sister was struggling with homelessness. I want to believe Sam’s promises about abundance, but Annie’s story complicates a lot of the things Sam has projected about the future.”
Early 2020 -- mid-2021: Sam is in the middle of an $85 million “real-estate shopping spree” [BI23a], that took place between early 2020 and mid-2021 [BI23a].
“A $43 million dollar estate in Hawaii, on Big Island, in 2021, with a private inlet, several houses, and “adventurous amenities”, including motorboating, cliff jumping, wakesurfing, Jet Ski-ing, and scuba diving. Business Insider reports that:”
A $27 million dollar home in San Francisco with a wellness center, “cantilevered infinity pool”, and an underground garage with a “car turntable”
A $15.7 million, 950-acre ranch in Napa, with five homes and vineyards
Annie had been “unaware that her oldest brother {Sam} owned property in Hawaii until BI asked her about it” [BI23a]
The land was bought by an LLC owned by Sam’s cousin, Jennifer Serralta
The purchase of this property had not been previously reported
“In a March post on her personal blog, Serralta wrote that she stayed at a Kailua-Kona property owned by “a friend” while vacationing in Hawaii. Last year, Altman tweeted a photo of himself wakesurfing in Hawaii; the view of the Big Island in the background of the photo precisely matches the view from the Kailua-Kona compound.”
Note: Business Insider’s statement seems accurate; c.f. my analysis using Google Maps in [BI23a].
It seems Annie was trying to use EMDR to heal her PTSD, which, as she claims, resulted from having flashbacks to and stronger memories the abuse, e.g. sexual abuse from Sam, that she was subjected to during her childhood.
It seems her therapist rejected her as a client on the basis of her position as a sex worker.
In late 2021, Sam reaches out to Annie with “seemingly kind words” [AA23m] 1 year after full contact (or, equivalently, 1.5 years after the two family therapy sessions) [AA24k]. Annie writes, “We spoke on the phone three times, and through these conversations I began to suspect the offer was another attempt at control. It seemed I would never have direct ownership of the house. Also, given the nature of my PTSD flashbacks, the house felt like an unsafe place to actually heal my mind and body.” [AA23m] Thus, Annie refuses Sam’s offer.
Also (as it seems to me), during these phone calls, Annie tells Sam that she is doing sex work, even though she doesn’t want to (i.e. she is doing so out of desperation, to survive, while burdened with various illnesses that prevent her from doing a normal job.) Sam responds: “Good.” [BB24d]. (Though “A person close to Sam says that Sam remembers the conversation differently.” [BB24d].)
Annie has stated: “There were other strings attached they made it feel like an unsafe place to actually heal from the experiences I had with him.” [AA23g] “The offer was after a year and half no contact {with Sam}, and {I} had started speaking up {about Sam, and his abuse/misconduct} online. I had already started survival sex work. The offer was for the house to be connected with a lawyer, and the last time I had a Sam-lawyer connection I didn’t get to see my Dad’s will for a year.” [AA23h]
On November 13, 2021, Annie makes some posts (Tweets) to X (Twitter) -- [AA21a] and [AA21b] -- where she publicly states that she “experienced sexual, physical, emotional, verbal, financial, and technological abuse from my biological siblings, mostly Sam Altman and some from Jack Altman”, among other things --
One month later {~December 2021}, Annie’s “long term home was broken into” [AA24e], and her “two most valuable items were left untouched.” [AA24l]:
A picture Annie posted in [AA24e], i.e. relating to her house being broken into:
2023: Annie seems to think that Sam was hoping that Annie would die or commit suicide before she could do too much damage to Sam’ s reputation, carrying her knowledge to the grave. [AA23b, AA23e].
2023-present: Annie continues to speak out against Sam on social media, including through various posts on Twitter/X (c.f. the References, and key excerpts from them section of this post.)
~September 2023 (before September 25, 2023): Elizabeth Weil interviews & does fact-checking with both Sam Altman and Annie Altman, in person, prior to publishing Sam Altman is the Oppenheimer of Our Age.
Sam does not talk about Annie with Elizabeth Weil.
September 24, 2023: After speaking in-person with Elizabeth Weil, the day before Weil’s article is published, Sam reaches out to Annie via email, apologizing to Annie and asking for forgiveness about not sending money to Annie in the years prior, when Annie was in a desperate financial situation.
October 4, 2023: some of Annie’s X (Twitter) posts receive newfound attention / rediscovery on X (Twitter). One of the people who sees them first the first time is me.
October 5, 2023: Multiple people attempt to edit the Sam Altman Wikipedia page and add details about Annie’s allegations that Sam sexually abused her into the Personal Life section of the Sam Altman Wikipedia page—only for those edits to removed just minutes later.
Over the course of the following months, on the Talk page the Sam Altman article on Wikipedia, Wikipedia editors get into extensive, heated discussions about whether or not to include Annie’s claims on Sam’s Wikipedia page. (Ultimately, after much discussion, they finally do include Annie’s claims on Sam’s Wikipedia page.)
It seems various people repeatedly tried to edit Sam’s Wikipedia page to include details about Annie’s allegations that Sam sexually abused her, but that, within literal minutes of each edit being made, Wikipedia users—primarily Wikipedia user “Panamitsu”, among others—removed the edits.
It also seems that all information about what those edits actually were has also been removed.
That is—from what I can tell, usually, when someone makes an edit to a Wikipedia article, you can go into the Revision history page for that Wikipedia article, and see what edits were made.
But with these edits, the links you could normally click on to see the edit details have been removed—they’ve got strikethroughs (i.e. like this) applied to them, and you can’t click on them, and there’s a note that says, “edit summary removed” next to all of them:
Wikipedia user “Panamitsu” (primarily), along with the other Wikipedia users who repeatedly removed the details, seem to have provided the following explanations for their removals:
“twitter isn’t a reliable source for gossipsheet content.,, reverted”
“Take it to talk page, I don’t think it should be here, it seems like a WP:BLP violation. I can’t even verify if that is his siter”
{I think there is a typo here, i.e. I think “siter” was supposed to say “sister”}
“Protected “Sam Altman”: Violations of the biographies of living persons policy: WP:EXTRAORDINARYWP:BURDEN ([Edit=Require autoconfirmed or confirmed access] (expires 01:26, 16 October 2023 (UTC)) [Move=Require autoconfirmed or confirmed access] (expires 01:26, 16 October 2023 (UTC)))”
The version history of the Sam Altman Wikipedia indicates that that the Wikipedia users who made the removals wanted people to “Take it to {the} talk page”. That is, they instructed anyone who might want to add details about Annie’s allegations to the Sam Altman Wikipedia article to first discuss their intent to do so on the Talk page of the Sam Altman Wikipedia article.
It seems that, on 01:26 on October 6, 2023, Wikipedia user “EI C” “protected” the Sam Altman Wikipedia article:
To be clear: I don’t understand exactly what “Protected” means in this context. I don’t know what Wikipedia user “EI C” did to make the article “Protected.” (I’m not an expert in Wikipedia article revisions.) It seems that Wikipedia user “EI C” made it such that people couldn’t add details about Annie’s allegations unless they had “autoconfirmed or confirmed access”. (I have no clue what that means either.) It also seems that this status was set to expire 10 days from the date & time it was instated (i.e. expire on 01;26, 16 October 2023.)
October 9, 2023:
09:08 on Oct 9, 2023 -- Wikipedia user “Allbirdy” edits the Sam Altman Wikipedia article, adding details about Annie’s allegations:
Just 25 minutes later: 09:33 on Oct 9, 2023 -- Wikipedia user “Panamitsu”, once again, removes these edits:
November 20, 2023:
08:36 on Nov 20, 2023 -- Wikipedia user “Rei” edits the Sam Altman Wikipedia article, adding details about Annie’s allegations:
Just 14 minutes later: 08:50 on Nov 20, 2023-- Wikipedia user “Panamitsu”, once again, removes these edits:
09:05 on Nov 20, 2023: Wikipedia user “Rei” re-makes their edit with the details about Annie’s allegations, stating, “{My previous edit was} Very much NOT a BLP violation. Matches tone reqs, credits statements to specific individuals, cites secondary sources, etc. If you want to accuse a BLP violation, you need to cite the part of the BLP policy violated. Talk created.”
Over the next hour (primarily), i.e. 09:05-10:50 -- “Rei” argues back and forth with other Wikipeditor editors about including their edits. Ultimately, Rei’s edits are removed by Wikipedia editor “Isabelle Belato”, with a note that says “Protected “Sam Altman”: Edit warring / content dispute;WP:BLP issues. ([Edit=Require administrator access] (expires 10:30, 4 December 2023 (UTC)))”
May 23, 2024: Wikipedia user “Somewordswrittendown” adds details about Annie’s allegations of abuse, incorporating “guidelines across the various discussion pages that have opened up around this topic; namely, this doesn’t source from twitter (stupid rule that needs to be updated) and only includes direct quotes from noted publications.”
October 5, 2023 -- October, 6, 2023: Some posts on Hacker News regarding Annie’s claims that Sam sexually assaulted her at age 4 are repeatedly flagged and/or removed (according to some comments on Hacker News).
I also reply to a Tweet of Annie’s, explaining that I made this post on LessWrong, and asking Annie if she’d be willing to “confirm/deny the accuracy of my post”.
October 8, 2023: Annie Reposts my reply, confirming that the post is (generally) accurate, but noting that she needs some time to process.
October 15, 2023: Annie makes another Repost of my reply, stating that my post is accurate while also providing a few corrections and some additional information (which I appreciate, and have since included in this LessWrong post.)
November 22, 2023: Annie writes, “At one point recently a high school faculty member, from our same school {John Burroughs School}, spoke with me and attempted to convince me to break no contact.” [AA23m]
“Altman’s firing and swift reversal of fortune followed a pattern in his career, which began when he dropped out of Stanford University in 2005 and gained the reputation as a Silicon Valley visionary. Over the past two decades, Altman has lost the confidence of several top leaders in the three organizations he has directed. At every crisis point, Altman, 38 years old, not only rebounded but climbed to more powerful roles with the help of an expanding network of powerful allies.”
“A group of senior employees at Altman’s first startup, Loopt—a location-based social-media network started in the flip-phone era—twice urged board members to fire him as CEO over what they described as deceptive and chaotic behavior, said people familiar with the matter. But the board, with support from investors at venture-capital firm Sequoia, kept Altman until Loopt was sold in 2012.”
“In 2019, Altman was asked to resign from Y Combinator after partners alleged he had put personal projects, including OpenAI, ahead of his duties as president, said people familiar with the matter.”
“This fall, Altman also faced a crisis of trust at OpenAI, the company he navigated to the front of the artificial-intelligence field. In early October {2023}, OpenAI’s chief scientist {Ilya Sutskever} approached some fellow board members to recommend Altman be fired, citing roughly 20 examples of when he believed Altman misled OpenAI executives over the years. That set off weeks of closed-door talks, ending with Altman’s surprise ouster days before Thanksgiving.”
“This article is based on interviews with dozens of executives, engineers, current and former employees and friends of Altman’s, as well as investors.”
“A few years after {Loopt’s} launch, some Loopt executives voiced frustration with Altman’s management. There were complaints about Altman pursuing side projects, at one point diverting engineers to work on a gay dating app, which they felt came at the expense of the company’s main work.”
“Senior executives approached the board with concerns that Altman at times failed to tell the truth—sometimes about matters so insignificant one person described them as paper cuts. At one point, they threatened to leave the company if he wasn’t removed as CEO, according to people familiar with the matter. The board backed Altman.”
““If he imagines something to be true, it sort of becomes true in his head,” said Mark Jacobstein, co-founder of Jimini Health who served as Loopt’s chief operating officer. “That is an extraordinary trait for entrepreneurs who want to do super ambitious things. It may or may not lead one to stretch, and that can make people uncomfortable.””
“Altman doesn’t recall employee complaints beyond the normal annual CEO review process, according to people familiar with his thinking.”
“Michael Moritz, who led Sequoia, personally advised Altman. When Loopt struggled to find buyers, Moritz helped engineer an acquisition by another Sequoia-backed company, the financial technology firm Green Dot.”
“Altman turned Y Combinator into an investing powerhouse. While serving as the president, he kept his own venture-capital firm, Hydrazine, which he launched in 2012. He caused tensions after barring other partners at Y Combinator from running their own funds, including the current chief executive, Garry Tan, and Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian. Tan and Ohanian didn’t respond to requests for comment.”
“Altman also expanded Y Combinator through a nonprofit he created called YC Research, which served as an incubator for Altman’s own projects, including OpenAI. From its founding in 2015, YC Research operated without the involvement of the firm’s longtime partners, fueling their concern that Altman was straying too far from running the firm’s core business.”
“By early 2018, Altman was barely present at Y Combinator’s headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., spending more time at OpenAI, at the time a small research nonprofit, according to people familiar with the matter.”
“The increasing amount of time Altman spent at OpenAI riled longtime partners at Y Combinator, who began losing faith in him as a leader. The firm’s leaders asked him to resign, and he left as president in March 2019.”
“Graham said it was his wife’s doing. “If anyone ‘fired’ Sam, it was Jessica, not me,” he said. “But it would be wrong to use the word ‘fired’ because he agreed immediately.”
“Jessica Livingston said her husband was correct.”
“To smooth his exit, Altman proposed he move from president to chairman. He pre-emptively published a blog post on the firm’s website announcing the change. But the firm’s partnership had never agreed, and the announcement was later scrubbed from the post.”
“For years, even some of Altman’s closest associates—including Peter Thiel, Altman’s first backer for Hydrazine—didn’t know the circumstances behind Altman’s departure.”
“As the company grew, management complaints about Altman surfaced.”
“In early fall this year, Sutskever, also a board member, was upset because Altman had elevated another AI researcher, Jakub Pachocki, to director of research, according to people familiar with the matter.”
“Sutskever told his board colleagues that the episode reflected a long-running pattern of Altman’s tendency to pit employees against one another or promise resources and responsibilities to two different executives at the same time, yielding conflicts, according to people familiar with the matter.”
“Other board members already had concerns about Altman’s management. Tasha McCauley, an adjunct senior management scientist at Rand Corp., tried to cultivate relationships with employees as a board member. Past board members chatted regularly with OpenAI executives without informing Altman. Yet during the pandemic, Altman told McCauley he needed to be told if the board spoke to employees, a request that some on the board viewed as Altman limiting the board’s power, people familiar with the matter said.”
“Around the time Sutskever aired his complaints, the independent board members heard similar concerns from some senior OpenAI executives, people familiar with the discussions said. Some considered leaving the company over Altman’s leadership, the people said.”
“Altman also misled board members, leaving the impression with one board member that another wanted board member Helen Toner removed, even though it wasn’t true, according to people familiar with the matter, The Wall Street Journal reported.”
“Altman also misled board members, leaving the impression with one board member that another wanted board member Helen Toner removed, even though it wasn’t true, according to people familiar with the matter, The Wall Street Journal reported.”
The 5 episodes (“OpenAI Part 1″ through “OpenAI Part 5”) provide a history of Sam and his rise in the tech world. Also, episodes 3 and 4 feature interviews with Annie. It seems, from the 3rd episode, that the podcast hosts actually went to Hawaii and spent time with Annie in person, and she showed them some of the (many) places she’d lived during her years of housing instability on Hawaii. (c.f. OpenAI Part 3 later on in this Timeline.)
Note: in the link I provided, there’s a transcript. The transcript has this feature where it highlights the current word being spoken, with the idea being that you can “follow along” reading the transcript while you’re listening to the podcast. Unfortunately, the feature is broken.I think this is due to the inclusion of some ads/commercials at various points throughout the podcast, which create a mismatch between the transcript and the audio.) Specifically, the word highlighted in the transcript is usually a few minutes laterthan the actual audio.
In this episode, it seems the podcasts hosts went to Hawaii and spent time in-person with Annie. As I mentioned above, Annie showed them the (cheap/non-ideal) places she lived during her years of housing instability and financial insecurity in Hawaii.
I’ve included relevant excerpts from the episode transcript in the dropdown section here.
See the dropdown for details.
Ellen Huet (host of the podcast): “Today, we’re going to start on a drive in Hawaii.”
Annie Altman: “We’re on north Shore, going deeper into the jungle on the north shore, so we’re passing twin falls right now.
Ellen Huet: “I’m driving through the lush green forests of Maui. Annie Altman, Sam Altman’s little sister is sitting in the passenger seat. You heard from her briefly in the first episode.”
...
Ellen Huet: “We’re taking a tour of the different places Annie has moved around in the last couple of years, driving down dirt roads to look at cabins and houses hidden behind enormous tropical plants.”
..,
Ellen Huet: “For much of the past two years, Annie hasn’t been able to afford a stable place to live.”
Annie Altman: “The place you just passed is one of the places I stayed at longer-term in all of the houselessness...{I spent} two months on a newly-built, {with} no running water or no electricity, house, at the far end, back, of the property.”
Ellen Huet: “And I think she’s an important part of Sam’s story.”
Annie Altman: “And at the time I had nowhere to stay and no rent money, certainly no deposit money, and barely enough room, barely enough money for rent.”
Ellen Huet: “Recently, over the course of just a year, she moved twenty two times, and that’s on average about twice a month. Sometimes she has stayed places for a week at a time, or even just a night or two. Some of them have been illegal rentals without running water. She says she’s slept on floors and friends’ houses. She stayed with strangers when she didn’t have another option.”
...
Annie Altman: “The man who lived in the front house messaged me on Instagram, and I stayed in his kids’ room the week that they weren’t there, and then slept on the floor in the common room the week that the kids were there.
Annie Altman: “I was houseless. I didn’t have somewhere to go.”
Annie Altman: “I stayed in this cabin with the slanty roof right there for three months.”
{A podcast host}: “How many different places have you lived in that didn’t have running water?”
Annie: “Maybe five-ish? Five or six? I don’t know.”
Ellen Huet: “Meanwhile, thousands of miles away in San Francisco, her brother Sam was having a spectacular year in 2023. The success of ChatGPT had launched OpenAI into the stratosphere. Sam was named CEO of the Year by Time magazine. He spent months flying around the globe talking to world leaders about AI.”
...
Ellen Huet: “On stage, on podcasts and interviews, people kept turning to Sam for answers. They were asking him what our AI future would hold. In May of that year, he confidently suggested a future where no one is poor. It’s an idea he’s talked about for years, and the remarks show that his tune hasn’t changed despite growing renown and wealth.
Sam Altman: “One thing I think we all could agree on is that we just shouldn’t have poverty in the world.”
...
Ellen Huet: “It sounds wonderful, almost utopian. But Sam was saying on stage that everyone should have enough money, enough food, everyone should have a place to live, while his own sister was struggling with homelessness. I want to believe Sam’s promises about abundance, but Annie’s story complicates a lot of the things Sam has projected about the future.”
...
Ellen Huet: “Sam is a savvy guy. As his profile has gotten bigger after he helped build the world’s leading AI company, he has stopped saying things like AI will kill us all. Instead, he talks about how society will be profoundly changed, but overall it will be for the better. Since his newfound chat GPT fame, he has shifted toward presenting himself and by extension, open AI, as more middle of the road. Sam is allowed to change his views, but people have also so complain to me in private that Sam has a tendency to talk out of both sides of his mouth. He’s good at telling people what they want to hear in that moment, so it’s not surprising that if it’s advantageous for him to seem more moderate, that he would start to sound that way.”
I’ve included relevant excerpts from the episode transcript in the dropdown section here.
See the dropdown for details.
Ellen Huet: “What really strikes me is that Sam positions himself as the visionary behind this AI that might put us all out of work, and the visionary behind systems that will save us from that chaos. He’s offering fixes to the problems that his own technology will create. Imagine a future where Sam Altman’s company has invented AI so powerful that it upends the entire labor economy. We no longer work for money. Instead, we get monthly checks from Sam Altman’s income distribution system. I can imagine that his intentions might be good, and that he wants to make a difference here. But what Sam’s proposing is ending poverty through systems overseen by him, basically, and that’s asking us to put a huge amount of trust in him. Remember, Sam is really good at gaining power. He has a deep drive to be in charge. His company has made promises about adhering to certain principles and then moved away from them. It brings me back to this question we asked in episode one, what I think is the key question of this series. Should we trust this person?”
Ellen Huet: “Like we said earlier, there’s a part of Sam’s life that really complicates this image of him. It’s the story of his little sister Annie. She says she lives in poverty. Sometimes she struggles with homelessness. She says she survives by doing sex work.Sam is pitching this dream future in which universal basic income will protect everyone who needs it. That sounds lovely in theory, but when it’s held up next to Annie’s messy, everyday reality, that promise starts to sound a bit hollow. Housing insecurity has defined Annie’s life for the past few years. This is a complex and sensitive situation, so I wanted to hear from her myself.”
Annie Altman: “In my experience, it’s not only hard to do anything when you are housing insecure, it is impossible. I haven’t had a typical day in four years because of how much energy both physically like looking for places or doing things, or looking for jobs and emotionally goes into housing insecurity. It has been the single biggest energy output of my past year.”
Ellen Huet: “In person, Annie is upbeat and smiley. She has good suggestions for health food stores on Maui. She has the word love tattooed across her knuckles. She makes a podcast, Hello and Welcome to the Annie Altman Show All Humans or Human Podcast, and posts videos of her singing on YouTube.”
...
Ellen Huet: “Sometimes, I and to better understand her story, I want to rewind to her childhood. When we heard from Annie briefly in the first episode, she talked about Sam’s domineering attitude within their family, how he dictated they wouldn’t have Christmas trees and put himself in charge of how long each sibling could speak at their dad’s funeral. Their family has three boys. Sam’s the oldest, then Max, then Jack. Annie is the youngest, nine years younger than Sam and the only girl. Her brothers loved science, math, games, nerdy stuff. She was always the artistic, sensitive one. Even when they were children, she sometimes felt like the odd one out, and as they became adults, the bonds between the brothers tightened both personally and professionally. While Sam was running YC, Jack founded a software company that was funded by YC. Jack and Max also both worked with Sam, helping run his investment fund with money from Peter Teel. Then all three started another investment fund together in which they used Sam’s personal wealth. The three brothers lived together in San Francisco, brothers, coworkers, roommates, a tight, messy knot of family, business and money. Annie, on the other hand, was not part of the Altman family brand. With each new step in her life, she seemed to veer farther away from the path she felt was expected of her. She completed pre med requirements, but decided not to pursue that further. She did improv classes, stand up comedy, yoga, teacher training. She said her dad was supportive of this turn away from a more traditional path. Her mom, who was a physician, was less excited.”
Annie Altman: “My siblings and mother were very judgmental about the shift and also very “This is just a phase.” I was an am at total daddy’s girl. With my mother, there was closeness only when I was doing what she wanted me to do, which is a story {that} sadly, I feel like a lot of people can relate to.”
Ellen Huet: “Just a note. We reached out to Sam, his siblings, and his mom for comment in this episode. His mom, Connie Gibstine, responded with this statement:”
Connie Gibstine: “We love Annie and are very concerned about her well being. Over the years, we have offered her financial support and help and continue to offer it today. Navigating the balance between providing support without enabling self-destructive behavior for a family member with mental health struggles is extraordinarily difficult. We only want the best for Annie and hope everyone will treat her with compassion.”
Ellen Huet: “In 2018, Annie’s father died suddenly of a heart attack, and the grief hit her {Annie} hard. Meanwhile, she also started dealing with some chronic health issues, including tendonitis in her ankle that made it difficult to do work that required standing. She quit her job. She was still mourning her dad. She had gotten some life insurance money after he died, but when that ran out a year later, she still found herself in a desperate financial situation. In order to pay rent, she started selling her furniture. She says she asked her family directly for money to pay rent and cover groceries.”
Annie Altman: “I asked my mother for help and she said no, And then {I} asked Sam and he was told to say no because of her {Connie} wanting him to say no, and he’s a grown man in his thirties, {worth} millions of dollars.”
Ellen Huet: “Now, Sam and his family have given Annie money at times, but she says it always came with heavy conditions that made her nervous. At one point, Sam wanted her to get back on Zoloft, an antidepressant, which she had started as a teen but had stopped later on. She {Annie} forwarded me an email from Sam where he asked her to share her bank statements and to allow him and his mom to sit in on some of her therapy sessions in exchange for her rent and medical expenses being covered. She felt like it was his way of exerting leverage or power over her. Of course, Sam can spend his money as he pleases, but again, he’s on stage espousing the virtues of universal basic income—giving money away for free, unconditionally, -- and Annie says he didn’t do the same here for her. There were times when I’d gone back and forth about what to include from Annie’s story. It’s a very personal, messy family situation, and I’ll confess that on occasion I’ve doubted some unrelated things she’s told me. But also, I’ve looked through corroborating emails and documents. We drove to a lot of places Annie lived, and I met people she lived with. So in late 2019, when she asked for help and says she was told no, she turned to something she considered a last resort. To make money, she started sex work. She made an account on a sugar daddy dating website where people trade money for companionship and often sex.”
Annie: “I was just...I was in a desperate place. I mean...people who have been in a position like this ever know that when you’re in a place of selling furniture, you’re in a desperate position of “I’m out options.” This is a ‘plan Z’ I would not be doing this if plans ‘A’ through ‘I’ had worked out in any capacity.”
Ellen Huet: “The first thing she tried was video chatting with a middle-aged man. She flashed him on camera and he sent her money over Zelle. She posted videos on OnlyFans and PornHub. She also did in-person sex work for two years. She says she didn’t want to, but it was the work that she was able to fit into her unpredictable schedule of dealing with her health issues. Her lack of stable income, led to a long period of housing insecurity. At times, she lived with sex work clients, or even with strangers from the internet. Her sex work contributed to her precarious housing. She didn’t have pay stubs or regular income, which limited the kind of leases she could get. It felt like this interconnected web, exactly the kind of vicious cycle that something like universal basic income tries to break.”
Annie Altman: “If I had a security deposit in my bank account - {I} never would have lived with this man, not, not even a little bit of a chance, would I have lived with this man. There’s some unhealthy sex work experiences, and I’ve also had very traumatizing experiences from in-person work that would not have happened if I had secure housing. I’m still in and, have been so long in, survival mode that it really shifts everything. It really shifts everything. Times when it’s been really like...places...like staying just for a week and a half {somewhere} and then the floor for a week, and then someone’s place for a night, and then a floor for a week—in those places of really moving that much in a short period of time, there’s no—I had no energy for anything else. Really feeling a sense of helplessness and powerlessness that I have never experienced, ever.”
Ellen Huet: “It’s not a clean cut situation. In twenty twenty two, Sam offered to buy Annie a house, but she says it wasn’t going to be in her name, and the conditions made her uncomfortable.”
Annie Altman: “It became clear to me that it was not an offer for my house. It was an offer for a house of Sam’s—or a lawyer of his—that I would be allowed to live in.”
Ellen Huet: “She felt like it was a throwback to Sam’s attempts to get her on Zoloft and to peer into her bank statements, so she said no. I do want to pause on this because I know it may sound illogical. After all, it would have been a place to live. But from her point of view, Sam had exerted control over her throughout their lives, and this seemed like one more attempt to control her. During those conversations, she was clear with Sam about the hardships she had endured in the past couple of years.”
Annie Altman: “I told him over the series of those phone calls too, that I had started sex work, and distinctly remember when I first told him about doing sex work and he said, quote, ‘Good.’”
Ellen Huet: “Annie was stung, because she remembers that he didn’t ask anything more about it. Like she was sharing something that was painful for her and he was blowing past it.”
Annie Altman: “To hear your little sister tell you she’s doing something she doesn’t want to do related to sex, and for the response to be ‘Good.’ So I was like, ‘Oh, you’re glad that I’m starting to post on OnlyFans. It sounds ‘good’ to you because I’m supporting myself, even if I’m telling you I’m doing this as a plan Z because I don’t know what else to do.’”
Ellen Huet: “A person close to Sam says that Sam remembers the conversation differently. Annie and Sam are mostly estranged. After that conversation, she kept living in Hawaii, struggling in obscurity. Meanwhile, Sam was ascendant. He was doing world tours. {He was} CEO of the year {in Time Magazine.} He officially became a billionaire. Most of the world had no idea Annie Altman existed, let alone that she was depending on OnlyFans for survival. But last fall, New York Magazine published a profile of Sam, and the journalist, Elizabeth Weil, interviewed Annie. The article was the first time a lot of people found out Sam even had a sister, myself included.”
Annie Altman: “Some of the trippiest messages I got from reporters, when that article first came out, were reporters who have watched every interview Sam has ever done, saying ‘He’s never mentioned a sister.’”
Ellen Huet: “Annie worries that because she’s basically invisible in Sam’s public life life, especially compared to his tight relationship with his brothers, reporters won’t take her story seriously.”
Annie Altman: “That they will then question my validity, or {be like} ‘Oh, well, she’s crazy. Maybe...he’s just not talking about her because she’s so mentally unstable, and so now let’s recycle the ‘Annie’s crazy’ narrative and ‘This is why she can’t be trusted’, or ‘We should just ignore her.’”
Ellen Huet: “In the days leading up to the article coming out, New York Magazine reached out to Sam and his family and OpenAI for fact-checking and to confirm details. So Sam knew the story was going to mention Annie. And then the day before the article ran, something spurred Sam to make an unexpected move. He emailed Annie.”
Annie Altman: “And the night before it {the Elizabeth Weil article} came out was Yom Kippur --
Ellen Huet: “—the Jewish day of forgiveness—”
Annie Altman: “Sam emailed me, ‘no subject’ and in all lowercase, and said, ‘hi annie. in the spirit of it almost being yom kippur, i wanted to apologize and ask for forgiveness for something. i should have kept sending you money without conditions even though our family had concerns; i was in a tough position of wanting to let mom drive decisions as the parent and seeing how much stress you were causing her (and also agreeing it would be better for everyone if you were able to support yourself, and thinking that you needed medical help) and it being clear you just weren’t really able to function very well. still, i made the wrong call and should just have just kept supporting you; i sincerely apologize. i hope you find peace.’ There’s no mention of this article that’s coming out tomorrow, and there’s no mention of the fact checking that he just went through.”
Ellen Huet: “Annie felt that the timing of this email was really telling. That for all this time, while Annie was staying in the background, Sam didn’t feel any need to apologize. Then, just as she’s about to exert a little bit of power over him, by complicating his image, he reaches out, and invokes their shared Jewish heritage to ask for forgiveness. I asked Annie how she felt about Sam speaking publicly about universal basic income and ending poverty when he hasn’t done the same for her.”
Annie Altman: “It was a very big slap in the face. It feels embarrassing to be related to him. It’s beyond depressing and heartbreaking and disappointing that someone who I thought had a different moral compass, or who I thought would be there for me when I needed someone and was really sick, wasn’t...in the same way I’m gonna be grieving my dad for the rest of my life, I’m gonna be grieving Sam for the rest of my life. And the sadness of...of someone who saw me in a walking boot and didn’t say, ‘How can I help you.’ It’s why I use the term ‘sibling’ and not ‘brother.’”
Ellen Huet: “Even though Annie’s story is really complicated, I think it’s relevant to all of us. Because when Sam is going around talking about our AI future, he acknowledges that AI could take our jobs and upend society and money as we know it. And he says he’ll come up with a solution for us: universal basic income. But, when he’s faced with the messy reality of his own sister, suddenly it’s not so simple. In public, he is literally saying that there shouldn’t be poverty. {That} money will be given away to everyone. In private, when Annie asked for help, he didn’t come through for her in the way she needed.”
Have Sam or his other family members responded to these claims?
Sam himself has not directly responded, as far as I know.
However, I did see the following responses from his family. These are the only instances of Annie’s family members responding to Annie’s claims that I currently know of:
More of the context in which the quote was provided:
“Annie has moved more than 20 times in the past year. When she called me in mid-September, her housing was unstable yet again. She had $1,000 in her bank account.
Since 2020, she has been having flashbacks. She knows everybody takes the bits of their life and arranges them into narratives to make sense of their world.
As Annie tells her life story, Sam, their brothers, and her mother kept money her father left her from her.
As Annie tells her life story, she felt special and loved when, as a child, Sam read her bedtime stories. Now those memories feel like abuse.
The Altman family would like the world to know: “We love Annie and will continue our best efforts to support and protect her, as any family would.”
Annie is working on a one-woman show called the HumAnnie about how nobody really knows how to be a human. We’re all winging it.”
Ellen Huet (host of the podcast): “We reached out to Sam his siblings, and his mom for comment in this episode. His mom, Connie Gibstine, responded with this statement:”
Connie Gibstine: “We love Annie and are very concerned about her well being. Over the years, we have offered her financial support and help and continued to offer it today. Navigating the balance between providing support without enabling self destructive behavior for a family member with mental health struggles is extraordinarily difficult. We only want the best for Annie and hope everyone will treat her with compassion.”
Ellen Huet: “What really strikes me is that Sam positions himself as the visionary behind this AI that might put us all out of work, and the visionary behind systems that will save us from that chaos. He’s offering fixes to the problems that his own technology will create. Imagine a future where Sam Altman’s company has invented AI so powerful that it upends the entire labor economy. We no longer work for money. Instead, we get monthly checks from Sam Altman’s income distribution system. I can imagine that his intentions might be good, and that he wants to make a difference here. But what Sam’s proposing is ending poverty through systems overseen by him, basically, and that’s asking us to put a huge amount of trust in him. Remember, Sam is really good at gaining power. He has a deep drive to be in charge. His company has made promises about adhering to certain principles and then moved away from them. It brings me back to this question we asked in episode one, what I think is the key question of this series. Should we trust this person?”
Ellen Huet: “Like we said earlier, there’s a part of Sam’s life that really complicates this image of him. It’s the story of his little sister Annie. She says she lives in poverty. Sometimes she struggles with homelessness. She says she survives by doing sex work.Sam is pitching this dream future in which universal basic income will protect everyone who needs it. That sounds lovely in theory, but when it’s held up next to Annie’s messy, everyday reality, that promise starts to sound a bit hollow. Housing insecurity has defined Annie’s life for the past few years. This is a complex and sensitive situation, so I wanted to hear from her myself.”
Annie Altman: “In my experience, it’s not only hard to do anything when you are housing insecure, it is impossible. I haven’t had a typical day in four years because of how much energy both physically like looking for places or doing things, or looking for jobs and emotionally goes into housing insecurity. It has been the single biggest energy output of my past year.”
Ellen Huet: “In person, Annie is upbeat and smiley. She has good suggestions for health food stores on Maui. She has the word love tattooed across her knuckles. She makes a podcast, Hello and Welcome to the Annie Altman Show All Humans or Human Podcast, and posts videos of her singing on YouTube.”
...
Ellen Huet: “Sometimes, I and to better understand her story, I want to rewind to her childhood. When we heard from Annie briefly in the first episode, she talked about Sam’s domineering attitude within their family, how he dictated they wouldn’t have Christmas trees and put himself in charge of how long each sibling could speak at their dad’s funeral. Their family has three boys. Sam’s the oldest, then Max, then Jack. Annie is the youngest, nine years younger than Sam and the only girl. Her brothers loved science, math, games, nerdy stuff. She was always the artistic, sensitive one. Even when they were children, she sometimes felt like the odd one out, and as they became adults, the bonds between the brothers tightened both personally and professionally. While Sam was running YC, Jack founded a software company that was funded by YC. Jack and Max also both worked with Sam, helping run his investment fund with money from Peter Teel. Then all three started another investment fund together in which they used Sam’s personal wealth. The three brothers lived together in San Francisco, brothers, coworkers, roommates, a tight, messy knot of family, business and money. Annie, on the other hand, was not part of the Altman family brand. With each new step in her life, she seemed to veer farther away from the path she felt was expected of her. She completed pre med requirements, but decided not to pursue that further. She did improv classes, stand up comedy, yoga, teacher training. She said her dad was supportive of this turn away from a more traditional path. Her mom, who was a physician, was less excited.”
Annie Altman: “My siblings and mother were very judgmental about the shift and also very “This is just a phase.” I was an am at total daddy’s girl. With my mother, there was closeness only when I was doing what she wanted me to do, which is a story {that} sadly, I feel like a lot of people can relate to.”
Ellen Huet: “Just a note. We reached out to Sam, his siblings, and his mom for comment in this episode. His mom, Connie Gibstine, responded with this statement:”
Connie Gibstine: “We love Annie and are very concerned about her well being. Over the years, we have offered her financial support and help and continue to offer it today. Navigating the balance between providing support without enabling self-destructive behavior for a family member with mental health struggles is extraordinarily difficult. We only want the best for Annie and hope everyone will treat her with compassion.”
Ellen Huet: “In 2018, Annie’s father died suddenly of a heart attack, and the grief hit her {Annie} hard. Meanwhile, she also started dealing with some chronic health issues, including tendonitis in her ankle that made it difficult to do work that required standing. She quit her job. She was still mourning her dad. She had gotten some life insurance money after he died, but when that ran out a year later, she still found herself in a desperate financial situation. In order to pay rent, she started selling her furniture. She says she asked her family directly for money to pay rent and cover groceries.”
Annie Altman: “I asked my mother for help and she said no, And then {I} asked Sam and he was told to say no because of her {Connie} wanting him to say no, and he’s a grown man in his thirties, {worth} millions of dollars.”
Ellen Huet: “Now, Sam and his family have given Annie money at times, but she says it always came with heavy conditions that made her nervous. At one point, Sam wanted her to get back on Zoloft, an antidepressant, which she had started as a teen but had stopped later on. She {Annie} forwarded me an email from Sam where he asked her to share her bank statements and to allow him and his mom to sit in on some of her therapy sessions in exchange for her rent and medical expenses being covered. She felt like it was his way of exerting leverage or power over her. Of course, Sam can spend his money as he pleases, but again, he’s on stage espousing the virtues of universal basic income—giving money away for free, unconditionally, -- and Annie says he didn’t do the same here for her. There were times when I’d gone back and forth about what to include from Annie’s story. It’s a very personal, messy family situation, and I’ll confess that on occasion I’ve doubted some unrelated things she’s told me. But also, I’ve looked through corroborating emails and documents. We drove to a lot of places Annie lived, and I met people she lived with. So in late 2019, when she asked for help and says she was told no, she turned to something she considered a last resort. To make money, she started sex work. She made an account on a sugar daddy dating website where people trade money for companionship and often sex.”
Annie: “I was just...I was in a desperate place. I mean...people who have been in a position like this ever know that when you’re in a place of selling furniture, you’re in a desperate position of “I’m out options.” This is a ‘plan Z’ I would not be doing this if plans ‘A’ through ‘I’ had worked out in any capacity.”
Ellen Huet: “The first thing she tried was video chatting with a middle-aged man. She flashed him on camera and he sent her money over Zelle. She posted videos on OnlyFans and PornHub. She also did in-person sex work for two years. She says she didn’t want to, but it was the work that she was able to fit into her unpredictable schedule of dealing with her health issues. Her lack of stable income, led to a long period of housing insecurity. At times, she lived with sex work clients, or even with strangers from the internet. Her sex work contributed to her precarious housing. She didn’t have pay stubs or regular income, which limited the kind of leases she could get. It felt like this interconnected web, exactly the kind of vicious cycle that something like universal basic income tries to break.”
Annie Altman: “If I had a security deposit in my bank account - {I} never would have lived with this man, not, not even a little bit of a chance, would I have lived with this man. There’s some unhealthy sex work experiences, and I’ve also had very traumatizing experiences from in-person work that would not have happened if I had secure housing. I’m still in and, have been so long in, survival mode that it really shifts everything. It really shifts everything. Times when it’s been really like...places...like staying just for a week and a half {somewhere} and then the floor for a week, and then someone’s place for a night, and then a floor for a week—in those places of really moving that much in a short period of time, there’s no—I had no energy for anything else. Really feeling a sense of helplessness and powerlessness that I have never experienced, ever.”
Ellen Huet: “It’s not a clean cut situation. In twenty twenty two, Sam offered to buy Annie a house, but she says it wasn’t going to be in her name, and the conditions made her uncomfortable.”
Annie Altman: “It became clear to me that it was not an offer for my house. It was an offer for a house of Sam’s—or a lawyer of his—that I would be allowed to live in.”
Ellen Huet: “She felt like it was a throwback to Sam’s attempts to get her on Zoloft and to peer into her bank statements, so she said no. I do want to pause on this because I know it may sound illogical. After all, it would have been a place to live. But from her point of view, Sam had exerted control over her throughout their lives, and this seemed like one more attempt to control her. During those conversations, she was clear with Sam about the hardships she had endured in the past couple of years.”
Annie Altman: “I told him over the series of those phone calls too, that I had started sex work, and distinctly remember when I first told him about doing sex work and he said, quote, ‘Good.’”
Ellen Huet: “Annie was stung, because she remembers that he didn’t ask anything more about it. Like she was sharing something that was painful for her and he was blowing past it.”
Annie Altman: “To hear your little sister tell you she’s doing something she doesn’t want to do related to sex, and for the response to be ‘Good.’ So I was like, ‘Oh, you’re glad that I’m starting to post on OnlyFans. It sounds ‘good’ to you because I’m supporting myself, even if I’m telling you I’m doing this as a plan Z because I don’t know what else to do.’”
Ellen Huet: “A person close to Sam says that Sam remembers the conversation differently. Annie and Sam are mostly estranged. After that conversation, she kept living in Hawaii, struggling in obscurity. Meanwhile, Sam was ascendant. He was doing world tours. {He was} CEO of the year {in Time Magazine.} He officially became a billionaire. Most of the world had no idea Annie Altman existed, let alone that she was depending on OnlyFans for survival. But last fall, New York Magazine published a profile of Sam, and the journalist, Elizabeth Weil, interviewed Annie. The article was the first time a lot of people found out Sam even had a sister, myself included.”
Annie Altman: “Some of the trippiest messages I got from reporters, when that article first came out, were reporters who have watched every interview Sam has ever done, saying ‘He’s never mentioned a sister.’”
Ellen Huet: “Annie worries that because she’s basically invisible in Sam’s public life life, especially compared to his tight relationship with his brothers, reporters won’t take her story seriously.”
Annie Altman: “That they will then question my validity, or {be like} ‘Oh, well, she’s crazy. Maybe...he’s just not talking about her because she’s so mentally unstable, and so now let’s recycle the ‘Annie’s crazy’ narrative and ‘This is why she can’t be trusted’, or ‘We should just ignore her.’”
Ellen Huet: “In the days leading up to the article coming out, New York Magazine reached out to Sam and his family and OpenAI for fact-checking and to confirm details. So Sam knew the story was going to mention Annie. And then the day before the article ran, something spurred Sam to make an unexpected move. He emailed Annie.”
Annie Altman: “And the night before it {the Elizabeth Weil article} came out was Yom Kippur --
Ellen Huet: “—the Jewish day of forgiveness—”
Annie Altman: “Sam emailed me, ‘no subject’ and in all lowercase, and said, ‘hi annie. in the spirit of it almost being yom kippur, i wanted to apologize and ask for forgiveness for something. i should have kept sending you money without conditions even though our family had concerns; i was in a tough position of wanting to let mom drive decisions as the parent and seeing how much stress you were causing her (and also agreeing it would be better for everyone if you were able to support yourself, and thinking that you needed medical help) and it being clear you just weren’t really able to function very well. still, i made the wrong call and should just have just kept supporting you; i sincerely apologize. i hope you find peace.’ There’s no mention of this article that’s coming out tomorrow, and there’s no mention of the fact checking that he just went through.”
Ellen Huet: “Annie felt that the timing of this email was really telling. That for all this time, while Annie was staying in the background, Sam didn’t feel any need to apologize. Then, just as she’s about to exert a little bit of power over him, by complicating his image, he reaches out, and invokes their shared Jewish heritage to ask for forgiveness. I asked Annie how she felt about Sam speaking publicly about universal basic income and ending poverty when he hasn’t done the same for her.”
Annie Altman: “It was a very big slap in the face. It feels embarrassing to be related to him. It’s beyond depressing and heartbreaking and disappointing that someone who I thought had a different moral compass, or who I thought would be there for me when I needed someone and was really sick, wasn’t...in the same way I’m gonna be grieving my dad for the rest of my life, I’m gonna be grieving Sam for the rest of my life. And the sadness of...of someone who saw me in a walking boot and didn’t say, ‘How can I help you.’ It’s why I use the term ‘sibling’ and not ‘brother.’”
Ellen Huet: “Even though Annie’s story is really complicated, I think it’s relevant to all of us. Because when Sam is going around talking about our AI future, he acknowledges that AI could take our jobs and upend society and money as we know it. And he says he’ll come up with a solution for us: universal basic income. But, when he’s faced with the messy reality of his own sister, suddenly it’s not so simple. In public, he is literally saying that there shouldn’t be poverty. {That} money will be given away to everyone. In private, when Annie asked for help, he didn’t come through for her in the way she needed.”
My Perspective
Opening Comments
This post began when I stumbled upon a repost on X of a post from Annie Altman in which she claimed that her brother, Sam Altman, sexually assaulted/abused her as a child (she was 4, he was 13), and that she has endured various other forms of abuse from him throughout her life. As it turns out, Annie has made a lot of very serious claims about Sam Altman.
I believe there is a very high probability that Annie Altman is who she claims to be—the sister of Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI. I believe this because:
Sam Altman posted a link on Twitter in 2018 to Annie’s YouTube channel (“Go check out my sister on Youtube!”)
Annie did an episode for her podcast featuring her brothers Sam Altman, Jack Altman, and Max Altman in 2018.
There are old newspaper reports in various places around the Internet listing Annie as a sibling of Sam, Jack, and Max Altman in, for example, obituary-type webpages related to the death and funeral of their father, Jerry Altman.
Picture is taken from [EW23a]. In the picture on the left, you see Annie Altman (front left), Sam Altman (front right), and then Jack and Sam Altman in the back (not sure who is who.)
I believe there is a high probability that Sam knows of the claims that Annie has made about him. I believe this because:
Sam shared a link to Annie’s Youtube channel in 2018. From this, I infer he is aware of her other social media profiles, where she has made her claims about Sam.
Sam and Annie both personally interviewed Elizabeth Weil for her September 2023 nymag article. The article was published, and I infer that Sam, having consented to be interviewed for the article, knows that the article exists and has read it.
Annie Altman has been posting consistently about being abused by Sam Altman (and Jack Altman, to a lesser extent) for about 4 years (~2019-present) across multiple social media platforms. Annie is largely self-consistent with the claims she makes over time.
In my view, Annie’s claims have been paid little attention, considering the power and notoriety of the person about whom she is making them—Sam Altman—and the seriousness of the claims she has been making. Besides Elizabeth Weil’s nymag article, there has been virtually zero (mainstream) media coverage of the extremely serious claims that Annie has consistently made many, many times against Sam Altman over the past 4 years.
How to interpret these claims?
Annie has been making these claims for a long time, and has been self-consistent in the way she has been making them, from what I can tell.
However, Annie has not yet provided what I would consider direct / indisputable proof that her claims are true. Thus, rationally, I must consider Sam Altman innocent.
However, this is not to say that think Annie’s claims are entirely false or implausible. Rather, I simply do not know whether Annie’s claims are true or false.
Given the degree to which Annie has pursued these claims, I think one of the following is likely:
The severe mental / psychological problems which Annie is dealing with have unfortunately caused her to misunderstand, misrepresent, disconnect (to some degree from), or selectively-filter reality into an incomplete understanding.
Or, relatedly, perhaps some of the (less serious) things Annie has claimed (e.g. that she had problems with her phone service, had low engagement / potential shadowbanning on some of her social media accounts) did indeed occur, but she overextrapolated to a larger narrative behind these events that is innaccurate.
Annie is indeed telling the truth, in whole or in part.
I don’t know which is true. Both are certainly plausible explanations.
Things I find Questionable/Unexplained
Annie claims her grandmother saw {Annie’s brothers?} playing “dwarf tossing” with Annie’s baby body, and condemned it. Did Annie’s grandmother ever tell Jerry about this? Did Jerry or Connie ever witness this behavior? If so, how did they respond to it?
At what age did Sam develop vocal fry? Was the onset gradual, or sudden? Was it precipitated by a traumatic event that Sam experienced?
If Sam molested Annie, what caused this highly abnormal behavior? Was it genetic factors, e.g. those encoding psychopathy, anti-social disorder, or related traits? Or might it have been learned behavior? Or was it perhaps downstream of a traumatic experience that Sam himself went through?
If Connie did indeed tell Annie to keep quiet about the sexual abuse she experienced from Sam—why? Such a response is not normal. Why exactly did Connie not want Annie to speak about this? What motives did she have for having Annie not tell other people about getting molested by Sam?
Annie claims that, around ~2016-2018, before he died, Jerry was working overtime, commuting between St. Louis and Kansas city, with a heart condition, because he needed the money. But I am a bit confused—Jerry was a lawyer, and Connie was a dermatologist. Both of those professions pay relatively well. Both Jack and Annie attended John Burroughs School, a private school (for grades 7-12) that currently charges students a staggering $36,300 per year in tuition. Though I can imagine ways in which it could be possible, I still wonder why exactly Jerry didn’t have enough money to retire, and why Jerry needed to work overtime for money all the way up until he died at age 67.
Jerry sent Annie a text message in January 2018, part of which read “I don’t just support your lifestyle now or your physical and emotional endeavors now; I support your life. I will always support your life. These are aspects of your life, so I support those too.” What was the other part of this text message? What prompted Jerry to say this to Annie?
Annie has noted that Connie and her brothers were not as supportive of her career transition (away from a pre-med track and into yoga and more creative & artistic pursuits) after she graduated college, though Jerry was supportive. Is this related?
Jerry had a known heart condition. Why was he rowing on Creve Coeur Lake just before he died at age 67? Wouldn’t he have known that this would have put him at risk for heart-related problems, e.g. a heart attack?
Did Jerry intentionally attempt to give himself a heart attack? Would Jerry have had any motives for killing himself?
How much did Jerry Altman know? Did he know anything?
Jerry was in the same household with Sam, Jack, Max, and Connie for many years. I think it’s unlikely that he would have been completely ignorant of, at minimum, the various mental health issues that Annie experienced beginning in early childhood.
Some specific examples:
- Annie told Elizabeth Weil that she was thinking of suicide by age 5, and getting up in the middle of the night needing to take baths to calm her anxiety. Was 5-year-old Annie able to fill up the bath & take a bath unassisted? Or was there a family member who would help her? If so—who was that family member? Did Jerry ever see this happen?
- On May 28, 2018 (3 years before Annie publicly acused Sam of molesting her), Annie wrote that her and Jerry were “always very close, talking about all the feels, all the music, and all the athletic activities.” This seems especially notable to me. In light of this, I think it’s extremely likely that Jerry was well-aware of Annie’s various mental health problems. Additionally—note that Annie said that her and Jerry were “always” very close. Hmm. It seems Annie told Elizabeth Weil that, at age 5, she began waking up in the middle of the night, needing to take baths to calm her anxiety [EW23a], and then by age 6, she was thinking about suicide, even though she didn’t know the word. From [AA19c], it seems that Annie was about 7 when she began to criticize her appearance. If Jerry and Annie were “always” close, then it seems pretty likely to me that Jerry would have known about some of this. Additionally, Jerry likely witnessed his son Jack being a “tired” kid, falling asleep face-first in his mac-and-cheese at dinner. So, more questions: was Jerry, a lawyer, ever suspicious of the abnormal behavior he observed in two of his children (Jack, Annie)? Did he ever suspect that something was awry? Did he ever suspect anything of his oldest child, Sam? Did he ever witness abusive behavior from Sam?
As I stated earlier in the timeline—I find it hard to reconcile the different stories Annie and Sam tell about their Dad’s death?I’ll copy-paste what I wrote above in the timeline here, regarding my confusion:
Note: In my opinion, Annie and Sam tell stories about their dad’s death that, to me, seem rather different and hard to reconcile --
Annie says:
{Jerry was} “working overtime, with known heart conditions. The dream he expressed to retire in Costa Rica was never fulfilled by his millionaire son, who could have retired our father that he claimed to love.” [AA24c]
“What would have been our last family trip, I chose not to go for various reasons. I asked our Dad to be given a check for whatever would have been spent on my fancy plane ticket and accommodations. Dad didn’t ever tell me about getting money from Sam, and got quiet about his Costa Rica dream” [AA24d]
“I asked for money and resources to be given to our Dad numerous times before he died.” [AA23q]
“”One time I found a $500k watch at my oldest siblings’ place {Sam’s place}, casually in an open kitchen cabinet. Another sibling told me how much the watch was, and then got bullied for disclosing to me. I asked why our 60-something Dad (with heart conditions) was making rent and car payments. Surely retiring the father you claimed closeness with was more valuable than a watch???????? If our Dad had his needs taken care of, I would have supported multiple fancy watches” [AA24m]
It seems that, as of May 23, 2018, Sam also owned a ~$100K Philippe Patek Perpetual Calendar Ref. 1526 watch, which he posted a picture of to Reddit (on May 23, 2023):
The picture of the watch is not currently shown in the Reddit post. I found a link to it in the post’s source code (using Inspect Element):
I also found the date & time of the post’s creation in its source code:
(Note: as I noted on Twitter, I originally got this date wrong, accidentally mistaking the date and time at which a comment on the post was made for the date and time at which the post itself was made. Sorry about that.)
Close-up of the watch Sam wore while testifying to Congress about AI.
A side-by-side comparison (which I’ve color-annotated) of the watch Sam was wearing (left) with a clearer picture of a Patek Philippe, Perpetual Calendar, Ref. 1526 (right; image source: here). You can make out the distinctive “moonphase window” [SW22a] (annotated in green, where I’ve traced segments along the boundary of the moonphase window itself in red), calendar info with the day and month (annotated in orange), the pure 18k yellow gold [SW22a] crown (annotated in blue), along with three of the watch’s golden numerals: 12 (at the top of the dial just above the calendar info, annotated in grey), 2 (annotated in light/aqua blue), and 4 (annotated in pink).
Sam says:
(32:28-33:49) “AGI and my family are the two main things I care about, so losing one of those is like...so yeah I mean it was just like unbelievably painful. The only comparable set of life experience that I had, and that one was of course much worse, was when my dad died. And that was like a very sudden thing. But the sense of like confusion and loss...in that case, I felt like I had a little bit of time to just like feel it all. But then there was so much to do. Like it was like so unexpected that I had to pick up the pieces of his life for a little while. And it wasn’t until, like, a week after that I really got a moment to just, like, catch my breath and be like, holy shit, like, I can’t believe this happened. So yeah, that was much worse.” [SA23a]
If Sam did indeed say this, I am a bit confused, as it seems a bit inconsistent to me that Sam identified Annie’s Youtube channel as “aligning with his businesses”, yet identified the podcast that he recorded with Annie as “not aligning with his businesses.” The reason I state that this seems inconsistent is because I don’t see what exactly what it was about Annie’s podcast that made it “not align” with Sam’s businesses given that Annie’s Youtube channel “did align.”
In the legal (probate) case (case number: 18SL-PR01960) relating to Jerry’s Will and Estate had (opened 06/12/2018), a “Proof of Mailing” was submitted on 07/09/2018.
In my (amateur) understanding, this means that Annie should have received a notice in the mail from the court clerk notifying her that her mother (Connie) had been appointed as the legal representative for the legal (probate) case regarding Jerry’s will and estate.
In light of this, I’m surprised that Annie, one of her father Jerry’s legal heirs, only met Pete for the first time around 09/22/2019 (see the email that Sam Altman sent to Pete Palumbo and Annie Altman the Timeline above), so long after her father’s death. Why was it that Sam both knew Pete before Annie did? Furthermore, Pete was working attorney for as Connie (the personal representative) as of 06/12/2018. Thus, at minimum, Connie knew Pete for over 1 year and 3 months before Sam sent the email instructing Pete to “meet” Annie on 09/22/2019. Why did Connie know Pete for so long, but (as it seems to me) never introduce Annie to him/tell Annie about him? Annie was an heir of Jerry’s just like Sam was. Why was Sam in contact with Pete before Annie was? Why was Sam the one making the introduction? Shouldn’t Pete have reached out to Annie himself, given that she was one of Jerry’s legal heirs?
Annie notes that a passport was stolen from her mail around the time she started her podcast. The first episode of Annie’s podcast came out on 08/14/2018. Hmm. Was Annie’s passport the only thing stolen from Annie’s mail around that time, or were other items stolen as well? Was the legally-required information regarding the legal (probate) case relating to Jerry’s death/Will/Estate indeed mailed to Annie as legally required, only for it to be stolen out of Annie’s mail? Who might have had a motive to steal such a thing from Annie’s mail?
Why was the judge for the legal (probate) case regarding Jerry’s Will and Estate reassigned twice (for a total of three different judges), within the span of 18 days?
Annie references a variety of things in [AA24a] Email about my Dad’s Trust (which is addressed to Annie’s “mother’s laywer” [AA24a], which I think is Pete Palumbo), including things that her short-term lawyer mentioned, that I don’t fully understand: -- something related to Hydrazine? -- something related to “a fund of my siblings’, and one of my Dad’s buildings with my-Dad’s-old-boss” [AA24a]? -- divisions of {Jerry’s Trust, which was established per his Will}? -- delayment of the funding of Jerry’s Trust? -- Jerry’s Trust now being funded, even though Pete Palumbo previously said it couldn’t be funded? -- why did Annie only learn that she could “make an as of the Trust with a monthly budget” [AA24a] after Annie’s short-term lawyer talked to Pete Palumbo? -- why was Anie not contacted about “the potential to request a non-prejudicial lump sum in accordance with my wishes” [AA24a]? -- Annie writes, “The Trust makes it clear that my Dad’s wish was for me to have been supported in tese six years since his death. In the absence of the support intended for me in my Dad’s Trust, I’ve experienced two and a half years of houseless and homelessness and daily PTSD flashbacks, and I’ve had to resort to survival sex work to support myself financially while still navigating physical illnesses.” [AA24a]. Why was the fufillment of Jerry’s wishes collectively blocked by Sam Altman, Connie Gibstine, and Pete Palumbo?
Why has it taken over 6 years for Jerry’s estate to be administered? Why has Pete Palumbo repeatedly filed for extensions?
I thought that Jerry was working overtime up until his death until he died. But his personal property was valued at $727,107.49 less than 5 months after his death (and is now valued at over 1 million dollars.) This should have been enough money for Jerry to retire on. So why was Jerry still working?
Also—what is this “personal property” of Jerry’s? Where did it come from?
Annie has been speaking out about Sam for roughly 3 years now. In 2021, she made her claims quite clear on her X account. I am confused as to why there has been basically 0 coverage of her claims in the media? In general, why is Annie so absent in anything related to Sam Altman on the Internet, especially considering the nature of her relationship with Sam?
The sole exception here, of course, is Elizabeth Weil’s nymag article, but even this article doesn’t directly state the entirety of the claims that Annie has made. Instead, it kind of vaguely addresses them, using somewhat inspecific phrasing like “Now those memories feel like abuse”, or “Since 2020, she has been having flashbacks” that don’t quite capture the gravity of what Annie has been claiming.
Why, as some commenters on Hacker News claim, has a post regarding Annie’s claims that Sam sexually assaulted her at age 4 been repeatedly removed?
Sam returned to his high school, John Burroughs School (JBS), on October 14, 2023. On November 22, 2023, Annie wrote “At one point recently a high school faculty member, from our same school {John Burroughs School}, spoke with me and attempted to convince me to break no contact.” Did Sam return to JBS on October 14, 2023 so he could speak with a faculty member who knew both him and Annie and convince them to reach out to Annie to try to get him to break no contact?
Some Twitter post’s of Annie’s were rediscovered around October 4, 2023. I published (the first version of) this post on October 7, 2023. Did these factors motivate Sam’s return to JBS, and his attempts to get Anine to break no contact using a JBS faculty member as a middleman?
If Sam did use a JBS faculty member as a middleman to try to get Annie to start talking to him again, who was that faculty member? Was there a reason in particular that Sam chose that faculty member? What does that faculty member know about Sam? What does that faculty member know about Annie?
What exactly is the nature of Sam’s relationship to JBS, and specific members of its faculty? Why exactly has Sam returned to JBS numerous times? Is there a member of the JBS faculty who knows something important about Sam and/or Annie?
Anticipating and Responding to Potential Objections
I initially hesitated to make this post, because I was initially skeptical of Annie’s claims. However, I changed my mind—I think there is a nonzero probability that Annie is telling the truth, in whole or in part, and thus believe her claims ought to receive greater attention and further investigation.
Assuming that my personal understanding of Annie’s story, as presented above, is correct, Annie’s behavior potentially makes sense.
So—assuming my understanding is correct, I provide the following responses to (potential) objections regarding (the validity of) Annie’s claims:
My response: I do think this is a reasonable objection. However, I think this behavior could be plausible in light of the timeline of Annie’s life:
A 13-year-old Sam sexually assaults a 4-year-old Annie.
As Annie grows older, she does not explicitly remember this event (until 2020), but experiences a multitude of severe psychological and mental traumas and illnesses stemming from this early sexual abuse (see above.)
When she begins to remember this event in 2020, it takes a severe toll on her (and she had already been dealing with many mental health issues since the age of 4 even without explicitly remembering Sam’s sexual assault of her (as the source of her psychological maladies)), and weakens her ability to financially support herself.
Objection 2: “Annie hosted a podcast in 2018 with her brothers (Sam, Jack, and Max), but seems to have been unhappy that her brothers, particularly Sam, refused her request to share (the link to) her podcast (e.g. on Twitter.) This seems to potentially be part of a pattern of behavior wherein Annie tries to exploit the status of her brothers for her own gain.”
My response: I do think that this objection holds merit. In her nymag article, Elizabeth Weil writes, “Among her various art projects, Annie makes a podcast called All Humans Are Human. The first Thanksgiving after their father’s death, all the brothers agreed to record an episode with her. Annie wanted to talk on air about the psychological phenomenon of projection: what we put on other people. The brothers steered the conversation into the idea of feedback — specifically, how to give feedback at work. After she posted the show online, Annie hoped her siblings, particularly Sam, would share it. He’d contributed to their brothers’ careers. Jack’s company, Lattice, had been through YC. “I was like, ‘You could just tweet the link. That would help. You don’t want to share your sister’s podcast that you came on?’” He did not. “Jack and Sam said it didn’t align with their businesses.”” I find this account to be plausible, yet do not think it entirely dispels the objection.
Objection 3: “It seems Annie has been dealing with a variety of severe mental and psychological ailments throughout her life. She also seems to smoke/drink occasionally. It may well be that these claims are borne purely out these sorts of ailments of hers (or are of some other untrustworthy origin).”
My response: I think this is a valid concern to raise. As with much of the information presented here, I would be interested in hearing more from Annie.
Objection 4: “While Annie’s claims are concerning, and her online activity and presence across a variety of media platforms does potentially support her claims, Annie has provided no direct evidence to corroborate her claims. We ought to hold Sam Altman innocent until proven guilty.”
My response: I think this is a valid position. I actually agree with it. Hopefully, as a result of this post, we potentially receive a more detailed account or perspective on this matter from Annie, Sam, or others close to this matter (e.g. Jack Altman, Max Altman, etc.)
Responding to Objections/Comments I’ve Seen From Others
It’s been some time since I originally made my post, and I’ve seen a lot of comments, objections, and feedback from others. I”ll try to respond to some here.
I will provide a counterargument to each point that Kat Woods made in these Tweets. Before I do so, a few notes:
In my opinion, Kat Woods has not provided the key facts. Rather, she has provided a highly-filtered subset of the full set of facts/the full story.
However—I don’t want to unfairly villianize Kat. This story is, as one can clearly sees with the length of this LessWrong, a long story. There is a lot of information to process. I understand that it may be easy to miss key details.
So—my point-by-point response:
Kat Woods: “She only started accusing Sam after she wanted money and didn’t get it. She disputed the inheritance from a trust fund she felt she was owed after her father died. She blamed her family and started publicly attacking them, including Sam.”
“Wanted money and didn’t get it” --
this is a a misleading characterization. Annie’s dad left money to her, but then Connie (in communication with Sam, Jack, Max) overrode Jerry’s wishes and blocked Annie from receiving the money, right after Annie quit her job due to a variety of health issues that had cropped up for her that made it hard to work. Annie had told Connie (and, iiuc, Sam, Jack, and Max) before quitting her job that she was going to quit her job with the expectation that she would be receiving the money that Jerry had left to her, with the expectation being that this money would cover Annie’s financial needs while she was temporarily unemployed. Connie then blocked Annie from receiving this money only after Annie had already quit her job. Connie knew this was going to happen. So, of course Annie “wanted” the money:
She was supposed to get the money—Jerry had wanted her to have it
She was in a desperate financial situation
She had told Connie (and Sam, Jack, Max) that she expected that she’d receive the money before she quit her job, and then they withheld it from only after she had already quit her job, putting Annie in a precarious financial position in a way she had not at all been expecting.
“after she wanted money and didn’t get it” --
this is a misleading characterization. As far as I know, Annie hadn’t began directly speaking out against her relatives (Sam, Max, Jack, and Connie) on social media until she made these 3 Tweets on November 13, 2021. This was roughly two years after Connie, Sam, Max, and Jack blocked Annie from getting the money that her father (Jerry) left to her. Saying “She only started accusing Sam after she wanted money and didn’t get it” makes it sound like 1) Annie didn’t have a valid reason for the money, she just “wanted” it, and 2) When Annie didn’t get the money, she got on social media and started defaming her relatives on social media. Neither of these seem to be the case, as far as I can tell. As I detailed in the previous bullet point, Annie actually did have multiple valid reasons to expect the money: firstly, that her father had left it to her, and secondly, that she had told her family members that she was going to temporarily quit her job to try to fix her health issues with the expectation that she’d be receiving money, and (I presume) those relatives hadn’t given any indication that they’d be withholding the money from Annie after she quit her job.
“She disputed the inheritance from a trust fund she felt she was owed after her father died.” --
“Felt she was owed” is a misleading characterization that makes it seem like Annie just felt entitled, for no good reason, to money that wasn’t supposed to be hers. This is not at all the impression I get. My understanding is that Annie’s father, in legal documents (will, 401k), indicated that he wanted Annie to receive money. Annie’s relatives overrode these wishes, to block/withhold that money from getting to Annie.
“She blamed her family and started publicly attacking them, including Sam.” --
“Blamed” makes it seem like Annie blamed her family without a good reason. But that isn’t what happened:
Annie’s family (Connie, Sam, Jack, and Max) actively intervened to prevent Annie from seeing Jerry’s will for ~1 year after his death
In 2019, Annie told her family she was going to quit her job, as she wanted time to try to cure her health problems (which were making it hard for her to stand ⟹hard for her to do her job), and was expecting to receive money that her father had left. So, Annie’s relatives:
KNEW that Annie expected to receive her father’s money
KNEW she was going to quit her job
Then, only after Annie quit her job, did Annie’s relatives then tell her that they were going to withhold the money from her.
This put Annie into a desperate financial situation. She was now jobless, low on money, and plagued by health problems that made it hard for her to get a new job.
“And started publicly attacking them” --
Again, Kat’s writing is missing key context about the timeline here. Annie’s relatives blocked her from receiving Jerry’s money in 2019. Annie only started speaking out against them (including Sam) on November 13, 2021. There was a period of 2 years between those events.
Kat Woods: “—The accusation is based on “repressed memories” from when she was 4 that she “didn’t remember until she was 26”—right after she wanted her inheritance and was told she’d get it in monthly installments instead of a lump sum. She refused the conditions then went around saying she’d been denied her inheritance.”
“The accusation is based on “repressed memories” from when she was 4 that she “didn’t remember until she was 26”” --
This is incorrect.
Though, I can see how one could easily come to this incorrect conclusion.
Again, if Kat was writing with genuine good intent in her Tweets, then I don’t want to unfairly villainize her. Again, there is a lot of information here, and it’s easy to miss small details here and there.
In my understanding, Annie
Concluding Remarks
To be clear, in this post, I am not definitively stating that I believe Annie’s claims. Annie, to the best of my knowledge, has not provided direct proof—the sort that would be usable in court—of the claims she’s made of Sam Altman.
I currently hold that I do not know if Annie’s claims are true or not, though I will note that her online activity have been self-consistent over a long period of time, and seems to match up with activity from Sam in a few places (e.g. in the podcast episode she recorded with him.) I currently cannot disprove Sam Altman’s innocence, as I do not think I can say that he has been proven guilty.
Rather, as previously stated, I am hoping to draw attention to a body of information that I think warrants further investigation, as I think that there is a nonzero probability that Annie is telling the truth, in whole or in part, and that this must be taken extremely seriously in light of the gravity of the claims she is making and the position of the person about whom she is making them.
The information provided above makes me think it is likely that Sam Altman is aware of the claims that Annie Altman has made about him. To my knowledge, he has not directly, publicly responded to any of her claims.
Given the gravity of Sam Altman’s position at the helm of the company leading the development of an artificial superintelligence which it does not yet know how to align—to imbue with moralityand ethics—I feel Annie’s claims warrant a far greater level of investigation than they’ve received thus far.
I made an account on X (Twitter) (to reach out to Annie & Sam)
Unfortunately, within minutes of creating my account, I received the following message:
So, for now, my account is going to look suspicious, following only 1 account. Sorry.
Disclaimer
Disclaimer: I would like to note that this is my first post on LessWrong. I have tried my best to meet the writing standards of this website, and to incorporate the advice given in the New User Guide. I apologize in advance for any shortcomings in my writing, and am very much open to feedback and commentary.
“After several meetings I am writing to make a formal request to graduate at the end of this spring, with almost seven semesters of Tufts residency. I have been a full-time student for six semesters...At the end of this semester I will have completed my Biopsychology major, as well as the university’s distribution and credit requirements.”
“Because I have so treasured my experiences, choosing I was ready to leave was extremely difficult. There is simply no need for the sadness and anxiety I’ve felt relating to school; but it took me a while to both figure that out and to accept it. Education should be a gift, however I’ve recently found it to feel more like a burden. I came to Tufts on the pre-medical track, and it was not until this semester that I let go of my rigid attachment to that plan. While a MD or DO degree may still be in my future, I want to more openly look into becoming a nurse or physician’s assistant, as well as a therapist through psychology or social work graduate programs. I feel confident that I want to go into the healthcare field but I am still discovering what role would be the best fit for me and my happiness, allowing me to make the greatest possible positive contribution to the world. I feel extremely thankful for the support I’ve had, both from teachers and friends, in working through this decision. I am also very fortunate for my relationship with my parents and the emotional and logistical support they have given me in this process.”
“My dream would be a summer of my own therapy: taking counseling seriously in a way I have never before felt ready to, focusing on art projects, dance classes, and guitar lessons, as well as attending yoga and meditation retreats — working towards whatever euphemism you prefer for “getting my head on straight” or “re-centering.” I then want to spend a year traveling the world, creating my own education while carrying with me many important lessons learned from Tufts.”
“Sometimes in meditation the most mindful moments come not from feeling fully aware, but rather from realizing you had momentarily lost your awareness and coming back to the present moment. Depressed feelings usually linger from the past, and anxious thoughts are often about the future — a focus on the present brings me a sense of peace. I have come to the realization that being at Tufts is not giving me the potential to be my best self, and I feel as though staying here another year is not in my best interest. I would like to reiterate that many of my issues are not specific to Tufts, but rather regarding where I am at this point in my life. I am grateful for your time and consideration in reading my words and I hope that you will honor my request.”
Jack: “Switching into a...topic of sort of money and sort of the long-term view of it and how people can think about it most clearly, I’m actually to start with a quick story that I think illustrates a bit of some of your views. This is from when we were very young and our grandma gave us each some stock—”
Sam: “—oh this is a good story—”
Jack: “—in a company—”
Sam: “—alright, you can tell this one.”
Jack: “Okay. So she gave us each some stock in a company that she thought we would like. And so, as you like to point out, I was heavier as a child, and one of the things I liked was Applebee’s.”
“A blogger recently asked Altman, “How has having Asperger’s helped and hurt you?” Altman told me, “I was, like, ‘Fuck you, I don’t have Asperger’s!’ But then I thought, I can see why he thinks I do. I sit in weird ways”—he folds up like a busted umbrella—“I have narrow interests in technology, I have no patience for things I’m not interested in: parties, most people. When someone examines a photo and says, ‘Oh, he’s feeling this and this and this,’ all these subtle emotions, I look on with alien intrigue.” Altman’s great strengths are clarity of thought and an intuitive grasp of complex systems. His great weakness is his utter lack of interest in ineffective people, which unfortunately includes most of us. I found his assiduousness alarming at first, then gradually endearing. When I remarked, after a few long days together, that he never seemed to visit the men’s room, he said, “I will practice going to the bathroom more often so you humans don’t realize that I’m the A.I.””
““Well, I like racing cars,” Altman said. “I have five, including two McLarens and an old Tesla. I like flying rented planes all over California. Oh, and one odd one—I prep for survival.” Seeing their bewilderment, he explained, “My problem is that when my friends get drunk they talk about the ways the world will end. After a Dutch lab modified the H5N1 bird-flu virus, five years ago, making it super contagious, the chance of a lethal synthetic virus being released in the next twenty years became, well, nonzero. The other most popular scenarios would be A.I. that attacks us and nations fighting with nukes over scarce resources.” The Shypmates looked grave. “I try not to think about it too much,” Altman said. “But I have guns, gold, potassium iodide, antibiotics, batteries, water, gas masks from the Israeli Defense Force, and a big patch of land in Big Sur I can fly to.””
“Altman’s mother, a dermatologist named Connie Gibstine, told me, “Sam does keep an awful lot tied up inside. He’ll call and say he has a headache—and he’ll have Googled it, so there’s some cyber-chondria in there, too. I have to reassure him that he doesn’t have meningitis or lymphoma, that it’s just stress.” If the pandemic does come, Altman’s backup plan is to fly with his friend Peter Thiel, the billionaire venture capitalist, to Thiel’s house in New Zealand. Thiel told me, “Sam is not particularly religious, but he is culturally very Jewish—an optimist yet a survivalist, with a sense that things can always go deeply wrong, and that there’s no single place in the world where you’re deeply at home.”
“One evening at Altman’s house, his younger brothers, Max and Jack, were teasing him that he should run for President in 2020, when he’d be thirty-five: just old enough. Max, twenty-eight, said, “Who better than you, Sam?” As Altman tried not very vehemently to change the subject, Jack, twenty-seven, said, “It’s not purely little-brother trolling. I do think tech needs a good candidate.” “Let’s send the Jewish gay guy!” Altman said. “That’ll work!” Jack eyed a board game called Samurai on the bookshelf and said, “Sam won every single game of Samurai when we were kids because he always declared himself the Samurai leader: ‘I have to win, and I’m in charge of everything.’ ” Altman shot back, “You want to play speed chess right now?,” and Jack laughed.”
“Max was working at the Y Combinator company Zenefits; Jack co-founded a performance-management company, Lattice, which had just gone through YC. The two brothers moved in with Altman temporarily three years ago and never left. Altman recently hired a designer to upgrade his gray IKEA sofas to gray SummerHouse sofas, and he hung some handsomely framed photographs taken from space, but the house maintains an upscale-student-housing vibe. His mother told me, “I think Sam likes having his brothers around because they knew him when, and can give him pushback in ways that other people can’t. But it’s tricky, with the power dynamic, and I want it to end before it explodes.””
[AA18a] The Speech I Gave At My Dad’s Funeral—originally read aloud at Jerry’s funeral service on 5-28-2018 (according to Annie); posted on Annie’s Medium page on 3-28-2019
“My dad trusted my intuition more than I ever have. He often reminded me of the strength of my mind-body connection, a concept I am both extremely passionate about and skilled at underestimating. He created and held space for all of my feelings, and those of you who have talked to me ever know that I have more than a few of those all of the time.”
“Sam said we could each talk for about five minutes, less if possible to not make you lovely people sit here all day, and Jack correctly pointed out how I will definitely be using all five of my minutes. I’ll apparently even spend some sharing this backstory with you.”
“You may know that I come from a family that loves to rank things in order to make meaning of them. I love that too, and I also love talking about feelings, as someone who has so many of them. This led me to make a list about a year ago ranking my immediate family in terms of emotional expressivity, from most to least. Obviously I take “first place” on this list, which is probably part of why I wanted to make it. Next comes my dad, then Max, then Jack, and then Sam and mom alternate what would be first place if this list went from minimal to Annie levels of emotional expression.”
“My dad and I were always very close, talking about all the feels, all the music, and all the athletic activities.”
“We grew even closer in the past few years, as he was my #1 supporter and confidant in all my choices and adventures, most recently in moving to the Big Island of Hawaii, teaching yoga knowing full well it is not a “career” one can “support themselves” with, and even choosing to live in a car for a few months (re: there is little money in yoga and also Annie goes into extreme minimal hippie phase).”
“My dad came out to visit me in February, when I finally moved into a non-mobile home...My brothers are convinced that he changed his diet to be closer to me, much like his interest in rowing and involvement with the St. Louis Rowing Club, and I know they are right.”
“In January my dad sent me a text, part of which read, “And just for clarification, I don’t just support your lifestyle now or your physical and emotional endeavors now; I support your life. I will always support your life. These are aspects of your life, so I support those too. And there is not a “now”, as Yoda might say. There is only life, for as long as that may be.””
“My dad was active, with people, and doing what he loved, I had said up until his last day before my mom correctly clarified it as “his last hour.””
“Two months ago I met with Joe K, the owner of Urban Exhale Hot Yoga, to discuss the podcast episode we were going to record together. (I have since recorded podcasts with four other teachers at the studio and am completely unsure how to express my gratitude to Joe — honestly perhaps less words about it?) While I would be the one asking Joe questions on the podcast, he had an important question for me. With all the casual profundity of a yoga teacher, Joe asked, “what is your earliest memory?”
“Without pause for an inhale I responded, “probably a panic attack.” I feel like Joe did his best asana poker face, based on projecting my own insecurities and/or the hyper-vigilant observance that comes with anxiety.”
“I began having panic attacks at a young age. I felt the impending doom of death before I had any concept of death. (Do I really have any concept of death now, though? Does anyone??) I define panic attacks as feeling “too alive,” like diving off the deep end into awareness of existence without any proper scuba gear or knowledge of free diving. Panic attacks, I’ve learned, come like an ambulance flashing lights and blaring a siren indicating that my mind and my body are… experiencing a missed connection in terms of communication — they’re refusing to listen to each other. More accurately: my mind is disregarding the messages from my body, convinced she can think her way through feelings, and so my body goes into panic mode like she’s on strike.”
“I went to a sound bath at the yoga studio about a month ago, the second sound bath I’ve ever attended. (I cried at both and if you know me you know that I am happy about things that help me cry.) Sound baths are a guided meditation where you lay in corpse pose and receive sounds of specific frequencies, allowing vibrations to “wash” over and through you. Some shit is bound to surface in the tides.”
“My dad died five months ago now, and to say I’ve learned a lot is an enormous understatement. I was and am a “daddy’s girl.” The most recent panic attack, and perhaps darkest one I’ve experienced, happened the week he died. My dad was one of the most genuinely positive people I’ve ever come across. He had an incredible capacity to continually focus on the light, the good, what was “right” in any situation. I felt his presence during parts of the sound bath — a concept past me would have rolled her eyes about.”
“Laying in bed later that night, Joe’s question popped back into my consciousness with a kind “please make your way into child’s pose.” I realized I had deceived myself (classic humaning) with my response to his question, “what is your earliest memory?”
“Joe, and whoever is reading, I would like to formally change my answer. I am also without an exact answer. I am non-sarcastically “trusting the process” to potentially receive one. I know that a panic attack is not my answer, and my ego likes to remind itself that knowing what is not my truth leads me at least somewhat closer to said truth.”″
“I can reflect on and connect with feelings of panic and still have space to choose a positive perspective. Searching for ways to cope with existence has lead me to yoga, dance, singing, ukulele, cooking, baking, writing… to asking all the questions I know to ask so that I can open myself up to knowing just how many more questions life has to offer. Without panic attacks, I may have lived my whole life without starting a YouTube channel, a podcast, or this blog.”
“Emotions come and go, so it keeps seeming. Emotions and memory are directly linked, re: the amygdala. I have little to no control over my emotional response; I do have control over my reaction and subsequent actions.”
“I write my own history. Though TBD on the first memory of that history. Here’s to exploring.”
Context: “projection” is a recurring motif of discussion throughout the podcast episode.
Annie: “This is where, well—I do believe that projecting can be deflecting and it can be another buzzword in a lot of ways, and also, as you brought up, it points to very intense feelings and very, as you brought up Max {Altman}, {with the} human psychology of things, of, in some ways, we’re wired to remember painful experiences so that we do learn from them, and so—to remember negativity, and to remember those things—”
Sam {interjecting}: “More than that, I think one thing we’re particularly wired for, I don’t know why, is to not like hypocrisy...”
Note: as reported in Elizabeth Weil’s nymag article, Sam (and Jack) refuse (Annie’s requests to) share a link to the podcast. Annie finds this unfair, seeing as how Sam had been willing to help his other siblings’ careers in quite major ways. Sam (and Jack) apparently cited that the podcast episode “did not align with their businesses” [EW23a] as the reason they refused to post the link.
From [EW23a]: “Among her various art projects, Annie makes a podcast called All Humans Are Human. The first Thanksgiving after their father’s death, all the brothers agreed to record an episode with her. Annie wanted to talk on air about the psychological phenomenon of projection: what we put on other people. The brothers steered the conversation into the idea of feedback — specifically, how to give feedback at work. After she posted the show online, Annie hoped her siblings, particularly Sam, would share it. He’d contributed to their brothers’ careers. Jack’s company, Lattice, had been through YC. “I was like, ‘You could just tweet the link. That would help. You don’t want to share your sister’s podcast that you came on?’” He did not. “Jack and Sam said it didn’t align with their businesses.”” [EW23a]
“I started taking birth control pills at the age of 15 (I’m currently 25) and decided to stop taking them right before my 23rd birthday {~2017}. Also around this same time {~2017} I finished tapering off of Zoloft, which I started taking at age 13 {~2007} to help with symptoms of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Anxiety, and Depression. Also also around this time {~2017} I drastically altered my diet...I promptly lost my period and learned that changes relating to diet, hormonal birth control, and psychiatric medications are three of the main factors that can disrupt hormonal balance (stress being the baseline factor).”
“I’m experiencing a second puberty, or maybe an aftershock of sorts from first puberty and/or a year without my period. It feels like a hormonal “do-over” filled with moments of deja-vu: three new crushes in one week, intense crying and laughter in the same hour, and generally going about my day acting like I’m far less confused by all this internal “shifting” than I’m actually feeling. Plus days that feel exceptionally “average” leaving me extra confused about how dramatic life felt the day before. I’m fortunate to have received a liberal education and even so there were inevitable gaps in the information I was given, and open to receiving, about puberty.”
“I majored in Biopsychology in college, with a minor in dance, and took all the prerequisite courses for medical school. Then I noped out of the pre-med route to focus on movement, writing, comedy, music, and food. I got certified as a yoga teacher, worked for an online CSA (community-supported agriculture) company, began writing more frequently, started slowly going to open mic nights and putting videos on YouTube, and began a podcast and this blog. I’m learning to give myself space to explore what genuinely excites me without justification and I’ve felt levels of self-consciousness around my career swerve that I had not experienced since first puberty. HOW will I get my intellectual ego stroked without constant science classes? How can art really have no “right” answer? Am I really the only one who can validate how my feelings feel??”
“It’s been almost a year now since I got my period back and I feel I’ve been going through a sort of spiritual and scientific second puberty, to continue the soap operatics. A year extra filled with learning about my body’s cycle(s) and signals. Witnessing my hormones re-regulate has felt parallel to to self-soothing, not that I consciously remember learning that, and my first time with “my moon.” I started eating eggs again, including runny yolks for the first time, and ate fish for the first time in my life because my body very literally demanded them. A year without my period, after a decade of having it, felt like equal parts reset and emptiness.”
“I believe a large portion of shame takes root during puberty and then manifests as sexual repression, (sexual) aggression, body dysmorphia, addiction, and/or mood disorders. I can say for certain that has been my experience. Shame encourages ignorance by stifling conversations. Additionally, shame creates a feedback loop where ignorance is shamed and so questions and curiosity are discouraged.”
To me, this letter seems to be somewhat sarcastic. Annie is “thanking” her relatives in a way that carries subliminal criticisms.
Example: “Thank you for strengthening my sense of self. I am where I am and doing what I’m doing in part because of each of you. My tenacity and gentleness to take care of myself has increased because of you. The lessons I’ve received from my relationships with you have shifted my perspectives beyond their limitations. Thank you for providing contrast.”—What I think Annie is referencing here is how her relatives screwed her out of her money and (esp. Sam) abused her for a very long time. To this, she had to adapt by developing better ways to take care of herself, and was also forced to move around in a state of relative financial poverty.
As with the rest of the letter, Annie includes seemingly-upbeat, purposefully vague one-liners throughout the letter, such as “Thank you for providing me with contrast.” (The implied negative connotation isn’t too hard to infer.)
It seems Annie was trying to use EMDR to heal her PTSD, which, as she claims, resulted from having flashbacks to and stronger memories the abuse, e.g. sexual abuse from Sam, that she was subjected to during her childhood.
It seems her therapist rejected her as a client on the basis of her position as a sex worker.
“I experienced sexual, physical, emotional, verbal, financial, and technological abuse from my biological siblings, mostly Sam Altman and some from Jack Altman.”
“I feel strongly that others have also been abused by these perpetrators. I’m seeking people to join me in pursuing legal justice, safety for others in the future, and group healing. Please message me with any information, you can remain however anonymous you feel safe.”
“Sam and Jack, I know you remember my Torah portion was about Moses forgiving his brothers. “Forgive them father for they know not what they’ve done” Sexual, physical, emotional, verbal, financial, and technological abuse. Never forgotten.”
“I’m not four years old with a 13 year old “brother” climbing into my bed non-consensually anymore. (You’re welcome for helping you figure out your sexuality.) I’ve finally accepted that you’ve always been and always will be more scared of me than I’ve been of you.”
Note: The “brother” in question (obviously) being Sam Altman.
{Jokingly} “{Sam’s ‘nuclear backpack’} may also hold our Dad and Grandma’s trusts {which} him {Sam} and my birth mother are still withholding from me, knowing I started sex work for survival because of being sick and broke with a millionaire “brother””
“I got diagnosed with PCOS, and got walking boot for a third time in 8 years for the same tendinopathy, all in the first year of grieving my Dad.”
“I had a history since childhood of OCD, anxiety, depression, IBS, disorder eating—all covers for PTSD. Also tonsillitis yay”
“I got notified almost exactly a year after his death about my Dad leaving me money, so make a plan to stop working for 6 months and focus on my health.
“I got notified almost exactly a year after his death about my Dad leaving me money, so make a plan to stop working for 6 months and focus on my health. I had started a podcast and had other art proects I could do sitting down!”
“After quitting my dispensary job, my relatives find a loophole to withhold said money. They knew the health conditions and my plan, and they’re millionaires. I sell some things, go back to an older job, and eventually ask (for the first time ever) my millionaire relatives for financial help and am essentially told to “work harder.” I got $100 for an ankle MRI copay, after much ‘discussion’”
“I do two family therapy sessions and am professionally advised to stop doing family therapy sessions.”
“I move back to Big Island so I can work trade for rent, be around community, and actually heal. I’m offered {by Sam} a diamond made from Dad’s ashes instead of money for rent or groceries. Dad just wanted cremation.”
“I go {opt for} no contact with relatives.”
“I start spicy work which ends up being way more therapeutic than anticipated, though definitely challenging.”
“I end up moving to Maui. Unemployment comes through after identity theft, so I have a deposit {on?} a place to live.”
“I have two years of remembering horrific things I’d buried and told myself I made up, and experience adult SAs that brought up even more memories.”
Annie states that (Sam’s) technological abuse (shadowbanning) has made it hard for her to make an income / financially support herself.
She refers to Sam as her “first client” in her (current) sexual line of work.
“{I have been} under the thumb of this deeply depressed human {Sam Altman}, dealing with his guilt about our dad dying much earlier than he needed to—because our dad was not given money while he was alive, even though he’d had heart issues, and was 67 - can you imagine being a fucking multimillionaire and not giving your dad—that’s for me to talk about in therapy”
Context: Annie is (somewhat jokingly) talking about making shirts saying she survived Sam Altman’s shadowbanning. “The shirts—they’re gonna say ‘I survived Sam Altman’s shadowbanning.’ And it’s gonna be such a clusterfuck—because the longer that this has gone on—and it’s been 4 years now—I no longer care about sounding like a crazy person. There’s so much proof—go to my Instagram for “Hi Censorship” highlights. Also, the amount of friends I have had and tested things out with—and seen, when they share things, {versus} when I share things; sharing anything about the podcast...”
“Altman grew up the oldest of four siblings in suburban St. Louis: three boys, Sam, Max, and Jack, each two years apart, then a girl, Annie, nine years younger than Sam.”
“In 1993, for his 8th birthday, Altman’s parents — Connie Gibstine, a dermatologist, and Jerry Altman, a real-estate broker — bought him a Mac LC II.”
“Several months later, in late May, Altman’s father had a heart attack, at age 67, while rowing on Creve Coeur Lake outside St. Louis. He died at the hospital soon after. At the funeral, Annie told me, Sam allotted each of the four Altman children five minutes to speak. She used hers to rank her family members in terms of emotional expressivity. She put Sam, along with her mother, at the bottom.”
“Altman continued racing his cars (among his favorites: the Lexus LFA, which was discontinued by 2013 and, according to HotCars, “set you back by at least $950,000”). In the early days of the pandemic, he wore his Israeli Defense Forces gas mask. He bought a ranch in Napa. (Altman is a vegetarian, but his partner, Oliver Mulherin, a computer programmer from Melbourne, “likes cows,” Altman says.) He purchased a $27 million house on San Francisco’s Russian Hill. He racked up fancy friends.”
“This is not the portfolio of a man with ambitions like Zuckerberg, who appears, somewhat quaintly compared with Altman, to be content “with building a city-state to rule over,” as the tech writer and podcaster Jathan Sadowski put it. This is the portfolio of a man with ambitions like Musk’s, a man taking the “imperialist approach.” “He really sees himself as this world-bestriding Übermensch, as a superhuman in a really Nietzschean kind of way,” Sadowski said. “He will at once create the thing that destroys us and save us from it.””
“Families replicate social dynamics. Power differentials hurt and often explode. This is true of the Altmans. Jerry Altman’s 2018 death notice describes him as: “Husband of Connie Gibstine; dear father and father-in-law of Sam Altman, Max Altman, Jack (Julia) Altman” — Julia is Jack’s wife — “and Annie Altman …”
“Annie Altman? Readers of Altman’s blog; his tweets; his manifesto, Startup Playbook; along with the hundreds of articles about him will be familiar with Jack and Max. They pop up all over the place, most notably in a dashing photo in Forbes, atop the profile that accompanied the announcement of their joint fund, Apollo. They’re also featured in Tad Friend’s 2016 Altman profile in The New Yorker and in much chummy public banter.
@jaltma: I find it really upsetting when I see articles calling Sam a tech bro. He’s a technology brother.
@maxaltman: He *is* technology, brother.
@sama: love you, (tech) bros”
“Annie does not exist in Sam’s public life. She was never going to be in the club. She was never going to be an Übermensch. She’s always been someone who felt the pain of the world. At age 5, she began waking up in the middle of the night, needing to take a bath to calm her anxiety. By 6, she thought about suicide, though she didn’t know the word.”
“Like her eldest brother, she is extremely intelligent, and like her eldest brother, she left college early — though not because her start-up was funded by Sequoia. She had completed all of her Tufts credits, and she was severely depressed. She wanted to live in a place that felt better to her. She wanted to make art. She felt her survival depended on it. She graduated after seven semesters.”
“When I visited Annie on Maui this summer, she told me stories that will resonate with anyone who has been the emo-artsy person in a businessy family, or who has felt profoundly hurt by experiences family members seem not to understand. Annie — her long dark hair braided, her voice low, measured, and intense — told me about visiting Sam in San Francisco in 2018. He had some friends over. One of them asked Annie to sing a song she’d written. She found her ukulele. She began. “Midway through, Sam gets up wordlessly and walks upstairs to his room,” she told me over a smoothie in Paia, a hippie town on Maui’s North Shore. “I’m like, Do I keep playing? Is he okay? What just happened?” The next day, she told him she was upset and asked him why he left. “And he was kind of like, ‘My stomach hurt,’ or ‘I was too drunk,’ or ‘too stoned, I needed to take a moment.’ And I was like, ‘Really? That moment? You couldn’t wait another 90 seconds?’””
“That same year, Jerry Altman died. He’d had his heart issues, along with a lot of stress, partly, Annie told me, from driving to Kansas City to nurse along his real-estate business. The Altmans’ parents had separated. Jerry kept working because he needed the money. After his death, Annie cracked. Her body fell apart. Her mental health fell apart. She’d always been the family’s pain sponge. She absorbed more than she could take now.”
“Sam offered to help her with money for a while, then he stopped. In their email and text exchanges, his love — and leverage — is clear. He wants to encourage Annie to get on her feet. He wants to encourage her to get back on Zoloft, which she’d quit under the care of a psychiatrist because she hated how it made her feel.”
“Among her various art projects, Annie makes a podcast called All Humans Are Human. The first Thanksgiving after their father’s death, all the brothers agreed to record an episode with her. Annie wanted to talk on air about the psychological phenomenon of projection: what we put on other people. The brothers steered the conversation into the idea of feedback — specifically, how to give feedback at work. After she posted the show online, Annie hoped her siblings, particularly Sam, would share it. He’d contributed to their brothers’ careers. Jack’s company, Lattice, had been through YC. “I was like, ‘You could just tweet the link. That would help. You don’t want to share your sister’s podcast that you came on?’” He did not. “Jack and Sam said it didn’t align with their businesses.”
“On the first anniversary of Jerry Altman’s death, Annie had the word sch’ma — “listen” in Hebrew — tattooed on her neck. She quit her job at a dispensary because she had an injured Achilles tendon that wouldn’t heal and she was in a walking boot for the third time in seven years. She asked Sam and their mother for financial help. They refused. “That was right when I got on the sugar-dating website for the first time,” Annie told me. “I was just at such a loss, in such a state of desperation, such a state of confusion and grief.” Sam had been her favorite brother. He’d read her books at bedtime. He’d taken portraits of her on the monkey bars for a high-school project. She’d felt so understood, loved, and proud. “I was like, Why? Why are these people not helping me when they could at no real cost to themselves?””
“In May 2020, she relocated to the Big Island of Hawaii. One day, shortly after she’d moved to a farm to do a live-work trade, she got an email from Sam asking for her address. He wanted to send her a memorial diamond he’d made out of some of their father’s ashes. “Picturing him sending a diamond of my dad’s ashes to the mailbox where it’s one of those rural places where there are all these open boxes for all these farms … It was so heavy and sad and angering, but it was also so hilarious and so ridiculous. So disconnected-feeling. Just the lack of fucks given.” Their father never asked to be a diamond. Annie’s mental health was fragile. She worried about money for groceries. It was hard to interact with somebody for whom money meant everything but also so little. “Like, either you aren’t realizing or you are not caring about this whole situation here,” she said. By “whole situation,” she meant her life. “You’re willing to spend $5,000 — for each one — to make this thing that was your idea, not Dad’s, and you’re wanting to send that to me instead of sending me $300 so I can have food security. What?””
“The two are now estranged. Sam offered to buy Annie a house. She doesn’t want to be controlled. For the past three years, she has supported herself doing sex work, “both in person and virtual,” she told me. She posts porn on OnlyFans. She posts on Instagram Stories about mutual aid, trying to connect people who have money to share with those who need financial help.”
“Annie has moved more than 20 times in the past year. When she called me in mid-September, her housing was unstable yet again. She had $1,000 in her bank account.”
“Since 2020, she has been having flashbacks. She knows everybody takes the bits of their life and arranges them into narratives to make sense of their world.”
“As Annie tells her life story, Sam, their brothers, and her mother kept money her father left her from her.”
“As Annie tells her life story, she felt special and loved when, as a child, Sam read her bedtime stories. Now those memories feel like abuse.”
“The Altman family would like the world to know: “We love Annie and will continue our best efforts to support and protect her, as any family would.””
“Annie is working on a one-woman show called the HumAnnie about how nobody really knows how to be a human. We’re all winging it.”
Note: c.f. [EW23b], [EW23c], [EW23d], and [EW23e] for some comments that Elizabeth Weil made on X (Twitter) about this article.
“Thank you for the love and for calling I spade a spade. I experienced every single form of abuse with him—sexual, physical, verbal, psychology, pharmacological (forced Zoloft, also later told I’d receive money only if I went back on it), and technological (shadowbanning)”
“Aww you’re nervous I’m defending myself? Refusing to die with your secrets, refusing to allow you to harm more people? If only there was little sister with a bed you could uninvited crawl in, or sick 20-something sister you could withhold your dead dad’s money from, to cope.”
“@RemmeltE This is also a story about the tech media & its entanglement with industry. Annie was not hard to find. Nobody did the basic reporting on his family — or no one wanted to risk losing access by including Annie in a piece.” / X (twitter.com)
“@RemmeltE @phuckfilosophy of course — worry about losing access to pals, allies, people he funds, people he might fund, others in tech who don’t want to talk with journalists who might independently report out a story and not rely on comms....” / X (twitter.com)”
“@RemmeltE @phuckfilosophy i’m not a tech reporter primarily and i’ve been in this industry for a long time (and it’s a rough industry to be in), so less career risk for me”
“@RemmeltE @phuckfilosophy Or accept the version of personal lives as delivered by the source. Sam talked about his personal life with me a bit, as did Jack. Just didn’t ever reference Annie.”
“{I experienced} Shadowbanning across all platforms except onlyfans and pornhub. Also had 6 months of hacking into almost all my accounts and wifi when I first started the podcast”
Note: Some commenters on Hacker News claim that a post regarding Annie’s claims that Sam sexually assaulted her at age 4 has been being repeatedly removed. c.f. [HN23a], [NM23]
Note: this is Annie’s reply reply to [PO23] and [AA23g].
“The offer was after a year and half no contact {with Sam}, and {I} had started speaking up online. I had already started survival sex work. The offer was for the house to be connected with a lawyer, and the last time I had a Sam-lawyer connection I didn’t get to see my Dad’s will for a year.”
“I was too sick for “normal” standing jobs. Tendon and nerve pain, and ovarian cysts. “Pathetic” to you seems to mean something outside of your understanding”
Annie {addressing Sam}: “What must it be like, to be an almost-tech billionaire, terrified of the little sibling—you’ve lost privileges to call me your sister—who you repeatedly molested, and physically abused, and emotionally and verbally and then financially and then technologically—and oh also chemically with forced Zoloft—and I’m still alive, and you’re still scared, ’cause you’re sad. And I’m sad too—the difference is that I’ve processed it, and I do other things with it..instead of directly abusing people. And what must it be like to be more scared? Because you know the longer this goes on, the worse it’s all gonna be when it comes out for you. And knowing my Torah portion was about forgiving my brothers—wow. I mean, you’re forgiven, and also—fuck off, forever.”
“Thank you more than words for your time and attention researching.
All accurate in the current form, except there was no lawyer connected to the “I’ll give you rent and physical therapy money if you go back on Zoloft””
“Because my parents were still legally married, though separated, my mother was able to block my Dad’s wish and signature to make me the primary beneficiary of his 401k. I had quit the job I was working because of my Achilles and PCOS, while mid-paperwork to receive this money.”
“I had only fuzzy memories of sexual abuse until I went no contact, because of the emotional and financial and other abuses. I was unpacking my own sexual health, both by myself and in therapy, since 2012. Attempting to understand experiences like mid-sex projectile vomiting.”
“I was given some rent money for a few months in LA before moving back to Big Island for a work trade.
We made a plan with the family therapist (we did two sessions with) for Sam and my mother to help with my basic needs while I was sick. That plan was not followed.”
“That financial “help” became inconsistent and/or attached to strings. It would be less than the amount agreed on with the therapist, late for me to actually pay rent so I had to keep asked repeatedly, etc”
Annie: “When I started the podcast, before I did sex work or any other things that increased shadowbanning, I had shadowbanning immediately, and I had podcast ratings get deleted when it {the podcast} was called ‘True Shit’ right when I started it. And I could not get through to a real person.”
Remmelt: “And you don’t even know why. You can suspect why, but...”
Annie: “Oh yeah. I have all of my theories, and I have emails. I got some emails back and forth with Apple Podcasts about it. There wasn’t a phone number, ther wasn’t any way I could have the real accountability of, ‘Hey, I have this teeny podcast, it’s only a few motnhs old, and I’m having a third or more of the ratings get deleted, and I don’t underertand why.’ And that makes it obviously challenging to grow a podcast.’”
“I have experienced drama like the OpenAI drama — I grew up in it. I was repeatedly told “not to talk about it,” and to allow another person to remove my human agency.
I have lived under my sibling’s authority my whole life.
The narrative of “Annie is crazy” and “Annie doesn’t know how to take care of herself” is what I was raised and conditioned in. That narrative, along with intentionally conditional love, is what was used to control me my whole life.
When I went “no contact,” I learned even more about the control he wielded. It’s not just me, it’s his social and professional circles also. It’s terrifying how many people have told me privately they support me, but are terrified to speak publicly on my behalf.
Since going no contact from my living relatives in 2020, my literal and virtual life continue to be extremely restricted. I’ve had multiple accounts get hacked. My podcast ratings and YouTube views seemed to be removed. My presence seems difficult to find on Google. I am not sure how this is happening, and I don’t have the resources to investigate further. At one point recently a high school faculty member, from our same school, spoke with me and attempted to convince me to break no contact.
Going no contact was far from an easy decision.
I attempted every other possibility, including family therapy in early 2020. After two sessions together with my mother and brother, my therapist privately advised me that no contact was my best option, which I resisted for another four months. During this time, I was managing PCOS (several ovarian cysts) and repeat Achilles tendinopathy that severely limited my walking and normal movement abilities. I was also grieving our Dad who died in May 2018.
I quit a job because of being notified of money left to me from my Dad, and made a plan to take six months to heal my body. I notified my relatives of my health and my plan. While in the paperwork process, I was notified that the money was withheld from me until I’m in my 60s. Though separated, my parents were still legally married and so my mother had the “surviving spouse” option to ignore Dad’s wish to make me the primary beneficiary of his 401K.
Dad had a known heart condition, but still had to work full time until his death in 2018. Dad was very involved in affordable housing and reconstruction of historic buildings in St. Louis City. I had asked my sibling for years to give our Dad the financial help to stop working. Dad openly expressed his dream to retire in Costa Rica.
Jerry Altman died of a heart attack at age 67, without the dream his son could have fulfilled.
While still very physically ill and simultaneously managing intense and horrific flashbacks from PTSD, I began in person sex work in late 2020. I was unable to fully financially support myself with the virtual sex work I had already started, and with unemployment benefits from California. I applied for unemployment in 2020, at first not wanting to apply and “clog up” the process, because of my millionaire relatives I naively assumed would help me, and then was delayed in receiving benefits due to identity theft.
I was too physically ill with PCOS (several ovarian cysts) and repeat Achilles tendinopathy that severely limited my walking and normal movement abilities to work a standing job, and too mentally ill with daily flashbacks to do computer work.
I also desperately needed money for physical therapy so I could become healthier and support myself in the future. I felt like a zombie getting through every day while budgeting how much labor my body and brain could manage.
My sibling offered to buy me a home in 2021, reaching out with seemingly kind words after a year and half of no contact. We spoke on the phone three times, and through these conversations I began to suspect the offer was another attempt at control. It seemed I would never have direct ownership of the house. Also, given the nature of my PTSD flashbacks, the house felt like an unsafe place to actually heal my mind and body.
With regard to the current situation at OpenAI (and with tech in general), I feel the drama is a red herring.
The best case scenario is middle school-style interpersonal drama, with much higher money and power stakes. The worst case scenario is a distraction from something(s) that are more dangerous.
Calling employees in the middle of night to secure their public display of loyalty seems like cultish hazing.
Given my belief that “how you do anything is how you do everything”, and given the power of the technological revolution, I am concerned with where and how that power is being inequitably distributed. I am also concerned about who will benefit from that power, and in what ways.
I would love to see and support technology being used to equitably distribute basic human resources, which is far different from its current use.
My intention in sharing my story is to share my most personal and human truth, and to heal. In my own sharing, I wish to encourage others to find their truth and their healing.
I seek sovereignty for myself, and for child-me who was told to stay quiet about other people’s secrets — even when it made me physically ill.
I aim to give others the information of my story, while healing my own pains. My wish is to help others find their personal truth and healing from their pains — we’re all human.
We all advance as humans when we all tell our story.
“OpenAI CEO Sam Altman snapped up a $43 million estate in Hawaii in 2021, adding to his impressive real-estate portfolio.”
“OpenAI CEO Sam Altman owns multimillion-dollar properties in San Francisco, Napa, and Hawaii.”
“Altman, fired then reinstated as OpenAI’s CEO this month, has tried to keep a relatively low profile.”
“When Business Insider set out to catalog his assets, we found a previously unknown giant estate.”
“Years before the recent drama at OpenAI turned CEO Sam Altman into a household name, the former Y Combinator president went on an extraordinary 18-month, $85 million real-estate shopping spree, according to records reviewed by Business Insider — including a previously unreported $43 million Hawaii estate on land that locals describe as historically significant.”
“The purchases, which also include multimillion-dollar residences in San Francisco and Napa, California, took place between early 2020 and mid-2021, when Altman was ginning up support for his eyeball-scanning crypto startup, Worldcoin, and releasing OpenAI products in private beta, BI’s review of business and real-estate filings found.”
“A spokesperson for Altman declined to comment.”
“Earlier this year, Altman seemed to take a subtle dig at his fellow tech executives for amassing too much wealth.”
“”This concept of having enough money is not something that is easy to get across to other people,” Altman said at the Bloomberg Technology Summit in San Francisco.”
“But as Altman’s wealth has grown, he’s become increasingly removed from the daily life of the non-ultra-ultra-rich. His mother told The Wall Street Journal in March that Altman hadn’t been to a grocery store in four or five years. In 2021, he hired his cousin to manage his family office.”
“In July 2021, Altman bought a 12-bedroom estate in Kailua-Kona, on the Big Island of Hawaii, for $43 million. Judging by listing photos, the property has a private inlet and several houses. The estate is adjacent to a national landmark {Kamakahonu (here’s its Wikipedia page)} a reconstruction of the royal temple of King Kamehameha I, the first ruler of the unified Hawaiian islands.”
“A second video highlighted the estate’s adventurous amenities, including cliff jumping, motorboating, wakesurfing, Jet Ski-ing, and scuba diving. A person who worked on the second video said the intent was to produce something that friends and family could watch to remember their trips to the residence. (Both videos were removed from YouTube after BI requested comment for this article.)”
“Altman’s purchase of the Hawaii property has not been previously reported. BI linked the property to Altman by examining business and real-estate filings showing the land was owned by an LLC managed by Jennifer Serralta, whose name appears as a manager on paperwork for other businesses known to be owned by Altman. Serralta, who previously worked in the automotive industry, describes herself on LinkedIn as the chief operating officer of a family office — presumably Altman’s — and is his cousin, according to an obituary for their grandmother. Reached by phone, Serralta declined to comment.”
“In a March post on her personal blog, Serralta wrote that she stayed at a Kailua-Kona property owned by “a friend” while vacationing in Hawaii. Last year, Altman tweeted a photo of himself wakesurfing in Hawaii; the view of the Big Island in the background of the photo precisely matches the view from the Kailua-Kona compound.”
Here’s where I think Sam is in the wake surfing picture, just from visual estimates moving around to different Google Street View Images on Google Maps (with the little orange dude you can drag-and-drop around) near Kamakahonu:
“Altman has one family connection to Hawaii: His youngest sibling, Annie Altman, has lived on the islands on and off since 2017. Annie Altman, an artist and entertainer who has supported herself through in-person and virtual sex work, lives a much-different life from her brother’s. Annie is teetering on financial insolvency, she told BI, after a lengthy stretch of illnesses. She has not spoken with her brother since 2021, when she refused his offer to buy her a home after learning that a lawyer would control the property, she said. She had been unaware that her oldest brother owned property in Hawaii until BI asked her about it, she said.”
Sam also bought:
a $27 million home in San Francisco, which “is the home base for a number of Altman’s investment vehicles, according to business and Securities and Exchange Commission filings, including the venture firm Apollo Projects, 9Point Ventures, and Uncommon Ventures. In recent weeks, the property functioned as a war room for Altman and his closest allies as he planned his return to OpenAI.”
The home includes a wellness center, “cantilevered infinity pool”, and an underground garage with a “car turntable”
a $15.7 million, 950-acre ranch in Napa, with five homes and vineyards
“Several Altman companies are or have been registered to the address, including the opaquely named Project 2024 LLC, as well as another Altman venture firm, Hydrazine Capital.”
(32:28-33:49) Sam: “AGI and my family are the two main things I care about, so losing one of those is like...so yeah I mean it was just like unbelievably painful. The only comparable set of life experience that I had, and that one was of course much worse, was when my dad died. And that was like a very sudden thing. But the sense of like confusion and loss...in that case, I felt like I had a little bit of time to just like feel it all. But then there was so much to do. Like it was like so unexpected that I had to pick up the pieces of his life for a little while. And it wasn’t until, like, a week after that I really got a moment to just, like, catch my breath and be like, holy shit, like, I can’t believe this happened. So yeah, that was much worse.”
“Altman’s firing and swift reversal of fortune followed a pattern in his career, which began when he dropped out of Stanford University in 2005 and gained the reputation as a Silicon Valley visionary. Over the past two decades, Altman has lost the confidence of several top leaders in the three organizations he has directed. At every crisis point, Altman, 38 years old, not only rebounded but climbed to more powerful roles with the help of an expanding network of powerful allies.”
“A group of senior employees at Altman’s first startup, Loopt—a location-based social-media network started in the flip-phone era—twice urged board members to fire him as CEO over what they described as deceptive and chaotic behavior, said people familiar with the matter. But the board, with support from investors at venture-capital firm Sequoia, kept Altman until Loopt was sold in 2012.”
“In 2019, Altman was asked to resign from Y Combinator after partners alleged he had put personal projects, including OpenAI, ahead of his duties as president, said people familiar with the matter.”
“This fall, Altman also faced a crisis of trust at OpenAI, the company he navigated to the front of the artificial-intelligence field. In early October {2023}, OpenAI’s chief scientist {Ilya Sutskever} approached some fellow board members to recommend Altman be fired, citing roughly 20 examples of when he believed Altman misled OpenAI executives over the years. That set off weeks of closed-door talks, ending with Altman’s surprise ouster days before Thanksgiving.”
“This article is based on interviews with dozens of executives, engineers, current and former employees and friends of Altman’s, as well as investors.”
“A few years after {Loopt’s} launch, some Loopt executives voiced frustration with Altman’s management. There were complaints about Altman pursuing side projects, at one point diverting engineers to work on a gay dating app, which they felt came at the expense of the company’s main work.”
“Senior executives approached the board with concerns that Altman at times failed to tell the truth—sometimes about matters so insignificant one person described them as paper cuts. At one point, they threatened to leave the company if he wasn’t removed as CEO, according to people familiar with the matter. The board backed Altman.”
““If he imagines something to be true, it sort of becomes true in his head,” said Mark Jacobstein, co-founder of Jimini Health who served as Loopt’s chief operating officer. “That is an extraordinary trait for entrepreneurs who want to do super ambitious things. It may or may not lead one to stretch, and that can make people uncomfortable.””
“Altman doesn’t recall employee complaints beyond the normal annual CEO review process, according to people familiar with his thinking.”
“Michael Moritz, who led Sequoia, personally advised Altman. When Loopt struggled to find buyers, Moritz helped engineer an acquisition by another Sequoia-backed company, the financial technology firm Green Dot.”
“Altman turned Y Combinator into an investing powerhouse. While serving as the president, he kept his own venture-capital firm, Hydrazine, which he launched in 2012. He caused tensions after barring other partners at Y Combinator from running their own funds, including the current chief executive, Garry Tan, and Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian. Tan and Ohanian didn’t respond to requests for comment.”
“Altman also expanded Y Combinator through a nonprofit he created called YC Research, which served as an incubator for Altman’s own projects, including OpenAI. From its founding in 2015, YC Research operated without the involvement of the firm’s longtime partners, fueling their concern that Altman was straying too far from running the firm’s core business.”
“By early 2018, Altman was barely present at Y Combinator’s headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., spending more time at OpenAI, at the time a small research nonprofit, according to people familiar with the matter.”
“The increasing amount of time Altman spent at OpenAI riled longtime partners at Y Combinator, who began losing faith in him as a leader. The firm’s leaders asked him to resign, and he left as president in March 2019.”
“Graham said it was his wife’s doing. “If anyone ‘fired’ Sam, it was Jessica, not me,” he said. “But it would be wrong to use the word ‘fired’ because he agreed immediately.”
“Jessica Livingston said her husband was correct.”
“To smooth his exit, Altman proposed he move from president to chairman. He pre-emptively published a blog post on the firm’s website announcing the change. But the firm’s partnership had never agreed, and the announcement was later scrubbed from the post.”
“For years, even some of Altman’s closest associates—including Peter Thiel, Altman’s first backer for Hydrazine—didn’t know the circumstances behind Altman’s departure.”
“As the company grew, management complaints about Altman surfaced.”
“In early fall this year, Sutskever, also a board member, was upset because Altman had elevated another AI researcher, Jakub Pachocki, to director of research, according to people familiar with the matter.”
“Sutskever told his board colleagues that the episode reflected a long-running pattern of Altman’s tendency to pit employees against one another or promise resources and responsibilities to two different executives at the same time, yielding conflicts, according to people familiar with the matter.”
“Other board members already had concerns about Altman’s management. Tasha McCauley, an adjunct senior management scientist at Rand Corp., tried to cultivate relationships with employees as a board member. Past board members chatted regularly with OpenAI executives without informing Altman. Yet during the pandemic, Altman told McCauley he needed to be told if the board spoke to employees, a request that some on the board viewed as Altman limiting the board’s power, people familiar with the matter said.”
“Around the time Sutskever aired his complaints, the independent board members heard similar concerns from some senior OpenAI executives, people familiar with the discussions said. Some considered leaving the company over Altman’s leadership, the people said.”
“Altman also misled board members, leaving the impression with one board member that another wanted board member Helen Toner removed, even though it wasn’t true, according to people familiar with the matter, The Wall Street Journal reported.”
“Altman also misled board members, leaving the impression with one board member that another wanted board member Helen Toner removed, even though it wasn’t true, according to people familiar with the matter, The Wall Street Journal reported.”
Contrary to your email here, my-short-term-lawyer shared with me that my Father’s Trust has been funded before my mother’s death.
As I turned 30 this January, I am considering requesting the funds for which my Father’s Trust was established per my Father’s wishes, according to my understanding of my Father’s Will.
Before I do so, I would like to know the following information:
How much was the Trust funded for, and when exactly?
Please send details of all assets and all information about the Trust. My-short-term-lawyer mentioned Hydrazine, a fund of my siblings’, and one of my Dad’s buildings with my-Dad’s-old-boss?
Please send all documentation you have concerning the Trust, including but not limited to: documents and numbers related to the institution holding the Trust, the trustees, and communication regarding how the trust was funded.
Have there been any divisions of the Trust? Please send any information if yes.
Please send all documents related in any way to the Trust that I may not be aware of at this point.
Why was the funding of the Trust delayed? Why was the Trust funded now after you previously said it couldn’t be funded?
My-short-term-lawyer (cc’d), who you spoke with about getting the Trust funded, let me know you said my next step was to “make an ask of the Trust with a monthly budget.” Will you please point to where in the Trust it specifies that stipulation?
The Trust mentions different stipulations for different ages, and my 30th birthday was in January. Why was I not contacted about the potential to request a non-prejudicial lump sum in accordance with my Father’s wishes?
As you may also know, I quit my job in 2019 a year after my Father’s death, understanding that I was the primary beneficiary of my Father’s 401K. I planned to take my time away from work to focus on my health, which had declined severely in my mid-20s. My relatives are aware of my repeated tendinopathy, three times in a walking boot for the same ankle, and Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome. I did not receive any such funding, and as a result, my health and well-being have continued to suffer — in direct contradiction to the stipulations in my Father’s Will. The Trust makes it clear that my Dad’s wish was for me to have been supported in these six years since his death. In the absence of the support intended for me in my Dad’s Trust, I’ve experienced two and a half years of houseless and homelessness and daily PTSD flashbacks, and I’ve had to resort to survival sex work to support myself financially while still navigating physical illnesses.
Please send your confirmation of receipt of this email within 24 hours, and all requested documentation and answers, within 10 business days.
“Promise you it’s not something I ever thought I’d start.
In 2019, while living in LA, I got diagnosed with Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome. PCOS is a diagnosis of elimination, and/or “oh hey this ultrasound shows a cyst on your ovary.” Around the same time, I went into a walking boot for my Achilles for the third time in eight years. The first time was Achilles tendinopathy and a bone spur, the second time was plain old Achilles tendinopathy, and this third time was now both Achilles and posterior tibial tendinopathy.
I got my fourth or fifth tonsillitis in there too, to round things out, or something.
I had quit a job at a dispensary in the summer of 2019, while in the paperwork process about being the primary beneficiary of my Father’s 401K. My Dad died in May 2018, and access to his Will was withheld from me by my mother and three older siblings for an entire year. The 401K situation, a year after his death, motivated me to finally demand access to my Dad’s Will and other information.
When notified by the company about my Dad’s 401K, while sitting at a reception desk because I could no longer do the standing shifts, I was both relieved for the help and shocked that information about my Dad would be hidden from me. Especially shocked because my relatives knew about my various physical illnesses and need for financial support.
All three of my siblings and my mother, all wealthy, had seen the Will the entire time. I told them all about my health challenges, about the money I was receiving from Dad, and about my six month plan to work on my podcast and music and one human show, seated creative projects that would help me as I healed my tendons and hormones and digestion and grief.
I naively trusted these relatives. I figured the worst case scenario was not being able to monetize my art projects. I accepted this potential worst case because working on my projects would still help me rest my ankle, by giving me a creative outlet other than dancing and yoga, which my health impacted my abilities to continue. I had first gone to the Big Island of Hawai’i in 2017 for yoga teacher training, and then moved back there and taught yoga. (Seems like a place to note that I paid for training, and if I had gone to medical school like was tracked for me it would have been paid for by my relatives.) My relatives knew how important yoga and dance were and are to me, and mocked my interest aside from one singular time two of them took a yoga class taught by me.
I was very wrong about the potential worst case. Said 401K money from my Dad withheld from me by millionaire relatives, who knew I was sick. I went back to an old job I worked in the Bay Area, and was selling produce boxes with Farm Fresh to You. I was wearing the walking boot I attempted to avoid my third time needing. I was sweating through my sheets almost nightly, and was doing bloodwork and other exams to search for potential thyroid or other PCOS-related conditions. I began selling furniture and clothes, and the microphones I had been using for podcasts and music, so I could afford rent and food.
In December 2019, after being told “no” for the financial support I asked for the first time ever, I went on SeekingArrangements. Living in LA, I had no idea what I was getting into with that site, which is for sugar dating and escorting. I didn’t meet up with anyone in person in LA, though I did have a couple video chats. I remember the first time a man sent me a Zelle for a video call where I flashed him my boobs — a Zelle that got my account out of the negative. I also remember a man yelling at me through the phone about saying no to coming over for $300 because “WELL HAVEN’T YOU DONE IT FOR FREE A BUNCH!” I was horrified, and felt like the sex work industry was probably “too much” for me. Being scared of what felt like “plan Z” was scary in itself.
In the beginning of 2020 I did two family therapy sessions. I sat in my therapist’s office, in my walking boot and hormonal sweat, with my oldest sibling there in person holding his phone with our mother on FaceTime. The woman who bore me told the therapist that it would be “best for Annie’s mental health if she fully financially supported herself,” and my multi-millionaire sibling agreed.
The therapist was utterly shocked, I was only half-surprised.
Perhaps with her highlighting that I never asked them for financial help until very ill, and it still being so early in grieving our Dad, and with her highlighting their enormous wealth, the therapist somehow persuaded them to give short-term help for my basic needs.
Again I was wrong about a potential worst case scenario. My mom and my brother didn’t honor the therapist’s plan for six months of financial support, and my rent money was late or less-than-agreed or had-to-be-groveled-for. So in May 2020 I moved back to the Big Island of Hawai’i, where I had lived before living in LA. This was my plan Y — find a low-labor work trade.
I found a farm with a potential for a work trade, and despite being only a couple months out of the walking boot felt it was overall more healing than staying in a studio apartment I may or may not have enough rent money for, across from a park that was taped off due to Covid restrictions. When I notified one of my siblings of finding a farm work trade, he notified the rest of the relatives who group messaged me they would not be providing any of the final month of support agreed on with the therapist.
I had planned to use the rent money for food.
While work-trading on a rural farm, my oldest sibling messaged me asking where to send my diamond made from our Father’s ashes. My Father never asked to become a diamond. I never sent my sibling the farm address. The mailbox was open, in a cluster of mailboxes in the middle of nowhere on the island. Plus, the most financially reasonable thing for me to have done with a diamond at that point was to pawn it for food money — and my sibling was aware.
I decided to go full no contact with my relatives. The family therapist we spoke with recommended I consider this more seriously, after telling me she could not professionally recommend doing more group sessions. She was not the first therapist to tell me to go no contact. Withholding the final month of a six month plan for basic life support, while I was very sick, while withholding money left to me from my Dad, while offering a diamond Dad didn’t ask to become to be sent to a rural mailbox, was my final straw to begin grieving all three of my siblings and my mother. A completely different and similar grieving process as grieving my Dad.
The distinctions between “family” and “relatives” became more clear everyday.
After a couple months, I had to stop work trading on the farm because of my ankle again. Even small plantings and weeding was too much. One of the owners of the farm kindly and graciously found computer work for him for me to do seated, which gave me more time while I scrambled with my legs up the wall in constant ankle and knee pain. I had both an Etsy Shop and Patreon for my podcast, though they didn’t make enough to even cover my phone bill.
Still unsure how to rest and heal my body, I found a room rental in town and started OnlyFans. I applied for EBT food stamps and Medicaid, which felt so surreal while sharing DNA with millionaires. I had also applied for unemployment in California in April 2020, as at first I didn’t want to clog up the system for people who weren’t directly related to millionaires who could help them. I was one of the millions who had identity theft on their unemployment, and so had to go through paperwork and hearings for it to finally come through in November 2020.
So back to September 2020, starting OnlyFans. I started very softcore, for all sorts of reasons. I was uncomfortable showing much of my body, both because of a history of eating disorders and body dysmorphia and because my body was physically hurting in so many ways. I enjoyed parts of posting, and being front-facing about it all. Sharing pictures and videos on my own terms felt healing for years of insecurities with my body and sexuality and preferences, like exposure therapy for all my conditioning to hide. It felt like a very specific art therapy project. I was confused about liking parts of something that was a plan Z last resort.
I was still too sick to teach yoga. I had considered and attempted various mindless computer jobs, and found myself completely incapable. After going no contact because of financial and emotional abuse, I was flooded with memories of sexual abuse I had repressed.
I had flashbacks of the sexual and physical abuses my whole life, though it wasn’t until the silence of no contact that I had the space to connect the dots. In college and after, I had projectile vomited multiple times during sex with men I loved and trusted. I remember talking about this and related things with therapists, unable to wrap my mind around how violently my body had responded.
Now, literally on my ass from tendon and nerve and hormonal and digestive and ovarian cyst pain, I had a lot of time to remember the flashbacks’ details.
While deep in my own tendon and hormone and trauma healing, I turned to escorting. Most of my emotional and thought space was on various sexual healings of my own, so extending it to include others felt less intimidating. My days were hazes of PTSD flashbacks with whatever grounding exercises I could do, whatever floor yoga and stretching I could do, and physical therapy. I had to budget basic things like grocery trips based on how much I could walk or carry. I couldn’t carry heavy things or go on long walks, and could manage even shorter beach walks because of the uneven surface. I was constantly stressing about my health and money, and feeling hopeless and powerless. Being sick is very expensive, and also a very challenging state to be in attempting to make money.
My ankle and knee and hips would hurt extra some days, and it wasn’t for another year when I was referred to a pelvic floor physical therapist that I knew I was also managing nerve pain.
I decided to get on SeekingArrangements again, now living on Maui. My disabilities and desperation made me more open to navigate the website, and I figured it would be very different than in LA. It was different, though I was still resistant to actually meet anyone in person.
I had two adulthood sexual assaults while living on Maui that triggered more flashbacks. I’m grateful for those assaults in a fucked up way, for the clarities they gifted me. Half awake feeling unequivocally, “I’ve experienced exactly this before.” Though I was more set back emotionally and financially, managing even more flashbacks of old memories flooding in and incapacitating me. So I took the plunge to meet someone in person.
The first client I ever had was in an open relationship, where his partner gave him permission for “paid play partners” that she approved of. We met on video chat, then I met him for coffee, then a few days later he was at my place. We talked, we fucked, he sent me a Venmo, he left.
I logged on my computer and paid a bill I was behind on, immediately.
My last escorting experience was with a man who was experimenting with his queerness, and wanted me to bring another man in. I invited a filming partner, as I had started making hardcore porn on OnlyFans and PornHub at that point. Before the filming partner came over, the client said “I’m so gay!” — while his dick was in my mouth between words of the dick about to be in his mouth — followed by “omg I’ve never said that before” and a distant stare. I felt that stare, back to a stare I’d experienced decades ago.
In the shower after I prayed that would be my last experience in person, and I could switch to all virtual. I knew an article would be coming out soon quoting me in New York Magazine, and I prayed it would give me the exposure to support myself with OnlyFans.
Then maybe I could give energy to my podcast and writing and singing and teaching yoga again, too.
Who knows how much financial freedom I could have had from online work outside of the sex industry without the various technological blocks I’ve experienced.
I had podcast ratings get deleted, and my personal home wifi repeatedly hacked, and more, before I ever started sex work. I learned even more about shadow-banning and more since starting sex work, as that community is the most targeted demographic. I also learned that sex work triggers tech companies because it is so powerful — sex work proliferates the internet and all technology, and perhaps all companies at their base. “The oldest profession.”
I survived sickness because of survival sex work.
Escorting: I’m not at all glad that it happened; I am grateful.”
“One time I found a $500k watch at my oldest siblings’ place, casually in an open kitchen cabinet. Another sibling told me how much the watch was, and then got bullied for disclosing to me. I asked why our 60-something Dad (with heart conditions) was making rent and car payments.”
“Surely retiring the father you claimed closeness with was more valuable than a watch????????”
“If our Dad had his needs taken care of, I would have supported multiple fancy watches”
“What would have been our last family trip, I chose not to go for various reasons. I asked our Dad to be given a check for whatever would have been spent on my fancy plane ticket and accommodations. Dad didn’t ever tell me about getting money from Sam, and got quiet about his Costa Rica dream”
“*one year after full no contact, year and half after the two sessions with the LMFT”
Note: I believe LMFT stands for Licensed Marriage Family Therapist, a therapist that “offer{s} expert guidance to individuals, couples, and families experiencing complex relationship-based issues” (source)
Note: in the link I provided, there’s a transcript. The transcript has this feature where it highlights the current word being spoken, with the idea being that you can “follow along” reading the transcript while you’re listening to the podcast. Unfortunately, the feature is broken.I think this is due to the inclusion of some ads/commercials at various points throughout the podcast, which create a mismatch between the transcript and the audio.) Specifically, the word highlighted in the transcript is usually a few minutes laterthan the actual audio.
Ellen Huet: “For this season, you’ll hear reporting done by me and my colleagues at Bloomberg who have been covering AI during the boom of the last few years. We interviewed some of the leading minds in AI to try to cut through the hype and understand the debate about whether AI will be a tool to improve human existence or to extinguish it. But this is also the story of Sam, the man at the center of it all, and we spoke with Sam’s friends, family, and collaborators to demystify him and how he rose to power. This first episode is all about how Sam got here. He’s a man who has always understood the importance of being in the right room at the right time, with exactly the right few people. The full story of Sam’s rise is important because understanding who he is and what he believes will shed light on an urgent question should we trust this man to oversee this technology? In the summer of twenty twenty three, about five months before he was fired, my colleague Emily Chang asked him this exact question at a Bloomberg conference...”
Note: I’ve tried to fix any typos in the transcript, but there may still be some I’ve missed.
...
Ellen Huet: “To get a better sense of the kind of person Sam is and how he got where he is now. I want to take you back to his adolescence. Sam had a privileged upbringing in Saint Louis. He’s the oldest of four siblings. His mom was a dermatologist and his dad was a real estate developer. He attended a private high school called John Burrows. There’s an anecdote about him from that period that sticks out. When some students wanted to boycott an assembly about sexuality, Sam stood up in front of the whole school and announced he was gay. It’s a pretty gutsy move for a teenager in the early two thousands, and unsurprisingly, Sam was smart.
Andy Abbot: “And generally Sam he was. He was an exceptional student, He was an exceptional writer, he was an exceptional big personality.”
Ellen Huet: “That’s Andy Abbott. He was one of Sam’s English teachers, and he’s now the head of school. And this is a pretty nerdy school where it’s cool to get good grades and be a high achiever. And even in that environment, Sam stood out.”
Andy Abbot: “Sam’s just a really natural leader, incredibly charismatic, curious guy. He’s atypical you know. He was the editor of the yearbook and he represented the school in the Model United Nations. He designed our website, you know, before we hired people to do our website. He could just do that stuff.
Ellen Huet: “Sam even played water polo.”
Andy Abbot: “He was pretty good {laughs.} I’m not a connoisseur, but I’m like, he was pretty good.”
Ellen Huet: “He remembers Sam as being really confident, and apparently for good reason. Sounds like Sam was just this exceptional kid.”
Andy Abbot: “Well, he’s the smartest guy in the room, and he’s charismatic. I remember thinking, and I’m just this is just an embarrassing confession. I hope he doesn’t go into technology. He’s so creative and he’s so, he’s such a good writer, and I hoped he would be an author or something like that. And I mean, nobody could have anticipated the magnitude of open Ai, but everybody knew that this guy’s better at most things than most of us are.”
Ellen Huet: “This speaks to a pattern that’ll become a crucial factor in Sam’s career. He’s very good at impressing people, especially the right people, older people, people with influence, people who are at a position to help him. Someone who knows Sam says his superpower is figuring out who’s in charge and charming them.”
Ellen Huet: “So we have young Sam. Even though he was a teenager, he acted like someone older with more agency and confidence. Adults found this quality of his admirable, and he acted like this toward his three younger siblings too. In a big New Yorker profile on Sam, his younger brother said that as kids, they used to play a board game called Samurai, and Sam always won because he declared himself the leader and said, I have to win and I’m in charge of everything. When Sam’s brother told this story, it was a jocular exchange. But Annie, their youngest sibling and only sister, sees it differently. These days, she’s estranged from Sam and the rest of her immediate family, but when she was a kid, she remembered that same quality of Sam’s wanting to be in charge, and to her it wasn’t funny, it was domineering.”
Annie Altman: “From my perspective, with the 9 year age difference, he very much wanted to be, and acted like, the third parent, and like being the older sibling in charge, in control.”
Ellen Huet: “For instance, even though the family was Jewish, they used to get a Christmas tree until Sam put his foot down.”
Annie Altman: “I don’t have memories of Christmas tree because when Sam got bar mitzvah’d at 13, he decided that we as a family unit were Jews and needed to no longer celebrate Christmas. There were no more Christmas trees.”
Ellen Huet: “When their dad passed away in 2018, Annie remembers that Sam dictated to each of his younger siblings how many minutes they could talk at the funeral.
Annie Altman: “To be at your dad’s funeral, to be like, oh, I’m the oldest sibling, so I get to choose how long all the sibling—which, it is bizarre, and there’s a level of it that’s so hilarious and so benign, surface-level, classic older sibling bullshit where it’s like, ‘all right, older sibling wanting to make up the rules to the game.’” Like there’s a level of it that’s very light and funny—and there’s also a level of it that’s very dark and deeply unsettling, of how does that behavior come up in other places if you believe that you get to be the authority on something that you are not the authority on.”
Ellen Huet: “A spokeswoman for OpenAI told us that Sam recalls these incidents differently, but she declined to elaborate.”
...
Ellen Huet: “Sam started building the startup {Loopt} in 2005. The iPhone didn’t exist yet, so Looped was trying to do this for flip phones and it was kind of hard to get traction. At one point early on, Sam’s company was in a desperate situation. They really needed to get a deal with a mobile carrier. They learned that Boost Mobile, which was part of Sprint, was looking to add a location feature and needed a partner, but they were about to sign with someone else, so Sam flew down to Boost’s headquarters in Irvine in southern California. When he tells the story, he says that he just showed up, waited outside the right executive’s office, and asked for just ten minutes. Here’s how that executive remembers it.”
Lowell Winer: “It’s ever recall I got a phone call from Sam and he was in Irvine, and he said that he explained who he was and what Looped was somebody at Sprint had told him to get in touch with us.”
Ellen Huet: “That’s Lowell Winer. He was at the time the head of business development for Boost. And he’s going to tell a story that has a few asides, but that I think captures a lot about what Sam was like.”
Lowell Winer: “Early on, we were a day or two away from signing a contract with another startup that was further along than Looped. He asked to come by that day, you know, which is incredibly unusual, but given the timing that, you know, we were at the eleventh hour we were at to sign this contract. He had come, you know, referred to us by our parent company, it was worth at least a meeting. So Sam shows up at the office with one of one or two other guys from Loopt. We go sit in the conference room, you know, we share what we were looking to do. Sam started to share about Loopt. He was I think nineteen at the time, you know, I think maybe in cargo short sitting cross legged in a in a chair in the conference room and just kind of holding court.”
Ellen Huet: “I want to pause here for a second on this cargo shorts detail. For a lot of Sam’s young life, he was a cargo shorts. Devotee wore them all the time. People kind of poked fun at him for it, to the point where he felt the need to address it on a podcast called Masters of Scale.”
Sam Altman: “Honestly, I don’t think they’re that ugly, and I find them incredibly convenient. Like I I, you can like put a lot of stuff like I like to. I’d still read paperback books. I like paperback books. I like to carry on around with me. I have like an iPhone seven plus, which is kind of like works really well in cargo pockets. I carry like computer chargers, cables. They’re just like, you know, efficient. Why people care about that so much that I can’t tell you.”
Ellen Huet: “That last comment? That’s very Sam to remark that the things normal people might talk about don’t make sense or aren’t rational. It’s like he has no patience for the things most of us might think are funny. He has more important things to think about anyway. Here he is a nineteen year old in a meeting with mobile network executives wearing cargo shorts, sitting cross legged in a conference room chair. Even though this encounter was almost twenty years ago, Lowell remembers vividly what Sam looked like in that moment, because it was such an odd picture.
Ellen Huet (host of the podcast): “Today, we’re going to start on a drive in Hawaii.”
Annie Altman: “We’re on north Shore, going deeper into the jungle on the north shore, so we’re passing twin falls right now.
Ellen Huet: “I’m driving through the lush green forests of Maui. Annie Altman, Sam Altman’s little sister is sitting in the passenger seat. You heard from her briefly in the first episode.”
...
Ellen Huet: “We’re taking a tour of the different places Annie has moved around in the last couple of years, driving down dirt roads to look at cabins and houses hidden behind enormous tropical plants.”
..,
Ellen Huet: “For much of the past two years, Annie hasn’t been able to afford a stable place to live.”
Annie Altman: “The place you just passed is one of the places I stayed at longer-term in all of the houselessness...{I spent} two months on a newly-built, {with} no running water or no electricity, house, at the far end, back, of the property.”
Ellen Huet: “And I think she’s an important part of Sam’s story.”
Annie Altman: “And at the time I had nowhere to stay and no rent money, certainly no deposit money, and barely enough room, barely enough money for rent.”
Ellen Huet: “Recently, over the course of just a year, she moved twenty two times, and that’s on average about twice a month. Sometimes she has stayed places for a week at a time, or even just a night or two. Some of them have been illegal rentals without running water. She says she’s slept on floors and friends’ houses. She stayed with strangers when she didn’t have another option.”
...
Annie Altman: “The man who lived in the front house messaged me on Instagram, and I stayed in his kids’ room the week that they weren’t there, and then slept on the floor in the common room the week that the kids were there.
Annie Altman: “I was houseless. I didn’t have somewhere to go.”
Annie Altman: “I stayed in this cabin with the slanty roof right there for three months.”
{A podcast host}: “How many different places have you lived in that didn’t have running water?”
Annie: “Maybe five-ish? Five or six? I don’t know.”
Ellen Huet: “Meanwhile, thousands of miles away in San Francisco, her brother Sam was having a spectacular year in 2023. The success of ChatGPT had launched OpenAI into the stratosphere. Sam was named CEO of the Year by Time magazine. He spent months flying around the globe talking to world leaders about AI.”
...
Ellen Huet: “On stage, on podcasts and interviews, people kept turning to Sam for answers. They were asking him what our AI future would hold. In May of that year, he confidently suggested a future where no one is poor. It’s an idea he’s talked about for years, and the remarks show that his tune hasn’t changed despite growing renown and wealth.
Sam Altman: “One thing I think we all could agree on is that we just shouldn’t have poverty in the world.”
...
Ellen Huet: “It sounds wonderful, almost utopian. But Sam was saying on stage that everyone should have enough money, enough food, everyone should have a place to live, while his own sister was struggling with homelessness. I want to believe Sam’s promises about abundance, but Annie’s story complicates a lot of the things Sam has projected about the future.”
...
Ellen Huet: “Sam is a savvy guy. As his profile has gotten bigger after he helped build the world’s leading AI company, he has stopped saying things like AI will kill us all. Instead, he talks about how society will be profoundly changed, but overall it will be for the better. Since his newfound chat GPT fame, he has shifted toward presenting himself and by extension, open AI, as more middle of the road. Sam is allowed to change his views, but people have also so complain to me in private that Sam has a tendency to talk out of both sides of his mouth. He’s good at telling people what they want to hear in that moment, so it’s not surprising that if it’s advantageous for him to seem more moderate, that he would start to sound that way.”
Ellen Huet: “What really strikes me is that Sam positions himself as the visionary behind this AI that might put us all out of work, and the visionary behind systems that will save us from that chaos. He’s offering fixes to the problems that his own technology will create. Imagine a future where Sam Altman’s company has invented AI so powerful that it upends the entire labor economy. We no longer work for money. Instead, we get monthly checks from Sam Altman’s income distribution system. I can imagine that his intentions might be good, and that he wants to make a difference here. But what Sam’s proposing is ending poverty through systems overseen by him, basically, and that’s asking us to put a huge amount of trust in him. Remember, Sam is really good at gaining power. He has a deep drive to be in charge. His company has made promises about adhering to certain principles and then moved away from them. It brings me back to this question we asked in episode one, what I think is the key question of this series. Should we trust this person?”
Ellen Huet: “Like we said earlier, there’s a part of Sam’s life that really complicates this image of him. It’s the story of his little sister Annie. She says she lives in poverty. Sometimes she struggles with homelessness. She says she survives by doing sex work.Sam is pitching this dream future in which universal basic income will protect everyone who needs it. That sounds lovely in theory, but when it’s held up next to Annie’s messy, everyday reality, that promise starts to sound a bit hollow. Housing insecurity has defined Annie’s life for the past few years. This is a complex and sensitive situation, so I wanted to hear from her myself.”
Annie Altman: “In my experience, it’s not only hard to do anything when you are housing insecure, it is impossible. I haven’t had a typical day in four years because of how much energy both physically like looking for places or doing things, or looking for jobs and emotionally goes into housing insecurity. It has been the single biggest energy output of my past year.”
Ellen Huet: “In person, Annie is upbeat and smiley. She has good suggestions for health food stores on Maui. She has the word love tattooed across her knuckles. She makes a podcast, Hello and Welcome to the Annie Altman Show All Humans or Human Podcast, and posts videos of her singing on YouTube.”
...
Ellen Huet: “Sometimes, I and to better understand her story, I want to rewind to her childhood. When we heard from Annie briefly in the first episode, she talked about Sam’s domineering attitude within their family, how he dictated they wouldn’t have Christmas trees and put himself in charge of how long each sibling could speak at their dad’s funeral. Their family has three boys. Sam’s the oldest, then Max, then Jack. Annie is the youngest, nine years younger than Sam and the only girl. Her brothers loved science, math, games, nerdy stuff. She was always the artistic, sensitive one. Even when they were children, she sometimes felt like the odd one out, and as they became adults, the bonds between the brothers tightened both personally and professionally. While Sam was running YC, Jack founded a software company that was funded by YC. Jack and Max also both worked with Sam, helping run his investment fund with money from Peter Teel. Then all three started another investment fund together in which they used Sam’s personal wealth. The three brothers lived together in San Francisco, brothers, coworkers, roommates, a tight, messy knot of family, business and money. Annie, on the other hand, was not part of the Altman family brand. With each new step in her life, she seemed to veer farther away from the path she felt was expected of her. She completed pre med requirements, but decided not to pursue that further. She did improv classes, stand up comedy, yoga, teacher training. She said her dad was supportive of this turn away from a more traditional path. Her mom, who was a physician, was less excited.”
Annie Altman: “My siblings and mother were very judgmental about the shift and also very “This is just a phase.” I was an am at total daddy’s girl. With my mother, there was closeness only when I was doing what she wanted me to do, which is a story {that} sadly, I feel like a lot of people can relate to.”
Ellen Huet: “Just a note. We reached out to Sam, his siblings, and his mom for comment in this episode. His mom, Connie Gibstine, responded with this statement:”
Connie Gibstine: “We love Annie and are very concerned about her well being. Over the years, we have offered her financial support and help and continue to offer it today. Navigating the balance between providing support without enabling self-destructive behavior for a family member with mental health struggles is extraordinarily difficult. We only want the best for Annie and hope everyone will treat her with compassion.”
Ellen Huet: “In 2018, Annie’s father died suddenly of a heart attack, and the grief hit her {Annie} hard. Meanwhile, she also started dealing with some chronic health issues, including tendonitis in her ankle that made it difficult to do work that required standing. She quit her job. She was still mourning her dad. She had gotten some life insurance money after he died, but when that ran out a year later, she still found herself in a desperate financial situation. In order to pay rent, she started selling her furniture. She says she asked her family directly for money to pay rent and cover groceries.”
Annie Altman: “I asked my mother for help and she said no, And then {I} asked Sam and he was told to say no because of her {Connie} wanting him to say no, and he’s a grown man in his thirties, {worth} millions of dollars.”
Ellen Huet: “Now, Sam and his family have given Annie money at times, but she says it always came with heavy conditions that made her nervous. At one point, Sam wanted her to get back on Zoloft, an antidepressant, which she had started as a teen but had stopped later on. She {Annie} forwarded me an email from Sam where he asked her to share her bank statements and to allow him and his mom to sit in on some of her therapy sessions in exchange for her rent and medical expenses being covered. She felt like it was his way of exerting leverage or power over her. Of course, Sam can spend his money as he pleases, but again, he’s on stage espousing the virtues of universal basic income—giving money away for free, unconditionally, -- and Annie says he didn’t do the same here for her. There were times when I’d gone back and forth about what to include from Annie’s story. It’s a very personal, messy family situation, and I’ll confess that on occasion I’ve doubted some unrelated things she’s told me. But also, I’ve looked through corroborating emails and documents. We drove to a lot of places Annie lived, and I met people she lived with. So in late 2019, when she asked for help and says she was told no, she turned to something she considered a last resort. To make money, she started sex work. She made an account on a sugar daddy dating website where people trade money for companionship and often sex.”
Annie: “I was just...I was in a desperate place. I mean...people who have been in a position like this ever know that when you’re in a place of selling furniture, you’re in a desperate position of “I’m out options.” This is a ‘plan Z’ I would not be doing this if plans ‘A’ through ‘I’ had worked out in any capacity.”
Ellen Huet: “The first thing she tried was video chatting with a middle-aged man. She flashed him on camera and he sent her money over Zelle. She posted videos on OnlyFans and PornHub. She also did in-person sex work for two years. She says she didn’t want to, but it was the work that she was able to fit into her unpredictable schedule of dealing with her health issues. Her lack of stable income, led to a long period of housing insecurity. At times, she lived with sex work clients, or even with strangers from the internet. Her sex work contributed to her precarious housing. She didn’t have pay stubs or regular income, which limited the kind of leases she could get. It felt like this interconnected web, exactly the kind of vicious cycle that something like universal basic income tries to break.”
Annie Altman: “If I had a security deposit in my bank account - {I} never would have lived with this man, not, not even a little bit of a chance, would I have lived with this man. There’s some unhealthy sex work experiences, and I’ve also had very traumatizing experiences from in-person work that would not have happened if I had secure housing. I’m still in and, have been so long in, survival mode that it really shifts everything. It really shifts everything. Times when it’s been really like...places...like staying just for a week and a half {somewhere} and then the floor for a week, and then someone’s place for a night, and then a floor for a week—in those places of really moving that much in a short period of time, there’s no—I had no energy for anything else. Really feeling a sense of helplessness and powerlessness that I have never experienced, ever.”
Ellen Huet: “It’s not a clean cut situation. In twenty twenty two, Sam offered to buy Annie a house, but she says it wasn’t going to be in her name, and the conditions made her uncomfortable.”
Annie Altman: “It became clear to me that it was not an offer for my house. It was an offer for a house of Sam’s—or a lawyer of his—that I would be allowed to live in.”
Ellen Huet: “She felt like it was a throwback to Sam’s attempts to get her on Zoloft and to peer into her bank statements, so she said no. I do want to pause on this because I know it may sound illogical. After all, it would have been a place to live. But from her point of view, Sam had exerted control over her throughout their lives, and this seemed like one more attempt to control her. During those conversations, she was clear with Sam about the hardships she had endured in the past couple of years.”
Annie Altman: “I told him over the series of those phone calls too, that I had started sex work, and distinctly remember when I first told him about doing sex work and he said, quote, ‘Good.’”
Ellen Huet: “Annie was stung, because she remembers that he didn’t ask anything more about it. Like she was sharing something that was painful for her and he was blowing past it.”
Annie Altman: “To hear your little sister tell you she’s doing something she doesn’t want to do related to sex, and for the response to be ‘Good.’ So I was like, ‘Oh, you’re glad that I’m starting to post on OnlyFans. It sounds ‘good’ to you because I’m supporting myself, even if I’m telling you I’m doing this as a plan Z because I don’t know what else to do.’”
Ellen Huet: “A person close to Sam says that Sam remembers the conversation differently. Annie and Sam are mostly estranged. After that conversation, she kept living in Hawaii, struggling in obscurity. Meanwhile, Sam was ascendant. He was doing world tours. {He was} CEO of the year {in Time Magazine.} He officially became a billionaire. Most of the world had no idea Annie Altman existed, let alone that she was depending on OnlyFans for survival. But last fall, New York Magazine published a profile of Sam, and the journalist, Elizabeth Weil, interviewed Annie. The article was the first time a lot of people found out Sam even had a sister, myself included.”
Annie Altman: “Some of the trippiest messages I got from reporters, when that article first came out, were reporters who have watched every interview Sam has ever done, saying ‘He’s never mentioned a sister.’”
Ellen Huet: “Annie worries that because she’s basically invisible in Sam’s public life life, especially compared to his tight relationship with his brothers, reporters won’t take her story seriously.”
Annie Altman: “That they will then question my validity, or {be like} ‘Oh, well, she’s crazy. Maybe...he’s just not talking about her because she’s so mentally unstable, and so now let’s recycle the ‘Annie’s crazy’ narrative and ‘This is why she can’t be trusted’, or ‘We should just ignore her.’”
Ellen Huet: “In the days leading up to the article coming out, New York Magazine reached out to Sam and his family and OpenAI for fact-checking and to confirm details. So Sam knew the story was going to mention Annie. And then the day before the article ran, something spurred Sam to make an unexpected move. He emailed Annie.”
Annie Altman: “And the night before it {the Elizabeth Weil article} came out was Yom Kippur --
Ellen Huet: “—the Jewish day of forgiveness—”
Annie Altman: “Sam emailed me, ‘no subject’ and in all lowercase, and said, ‘hi annie. in the spirit of it almost being yom kippur, i wanted to apologize and ask for forgiveness for something. i should have kept sending you money without conditions even though our family had concerns; i was in a tough position of wanting to let mom drive decisions as the parent and seeing how much stress you were causing her (and also agreeing it would be better for everyone if you were able to support yourself, and thinking that you needed medical help) and it being clear you just weren’t really able to function very well. still, i made the wrong call and should just have just kept supporting you; i sincerely apologize. i hope you find peace.’ There’s no mention of this article that’s coming out tomorrow, and there’s no mention of the fact checking that he just went through.”
Ellen Huet: “Annie felt that the timing of this email was really telling. That for all this time, while Annie was staying in the background, Sam didn’t feel any need to apologize. Then, just as she’s about to exert a little bit of power over him, by complicating his image, he reaches out, and invokes their shared Jewish heritage to ask for forgiveness. I asked Annie how she felt about Sam speaking publicly about universal basic income and ending poverty when he hasn’t done the same for her.”
Annie Altman: “It was a very big slap in the face. It feels embarrassing to be related to him. It’s beyond depressing and heartbreaking and disappointing that someone who I thought had a different moral compass, or who I thought would be there for me when I needed someone and was really sick, wasn’t...in the same way I’m gonna be grieving my dad for the rest of my life, I’m gonna be grieving Sam for the rest of my life. And the sadness of...of someone who saw me in a walking boot and didn’t say, ‘How can I help you.’ It’s why I use the term ‘sibling’ and not ‘brother.’”
Ellen Huet: “Even though Annie’s story is really complicated, I think it’s relevant to all of us. Because when Sam is going around talking about our AI future, he acknowledges that AI could take our jobs and upend society and money as we know it. And he says he’ll come up with a solution for us: universal basic income. But, when he’s faced with the messy reality of his own sister, suddenly it’s not so simple. In public, he is literally saying that there shouldn’t be poverty. {That} money will be given away to everyone. In private, when Annie asked for help, he didn’t come through for her in the way she needed.”
Why so much attention for my sibling who went there, and not for me? Wouldn’t be about donations, would it?
Would love to see how much money you were given while I was navigating my Dad’s Trust being withheld, tendon/nerve/ovarian cyst pain, and homelessness—want to share?”
Didn’t fully grasp the meanness until I was working as a personal care attendant, and the nonverbal wheelchair bound client cut me out a magazine quote that said “YOU CAN!” and gave it me with genuine love ❤️”
I’m still curious how grown men allowed their mother to make their financial decisions, and not help their sister (when allowed to call me that) with groceries when I was very physically ill”
“Okay, I’ll text her. I’d like to change the arrangement somehow to involve less checking in, as I’m in agreement with your and (especially) Sam’s request for us to take more space. I’d like us to please talk in the future, Sam more too, about why she is able to make any of your financial decisions”
“For context: Connie (biological mother) kicked me off her health insurance less than three months after Dad died, when I was 24 and could have stayed on her work one for two more years”
My note: I’m pretty sure this Tweet from Annie is directed at her mother, Connie.
“You birthed me and raised me, abused me and let others abuse me. Sure you know me well, and I know your bullshit just as well, thanks.
Haven’t talked with you in over four years, and my PTSD is the best it’s ever been. Please thank your mom for me, for reprimanding you for neglecting me.”
My note: I think Connie’s mom was Marjori Mae “Peggy” Francis Gibstine, based on her obiturary.
“Can you imagine how much more I’ll scare them now that I’m getting my tendon/nerve/ovaries cared for, not sucking dick for rent money while my Dad’s Trust was completely withheld, and learning it’s safe and allowed for me to share my story on my terms 🥰”
“If the multiverse is real, I’d love to meet the version of me who did run away to the circus at 5 years old after telling her birth mother about wanting to end this life thing and being touched by older siblings, and said “mother” decided to instead protect her sons and demand to receive therapy and chores only from her female child.”
“My last in-person client came out to me as gay followed with “omg I haven’t ever said that out loud before,” as I flashbacked and did my best to stay in “work mode.” Will be more/less something when less ptsd-y”
“Yeah I was super sick...and houseless...and sucking “parts” for...{money?}...and so now—well, first of all, ’cause that was some outrageously good fuckery (abuse), and—now I’m un-fuck-with-able!”
“Reposting for you to read before you reach out about OpenAI and ChatGPT.
I’m just at the light at the end of tunnel of four years of being sick and broke and shadowbanned. I’d do it again to go no contact and feel physically and emotionally safe for the first time in my life.
Yes business life and personal life and different, and also “how you do anything is how you do everything.” Please vote with your dollars, your attention, and your truth.
Here, Annie provides a set of screen captures (in the form of an Instagram story called “Hi censorship”) showing instances she’s identified as shadowbanning / unusual activity surrounding various posts she’s made on social media.
“Victim mentality or survivor mentality? Did that happen “to you” or “for you”? (Note to watch out for spiritual bypassing and erasure of real experiences in your ~reflecting~)
I survived Achilles and posterior tibial tendinopathy. I survived posterior tibial nerve pain that radiated to my ankle, knee, and pelvis. I survived PCOS and those particular ovarian cysts that got intense enough to warrant scans. I survived IBS and every single disordered eating game.
I survived listening to my body fall apart as it told me the stories I had not yet been ready to hear the full depths of. I survived 18 months of nearly all-day PTSD flashbacks of childhood assaults.
I survived my Dad’s will being withheld for over a year, and money he left me being withheld by millionaires relatives. I survived the grief of my decision to go no-contact with said relatives.
I survived being shadowbanned across multiple accounts, while attempting to make a livable income online. I survived an in-person profession that was a plan Z last resort, and learned and was therapized by it.
I survived every form of ab*sive behavior. I survived relatives telling and showing me I was “crazy” for pointing out said ab*se.
I survived grieving my Dad and somehow got even closer with him, and yes forever grieving.
Hello Internet. I’ve gotten myself into a very difficult position, as I’ve been unable to work as much as I’ve needed due to my mental health and physical health. I put myself in a financially risky position to pursue my one woman show and podcast, and then had unexpected costs with health and technical difficulties. I’m dealing with the consequences of my own decisions and I need help. My Venmo is @Annie-Altman if you’re able.
In this calendar year I observed the one year anniversary of my dad’s death, discussed another mental health label to add to my collection, got diagnosed with PCOS (scans to rule out adrenal tumors, pelvic ultrasounds, blood tests), had IBS flare up again, had a long-term achilles injury flare up the longest I’ve experienced it, had almost all of my personal accounts have attempted or successful logins, had people logging on my wifi and other wifi issues (4 new modems, had excessive cell phone service issues, the pity-party list continues. I’m beyond my capacity of what I can handle alone. I—”
Annie’s post:
“#fbf to a silly and sad Annie, “putting herself in a position” to save other people who were harming her.
I’ve since learned part of personal accountability can be noticing my own savior complex, and allowing someone else to experience the consequences of their decisions.
Third sentence there ought to have read ‘My millionaire relatives are refusing to give me help, and are withholding money from my dead Dad that I quit a job because of, while sick and in paperwork process to receive what he left in my name.’”
“Almost all of my social media accounts have been/are shadowbanned, and this is an unfortunate truth for many. OpenAI would be tagged here also if they had a account.
It started for me before any swork {sex work} started. I don’t mean that this account would be at 100K or some set number. I do mean it makes no sense to be unable to pass 1K, with over 100 podcasts and other creations, and consistent posting.
Old videos wil {sic} get reduced to something like 2 views on @instagram and @youtube , podcast rating get frequently deleted on @apple @applepodcasts , people will get automatically unfollowed, posts will be restricted in who sees them, and more.
It’s been really demoralizing on a lot of levels, which is part of the purpose of shadowbanning. The other purpose of shadowbanning is direct repression of ways I can support myself with my art, like my @etsy and @patreon , or podcast ads for @anchor.fm .”
“Patek Philippe’s first commercial manufacturing perpetual calendar was the reference 1526. This is the ultimate permanent calendar for most enthusiasts, including the collectors. Over the years, numerous designers have produced alternate calendar displays. However, nothing has come anywhere close to the 1526’s clear, readable, and visually beautiful dial.”
“The Patek Philippe Perpetual Calendar case is made of pure 18k yellow gold and is 34mm in diameter by 11.5mm in thickness. The acrylic crystal is spherical while the back of the casing snaps shut...The casing body is brush polished, while the snapback is finished. The lugs have a modest downward arch—besides, the brown leather strap with Patek Philippe clasp in 18k gold. The calendar info is also displayed on the dial in an ideal manner.”
“The dial has a lovely, homogeneous eggshell-colored patina that complements the rose gold color of the casing wonderfully. The logo and scales are solid enamel and are as polished as a refined connoisseur could anticipate. The gold mark beneath the top left lug is clear, and the signature on the right ring is profound and prominent, indicating that the case is strong and resistant to scratch.”
“In addition, the Patek Philippe Perpetual Calendar dial is 100 percent genuine and untouched. It is matte silver in color with attached golden Arabic numerals and hour indicator dots and a written minutes scale around the outside. The golden hands are also distinctive and are leaf style, commonly known as Feuille hands in Patek jargon. The supplemental second’s hand is a tiny version of the golden leaf style. The blued hand along the outside chapter enclosing the moonphase window, whereas the day and month are presented under the 12 o’clock position, indicates the date. The original moonphase disc is blue with gold stars as well as a moon.”
“During the model’s history, just 165 pieces with references to 1526 perpetual calendars were produced...Patek Philippe 1526s are incredibly uncommon.”
“If you’re wondering what watch Sam Altman wears, at least one of his choices appears to be a Greubel Forsey Invention Piece 1.”
“In the comparison below, the watch was flipped to put the crown on the right side. From there, you can see the long tourbillon bridge and main dial location seem to match the layout of the Greubel Forsey.
“Let’s look at the overall layout side-by-side. The image below includes a Greubel Forsey image with a similar red gold/silver dial configuration.”
The watch may stick out prominently from Mr. Altman’s sleeve, but that doesn’t make it any easier to identify from the video. However, the thickness, short lugs, and bar across the lower left are definitely leaning towards the Invention Piece 1.”
“Not to mention, pieces like this carry retail prices so far from obtainability that the average watch collector finds them to be fun to gawk at and read about, but that’s about it – the way car people might drool over images of the Ferrari Daytona SP3 or Lamborghini Sian (although Greubel Forsey is more along the lines of a Pininfarina Battista or Pagani Utopia).”
“The price is not the only limitation in acquiring an Invention Piece 1… there were only 33 total watches available in the entire world.”
“If you’re going to spend that much on a timepiece, you probably want people to see it. The Invention Piece 1 is the perfect wingman in that regard. Boasting a diameter of 43.5mm and standing tall at almost 17mm in thickness...At about 13 seconds into the video… wait a minute, is that Sam Altman doing a classic watch geek move of looking down at his wrist to make sure his watch is exposed?”
“The Invention Piece 1 is available in 18K white gold, 5N red gold, or platinum. 11 pieces were produced in each metal type.”
I found the date of publication and the last modified date using (once again) Inspect Element:
“To Sam Altman’s many titles — ousted-then-returned OpenAI CEO, former Y Combinator president, universal basic income enthusiast, part-time Hawaii resident — we must add one more: Watch guy.”
“Altman owns a watch so rare that only 33 were ever made, according to luxury watch website KeepTheTime. After spotting Altman wearing a chunky gold watch at a Wired event in 2018, BI asked the site for assistance identifying the distinctive timepiece. (BI, which went way too hard, also asked for help from a subreddit for watch enthusiasts, a longtime watch salesperson at Tiffany’s San Francisco location, watch experts at several high-end auction houses, and people lurking in the Discord of the open-source intelligence site Bellingcat.)”
“The watch, the Greubel Forsey Invention Piece 1 in red gold, was priced at 520,000 Swiss Francs when it was released in 2008, a spokesperson for Greubel Forsey confirmed. At the exchange rate of the time, that works out to roughly $480,000.”
“Altman has also flaunted his more modest Patek Philippe Perpetual Calendar 1526, one of which sold at Christie’s for $106,250 in 2017.”
“Altman posted a photo of the timepiece on the r/watches subreddit in May 2018, with a ❤️ emoji, and was spotted wearing the watch at a congressional hearing this year where he testified to the need for AI regulation.”
“Altman’s pricey watch collection is just one part of his ultra-luxurious lifestyle. Business Insider previously reported that he went on an 18-month, $85 million real estate shopping spree in recent years. He was spotted driving a red McLaren F1 around northern California this month. A similar car was expected to sell for up to $15 million at auction in 2015. Altman also reportedly owns a Lexus LFA racing car, one of which recently sold for $1.1 million at auction.”
Sam Altman’s sister, Annie Altman, claims Sam has severely abused her
Updates as of November 2024: I’ve added in a substantial amount of new information that Annie and other sources have provided since the day that I originally made this post (October 7, 2023.) I added some in-text citations so it’s easier to see how I’ve constructed the Timeline below. I also changed my Twitter username for reasons I provided here. If you want to see what this post looked like before I made these updates, it’s available here on the Internet Archive.
Content warning: Sexual assault, abuse, child abuse, suicidal ideation, severe mental illnesses/trauma, graphic (sexual) language.
This post aims to aggregate a collection of statements made by Annie Altman, the (lesser-known) younger sister of Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI.
In these statements, Annie asserts that she has suffered various severe forms of abuse from Sam Altman throughout her life, including being sexually abused by him as a child. She also states that she has experienced abuse from her other brother Jack Altman, though to a lesser extent.
Annie has stated that the forms of abuse she’s endured include sexual, physical, emotional, verbal, financial, technological (shadowbanning, hacking), pharmacological (forced Zoloft), and psychological abuse.
I do not attempt to speak for Annie; rather, my goal is to provide an objective and unbiased aggregation of this situation, and the claims Annie has made.
I have made this post because I think that it may be important to be aware of the existence of the claims that Annie has made about Sam, given his strong influence over the development and alignment of increasingly powerful AI models. I have also made this post because I think that Annie’s claims are not covered well elsewhere—at least, at the time of this post’s writing.
Disclaimer: I have tried my best to assemble all relevant information I could find related to this (extremely serious) topic, but this is likely not a complete collection of information regarding the Sam Altman’s alleged abuse of Annie Altman.
An outline of this post
Note: I am awe that this post is rather long. However, most of the content is summarized in the Timeline section (~20 minute read.)
The Timeline section gives my attempt at a timeline detailing Annie’s claims in chronological order. It provides a summary of most the information in the post. After the Timeline section, I then provide other sources & references, and excerpts from them, which I used to create the Timeline.
Here is an outline o the post:
Timeline
Note
Timeline
Have Sam or his other family members responded to these claims?
My perspective
Opening Comments
How to interpret these claims?
Things I find Questionable/Unexplained
Anticipating and Responding to Potential Objections
Responding to Objections/Comments I’ve Seen From Others
Concluding Remarks
I made an account on X (Twitter) (to reach out to Annie & Sam)
Disclaimer
List of Annie’s various online accounts
References, and key excerpts from them
Wristwatch-Related References
Timeline
Note
This post provides my understanding of Annie’s claims, and the situation. It’s definitely possible that I’ve (unintentionally) gotten things wrong, misinterpreted things, or been biased in how I’ve covered this situation, despite my best efforts not to be.
Unlike other journalists & reporters who’ve covered Annie’s allegations, I’ve never personally met or interviewed Sam, Annie, or any of their family in-person. Everything in this post is just information that I found on the Internet.
I’ve used citations & links heavily throughout the post, in an attempt to make it clear how I’ve come to my current understanding. By all means, go look at the source material and references yourself, and form your own understanding.
In an attempt to make this post clearer and easier to read, I’ve used “collapsible” sections, like this one.
You can click on the little ▶ triangle icon at the top-left of each collapsible section to un-collapse it, and reveal its hidden content. You can then click the ▼ icon again to re-collapse the section, and hide its content.
Note: there is still important information in many of the “dropdown” parts. A few of them are empty, and a few contain less-important information, but most actually do have additional information that you should read.
In other words—don’t misread this as “the information in the dropdown sections is redundant/irrelevant.”
You should still read the information in all of the dropdown sections.
My ideal form of the content in this post would be a giant bullet list where you can “toggle” or “collapse” a single bullet point and sub-bullet point.
However, LessWrong (understandably) doesn’t offer this feature. (It’s more something you’d find in a note-taking app or something.)
So, using these dropdown sections is the closest I can get to that ideal.
I’ve also added some in-text citations.
I’ve included them so that you can more easily see how I’ve constructed this timeline from the source material that I reference throughout this post (e.g. news articles, posts on social media, etc.)
Each in-text citation is linked to a different part of this post where I’ve provided the corresponding reference.
They look like this:
[AA19c]
[EW23a]
And their meanings are like this:
[AA19c] -- “Annie Altman, 2019, c”
[EW23a] -- “Elizabeth Weil, 2023, a”
Specifically:
The first two upper-case letters stand for the first and last name of the author of the reference.
Example: “AA” for “Annie Altman”.
The two numbers that follow give the year in which the reference was authored.
Example: “19” for “2019″.
The final lower-case letter doesn’t have a specific meaning. It’s just for distinguishing between different in-text citations that would otherwise look the same.
Example: “[AA19c]” vs “[AA19b]”.
Note: some of the links on these in-text citations are currently outdated and/or don’t work. For now, just use Command-F/Control-F, or scroll down manually, to see the corresponding refernece for each in-text citation.
I’ve purposefully aired on the side of potentially adding a bit “too much” detail in this timeline, as I’d rather do that than accidentally leave out information in a way that makes it hard to understand other events in the timeline.
There are various events in the timeline that, when you first read them, may seem “unnecessary” or “not relevant.” But, generally, I include things in the timeline for a reason. Often, in this timeline, earlier events sort of “set up” events that follow years later. You often need to understand various events that occur earlier on in the timeline before you can understand various events that come later.
Throughout this post, I’ve bolded various segments that I feel are particularly important or relevant.
Timeline
April 22, 1985: Sam Altman is born, to parents Connie Gibstine (mother) and Jerry Altman (father.)
1987: Max Altman is born.
1989: Jack Altman is born.
1994: Annie Altman is born.
The birth years of Max, Jack, and Annie can be deduced from (e.g.) [EW23a], this article, this tweet, etc.
⟹Sam is ~9 years older than Annie, Max is ~7 years older than Annie, Jack is ~5 years older than Annie.
Connie Altman (front left), Jerry Altman (front middle), Annie Altman (front right.)
Source: https://x.com/anniealtman108/status/1787162346047304103
Jack Altman, Jerry Altman, (I’m not sure who the elderly woman is), Annie Altman, Sam Altman, Connie Gibstine (Sam and Annie’s mother), Max Altman
Source: https://www.businessinsider.com/sam-altman-sister-brothers-husband-parents
Sam Altman, Annie Altman, Jack Altman, Max Altman
Source: https://www.businessinsider.com/sam-altman-sister-brothers-husband-parents
Image source: https://x.com/anniealtman108/status/1727224272522023287
Image source: https://x.com/anniealtman108/status/1727224272522023287
Beginning when Annie is a baby [AA24n] -- i.e. beginning somewhere between ~1994 and ~1997 -- Annie repeatedly experiences various forms of abuse from her biological siblings. That is, from her 3 brothers: Sam Altman, Jack Altman, and Max Altman. It seems that most of the abuse that Annie has experienced from her 3 brothers has come from Sam.
On November 13, 2021, Annie wrote: “I experienced sexual, physical, emotional, verbal, financial, and technological abuse from my biological siblings, mostly Sam Altman and some from Jack Altman.” [AA21a]
September 10, 2022, Annie wrote: “Sam and Jack, I know you remember my Torah portion was about Moses forgiving his brothers. “Forgive them father for they know not what they’ve done” Sexual, physical, emotional, verbal, financial, and technological abuse. Never forgotten.” [AA22a]
Somewhere between ~1994 and ~1997, (Annie’s brothers, I presume?) play “dwarf tossing” with Annie when she is a baby [AA24n]. Annie’s grandmother witnesses this, and condemns it. [AA24n]
“Things Grandma was right about...”dwarf tossing” with my baby body was wrong” [AA24n]
Note on how I determined “between ~1994 and ~1997”:
It seems that definitions vary regarding the age range in which a human is considered a “baby”.
Some say “0-12 months.” (Example.)
Others say “0-3 years.” (Example.)
So, I just went with the conservative definition of “0-3 years.”
Thus, because Annie was born in ~1994, the abuse, which perhaps started with “dwarf tossing” of Annie when she was a baby (0-3 years old), and then escalated over time, must have began between ~1994 and ~1997.
Annie has also written that her grandmother (who I think was Marjori Mae “Peggy” Francis Gibstine) reprimanded Connie for neglecting Annie—see [AA24p].
~1996: Sam and Jack’s grandmother gets each of them some stock in a company related to something they like. Sam is given stock in Apple, given his interest in computers. Jack is given stock in Applebee’s, given that he was, as he puts it, “heavier as a child, as {Sam} like{s} to point out” [YC16a].
In one of the Altman family pictures above, from when Jack was younger, Jack does indeed look a bit heavier:
Connie Altman (front left), Jerry Altman (front middle), Annie Altman (front right.)
Source: https://x.com/anniealtman108/status/1787162346047304103
Jack was a “very tired kid.”
The question here being, “why?”
A possible answer
~August 1997: Sam, age 12, begins his time at the John Burroughs School (JBS) in St. Louis, Missouri, staring 7′th grade.
Timeline:
August 1997 - June 1998: 7th grade (for Sam, at JBS)
August 1998 - June 1999: 8th grade
August 1999 - June 2000: 9th grade
August 2000 - June 2001: 10th grade
August 2001 - June 2002: 11th grade
August 2002 - June 2003: 12th grade
I (inductively) estimated the month and year in which Sam started and ended each grade at JBS using the dates available on the calendar on JBS’s website.
I don’t know for sure that Sam did grades 7-12 there, but that’s just what I’m guessing, since JBS says they’re “for grades 7-12” in their X (Twitter) account bio.
Sources indicating that Sam graduated in 2003: here, here.
There are numerous sources that indicate that Sam attended JBS: here, here, here, here, etc.
In ~1998 or 1999, when Annie Altman is 4 years old and Sam Altman is 13 years old, Sam sexually abuses Annie [AA23a, AA—f] -- repeated molestation [AA23w] and touching her in private areas. [AA23x]
Annie has stated that:
Sam was something like her “first {sex work} client” [AA23j]
Sam used her to “help him figure out his sexuality” [AA23a]
Her brothers Sam and Jack “touched her.” [AA22a]
(implied: in an inappropriate / nonconsensual way that would be classified as sexual abuse.)
I estimate the year in which the alleged sexual assault occurred from the fact that Annie claims that Sam was 13 when the alleged sexual assault occurred [AA23a]. Sam’s birthday is April 22, 1985, and thus, for him to have been 13 at the time of the alleged sexual assault, the alleged sexual assault must have taken place in the range April 22 1998 -- April 22 1999.
From the birthdays I listed above—at this time, the ages of the Altman siblings are as follows:
Sam is 13 years old
⟹Max is ~11
⟹Jack is ~9
Annie is 4
~1998-1999: Annie’s 4-year-old mind represses her memories of these abuses [AA18b, AA23k, EW23a].
For the next ~20 years (~1998-2018) Annie’s mind continues to repress her full memories of being abused. However, throughout those 20 years, Annie does recall bits and pieces of her memories of being sexually abused. These partial-memories confuse and disturb Annie, and she doesn’t fully understand them when they recur to her. Crucially, Annie also doesn’t remember that it was Sam who sexually abused her.
Also, over the next 20 years (~1998-2018), Annie experiences a variety of mental health issues, eating disorders, and other disturbing experiences (e.g. projectile vomiting during consensual sex), all caused by the abuse she experienced at a young age.
However, beginning in 2018, a sort of “perfect storm” of events unfold that cause Annie to gradually start recalling her full memories of being abused. This gradual process of Annie recalling her full memories of abuse occurs from ~2018-2021. I’ll detail these events later on in this timeline.
My understanding is that this occurred as part of 4-year-old Annie’s subconscious/automatic trauma response and/or as a mental defense mechanism.
That is, I think Annie’s 4-year-old mind repressed the memories of this event because she was extremely young, and the event was extremely traumatic for her younger self in a way that was hard for her to even conceptualize, much less fully understand and remember.
Annie does not begin to fully recall her repressed memories until decades later, in a gradual process that intensifies from mid-2018 onwards (as the rest of this timeline describes.)
Decades later, about her gradual process of recalling her repressed memories, Annie would write:
On 11-8-2018: “With all the casual profundity of a yoga teacher, Joe asked, what is your earliest memory?′ Without pause for an inhale I responded, ‘probably a panic attack.’...I began having panic attacks at a young age. I felt the impending doom of death before I had any concept of death.” [AA18b]
On 4-21-2023: “I had a history since childhood of OCD, anxiety, depression, IBS, disorder eating—all covers for PTSD...”After quitting my dispensary job, my relatives find a loophole to withhold said money. They knew the health conditions and my plan, and they’re millionaires. I sell some things, go back to an older job, and eventually ask (for the first time ever) my millionaire relatives for financial help and am essentially told to “work harder.” I got $100 for an ankle MRI copay, after much ‘discussion’”...I do two family therapy sessions and am professionally advised to stop doing family therapy sessions...{in 2020} I’m offered {by Sam} a diamond made from Dad’s ashes instead of money for rent or groceries. Dad just wanted cremation. I go for no contact with relatives...I have two years of remembering horrific things I’d buried and told myself I made up, and experience adult SAs that brought up even more memories.” [AA23k]
On 10-15-2023: “I had only fuzzy memories of sexual abuse until I went no contact {with Sam and her other relatives}, because of the emotional and financial and other abuses. I was unpacking my own sexual health, both by myself and in therapy, since 2012. Attempting to understand experiences like mid-sex projectile vomiting.” [AA23u]
On 3-27-2024, Annie wrote: “{In summer 2020} I decided to go full no contact with my relatives {Sam, Jack, Max, and Connie.}...After a couple months, I had to stop work trading on the farm because of {health issues with} my ankle again. Even small plantings and weeding was too much...I scrambled with my legs up the wall in constant ankle and knee pain...{In September 2020} my body was physically hurting in so many ways...I was still too sick to teach yoga. I had considered and attempted various mindless computer jobs, and found myself completely incapable. After going no contact because of financial and emotional abuse, I was flooded with memories of sexual abuse I had repressed. I had flashbacks of the sexual and physical abuses my whole life, though it wasn’t until the silence of no contact that I had the space to connect the dots. In college and after, I had projectile vomited multiple times during sex with men I loved and trusted. I remember talking about this and related things with therapists, unable to wrap my mind around how violently my body had responded. *Now, literally on my ass from tendon and nerve and hormonal and digestive and ovarian cyst pain, I had a lot of time to remember the flashbacks’ details*...Most of my emotional and thought space was on various sexual healings of my own...My days were hazes of PTSD flashbacks with whatever grounding exercises I could do, whatever floor yoga and stretching I could do, and physical therapy...I had two adulthood sexual assaults while living on Maui that triggered more flashbacks. I’m grateful for those assaults in a fucked up way, for the clarities they gifted me. Half awake feeling unequivocally, “I’ve experienced exactly this before.” Though I was more set back emotionally and financially, managing even more flashbacks of old memories flooding in and incapacitating me...My last escorting experience was with a man who was experimenting with his queerness, and wanted me to bring another man in. I invited a filming partner, as I had started making hardcore porn on OnlyFans and PornHub at that point. Before the filming partner came over, the client said “I’m so gay!” — while his dick was in my mouth between words of the dick about to be in his mouth — followed by “omg I’ve never said that before” and a distant stare. I felt that stare, back to a stare I’d experienced decades ago.” [AA24b]
“I survived listening to my body fall apart as it told me the stories I had not yet been ready to hear the full depths of.” [AA—f]
It seems that, before Annie started to recall her repressed memories, she only remembered that Sam had “read her books at bedtime.” [EW23a] Only decades later did her recollection change: “As Annie tells her life story, she felt special and loved when, as a child, Sam read her bedtime stories. Now those memories feel like abuse.” [EW23a].
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Note: when I first learned of Annie’s story, I was confused by, and didn’t fully understand, some of her symptoms. I’ve since learned more about common symptoms in people who experienced sexual abuse as a child.
Annie displays many of these symptoms, including:
- panic attacks beginning at a young age
- waking up in the middle of the night needing to take a bath to calm her anxiety
- suicidal ideation beginning at age 5-6
- “rationalizing away” and/or not understanding partial flashbacks (to the sexual abuse she experienced) that occurred earlier in her life
- PTSD
- developing eating disorders and body image problems from a young age
- developing many mental illnesses (including suicidal ideation, anxiety, depression, OCD, and more) from a young age
- (initial) repression of the (full) memories of the abuse (as an automatic trauma response in the brain)
- many more symptoms
Some sources that helped me understand:
• Child Sexual Abuse—US Department of Veterans Affairs
• The Body Keeps the Score—by Bessel Van Der Kolk
• My Healing Journey After Childhood Abuse—Tim Ferriss
• What to Do if You Have PTSD From Being Molested as a Child—sexualabuselawfirm.com
From saprea.org, (Saprea seems to be a 501(c)(3) nonprofit public charity that “exists to liberate individuals and society from child sexual abuse and its lasting impacts”:
• The Effects of Child Sexual Abuse: How Does Trauma Affect the Brain and Body? -- saprea.org
• Common Symptoms {in people who experienced sexual abuse as a child}: Flashbacks
• Common Symptoms: Difficult Relationship with Body
• Common Symptoms: Panic Attacks
(As with the rest of this post—see the dropdown section for more details.)
Child Sexual Abuse—US Department of Veterans Affairs
The Body Keeps the Score—by Bessel Van Der Kolk
My Healing Journey After Childhood Abuse—Tim Ferriss
What to Do if You Have PTSD From Being Molested as a Child—sexualabuselawfirm.com
From saprea.org, (Saprea seems to be a 501(c)(3) nonprofit public charity that “exists to liberate individuals and society from child sexual abuse and its lasting impacts”:
The Effects of Child Sexual Abuse: How Does Trauma Affect the Brain and Body? -- saprea.org
Common Symptoms {in people who experienced sexual abuse as a child}: Flashbacks
Common Symptoms: Difficult Relationship with Body
Common Symptoms: Panic Attacks
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
At age 5 (~1999), Annie tells her mother, Connie Altman, that she wants to end her own life and that she was “touched by older siblings”, and Connie “decided to instead protect her sons and demand to receive therapy and chores only from her female child.” [AA24f]. In particular, (it seems) Connie tells Annie to keep the sexual assault a secret [AA23m].
Decades later, Annie would write:
“I have experienced drama like the OpenAI drama — I grew up in it. I was repeatedly told “not to talk about it,” and to allow another person to remove my human agency.” [AA23m]
“Child-me...was told to stay quiet about other people’s secrets—even when it made me physically ill.” [AA23m]
{I presume that it was Annie’s mother who told her to stay quiet, though it’s not fully clear.}
“At age 5 {~1999}, {Annie} began waking up in the middle of the night, needing to take a bath to calm her anxiety. By 6 {~2000}, she thought about suicide, though she didn’t know the word” [EW23a].
~2001 (Annie: age ~7): Annie begins to criticize her appearance. She continues to do so for the next 18 years.
Annie published 18 reasons I spent 18 years criticizing my appearance on her blog (allhumanarehuman.medium.com) on March 6, 2019 ⟹she started to criticize her appearance in 2001.
“18 reasons I spent 18 years criticizing my appearance
1. OCD
2. Anxiety
3. Depression
...
6. A belief that any body’s appearance is fixed its entire lifetime
7. A belief that anything in this physical world is fixed, ever
...
11. A belief that I could control my body completely with enough will power
12. A belief that controlling my body could control my entire life
13. A belief that controlling my body could control its inevitable decay (lack of knowledge that fearing death is fearing actually living life)
14. Equating control with peace and happiness
15. A tendency towards being self-critical”
~2001: At age 16, Sam comes out to his parents as gay. [TF16a]
Throughout her childhood (and the rest of her life), Annie does not have a complete memory of the sexual abuse she experienced in her early childhood.
However, she experiences a variety of mental and physical symptoms common among those who have experienced sexual abuse in early childhood.
(As with the rest of this post—see the dropdown for details.)
Annie’s symptoms include:
panic attacks
“feeling the impending doom of death before I had any concept of death” [AA18b]
depression
OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder)
IBS (Irritable bowel syndrome)
body image problems
body dysmorphia
eating disorders
anxiety
suicidal thoughts
and more.
Sources: [AA23k, AA18b, AA19b, AA19c, EW23a, AA—f, AA24b]
Annie writes, “I had a history since childhood of OCD, anxiety, depression, IBS, disorder eating—all covers for PTSD.” [AA23k]
By “PTSD”, I think Annie is specifically referring to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) caused by the abuse she experienced (mostly) from Sam and (some) from Jack. [AA21a]
Annie writes in [AA18b]: “I began having panic attacks at a young age. I felt the impending doom of death before I had any concept of death...I define panic attacks as feeling “too alive,” like diving off the deep end into awareness of existence without any proper scuba gear or knowledge of free diving. Panic attacks, I’ve learned, come like an ambulance flashing lights and blaring a siren indicating that my mind and my body are… experiencing a missed connection in terms of communication — they’re refusing to listen to each other. More accurately: my mind is disregarding the messages from my body, convinced she can think her way through feelings, and so my body goes into panic mode like she’s on strike.”
From ~August 2006 to June 2012, Annie attends grades 7-12 at the John Burroughs School (JBS) in St. Louis, Missouri (the same school that Sam attended [AA23m].)
I inferred the year that Annie graduated from JBS by looking closely at the bottom-right corner of the pictures she posts in [AA24i]:
This implies:
August 2006 - June 2007: 7th grade (for Annie, at JBS)
August 2007 - June 2008: 8th grade
August 2008 - June 2009: 9th grade
August 2009 - June 2010: 10th grade
August 2010 - June 2011: 11th grade
August 2011 - June 2012: 12th grade
I made the same assumptions/used the same reasoning to make the esitmates here as I did (above) with my estimates regarding Sam’s time at JBS.
In 2005, Sam begins working on his startup, “Loopt” (formerly named “Radiate”). During his sophomore year at Standford (also in 2005), Sam meets Paul Graham. Paul Graham is quite impressed by Sam, and Loopt is accepted into Y Combinator’s first cohort.
Graham spoke highly of Sam:
-- October 2006: “Sam Altman, the co-founder of Loopt, had just finished his sophomore year when we funded them, and Loopt is probably the most promising of all the startups we’ve funded so far. But Sam Altman is a very unusual guy. Within about three minutes of meeting him, I remember thinking “Ah, so this is what Bill Gates must have been like when he was 19.”″
-- August 2008: “When we predict good outcomes for startups, the qualities that come up in the supporting arguments are toughness, adaptability, determination. Which means to the extent we’re correct, those are the qualities you need to win. Investors know this, at least unconsciously. The reason they like it when you don’t need them is not simply that they like what they can’t have, but because that quality is what makes founders succeed. Sam Altman has it. You could parachute him into an island full of cannibals and come back in 5 years and he’d be the king. If you’re Sam Altman, you don’t have to be profitable to convey to investors that you’ll succeed with or without them. (He wasn’t, and he did.) Not everyone has Sam’s deal-making ability. I myself don’t. But if you don’t, you can let the numbers speak for you.”
—April 2009: “I was told I shouldn’t mention founders of YC-funded companies in this list. But Sam Altman can’t be stopped by such flimsy rules. If he wants to be on this list, he’s going to be. Honestly, Sam is, along with Steve Jobs, the founder I refer to most when I’m advising startups. On questions of design, I ask “What would Steve do?” but on questions of strategy or ambition I ask “What would Sama do?” What I learned from meeting Sama is that the doctrine of the elect applies to startups. It applies way less than most people think: startup investing does not consist of trying to pick winners the way you might in a horse race. But there are a few people with such force of will that they’re going to get whatever they want.”
During Sam’s time at Loopt, a group of senior Loopt employees “twice urged board members to fire him as CEO over what they described as deceptive and chaotic behavior...Senior executives {at Loopt} approached the board with concerns that Altman at times failed to tell the truth—sometimes about matters so insignificant one person described them as paper cuts. At one point, they threatened to leave the company if he wasn’t removed as CEO.” [WSJ23a]
Sam also helps orchestrate an elaborate, multi-year plan to seize control of Reddit, by slowly diluting the ownership Condé Naste (who’d acquired it) until Reddit was effectively owned, once again, by its original founders, who’d also been part of Y Combinator’s first cohort. (The plan succeeded.)
2005: Steve Huffman (aka “spez”) and Alexis Ohanian meet Paul Graham (co-founder of Y Combinator), and pitch him a startup idea, hoping to get into Y Combinator (aka YC.) Graham rejects their idea, but calls them the next morning, and has another conversation with Huffman and Ohanian where he tells them to build a “front page for the Internet.” With this idea, which becomes Reddit, Huffman and Ohanian join YC’s first batch, of which Sam was also a member.
In ~October 2006, Condé Nast acquires Reddit for ~$10-20 million.
(If the story told by Yishan Wong (former Reddit CEO) here on Reddit is to be believed:) Beginning sometime in the late 2000′s, Sam and some of his associates at Y Combinator begin the execution of a years-long effort to dilute Condé Nast’s ownership in Reddit, and return Reddit to the control of YC & Reddit’s original founders. (This effort seems to have ultimately succeeded.) --
~2007: At age 13, Annie starts using Zoloft to help with symptoms of OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder), anxiety, and depression. [AA19b].
Annie eventually tapers herself off of Zoloft at age 22 (in ~2017) [AA19b, EW23a].
~2009: At age 15, Annie starts using birth control pills. [AA19b].
(I only include this because it becomes relevant later on, in the context presented in “Period lost, period found” [AA19b].)
Annie stops taking birth control pills at age 22, just before her 23rd birthday (~2017.)
In ~September 2012, Annie begins college at Tufts University, intending to complete a pre-medical track. [AA15a]
Years, later, Annie wrote the following about her time in college (i.e. ~2012-2016):
On 10-15-2023, Annie wrote: “I had only fuzzy memories of sexual abuse until I went no contact {with Sam and her other relatives}, because of the emotional and financial and other abuses. I was unpacking my own sexual health, both by myself and in therapy, since 2012. Attempting to understand experiences like mid-sex projectile vomiting.” [AA23u]
On 3-27-2024, Annie wrote: “I had flashbacks of the sexual and physical abuses my whole life, though it wasn’t until the silence of no contact that I had the space to connect the dots. In college and after, I had projectile vomited multiple times during sex with men I loved and trusted. I remember talking about this and related things with therapists, unable to wrap my mind around how violently my body had responded.” [AA24b]
The flashbacks Annie describes {to the sexual abuse she experienced from Sam during her childhood} will re-appear later on in this timeline.
2012: Sam sells Loopt to Green Dot $43.4 million, coming away with $5 million himself. Sam uses that $5 million, along with money provided by Peter Thiel, to launch his own venture fund, Hydrazine Capital, with his brother Jack Altman. [EW23a]
“{Sam} also took a year off, read a stack of books, traveled, played video games, and, “like a total tech-bro meme,” he said, “was like, I’m gonna go to an ashram for a while, and it changed my life. I’m sure I’m still anxious and stressed in a lot of ways, but my perception of it is that I feel very relaxed and happy and calm.”″ [EW23a]
From a recent (September 24, 2024) podcast he did, it seems that Sam did a “weekend-long retreat in Mexico” where he did psychedelics, and that this retreat & the psychedelics he took significantly changed his inner state, helping him become more calm (he was more anxious before).
See also: Sam Altman says doing psychedelics during a weekend retreat in Mexico changed his life—Business Insider (published September 24, 2024)
Sam Altman—Wikipedia is where I got the information that Sam co-founded Hydrazine Capital with his brother Jack Altman.
On March 30, 2015, Annie submits an appeal letter [AA15a] to a Dean at Tufts University asking if Tufts will allow her to graduate early at the end of the semester {which would have been May 17, 2015} since, by that time, Annie would have completed all of her graduation requirements, except for Tufts University’s “residency requirement.”
In this letter, Annie states that:
For the first time, during her current semester {her 6′th semester}, she has started to consider not going to medical school (e.g. to get a MD or DO degree}, and has instead started to consider other (related) career options, such as becoming a nurse, physician’s assistant, or a therapist.
She wants to have a “summer of my own therapy: taking counseling seriously in a way I have never before felt ready to...working towards whatever euphemism you prefer for “getting my head on straight” or “re-centering.””
Annie’s request to graduate early (in 6 semesters) is denied.
Annie still ends up finishing college early—just in 7 semesters [EW23a], rather than 6. She graduates with a degree in Biopsychology (in ~2016).
Upon graduating, Annie is extremely depressed [EW23a], and she does not pursue medical school [AA19b] as she’d initially intended to [AA15a].
In Annie’s own words: “I majored in Biopsychology in college, with a minor in dance, and took all the prerequisite courses for medical school. Then I noped out of the pre-med route to focus on movement, writing, comedy, music, and food. I got certified as a yoga teacher, worked for an online CSA (community-supported agriculture) company, began writing more frequently, started slowly going to open mic nights and putting videos on YouTube, and began a podcast and this blog {i.e. her blog on Medium.}” [AA19b].
From [EW23a]: “{Annie} left college early...She had completed all of her Tufts credits, and she was severely depressed. She wanted to live in a place that felt better to her. She wanted to make art. She felt her survival depended on it. She graduated after seven semesters.”
From [BB24d]: “Annie, on the other hand, was not part of the Altman family brand. With each new step in her life, she seemed to veer farther away from the path she felt was expected of her. She completed pre med requirements, but decided not to pursue that further. She did improv classes, stand up comedy, yoga, teacher training. She said her dad was supportive of this turn away from a more traditional path. Her mom, who was a physician, was less excited.”
Annie Altman: “My siblings and mother were very judgmental about the shift and also very “This is just a phase.” I was an am at total daddy’s girl. With my mother, there was closeness only when I was doing what she wanted me to do, which is a story {that} sadly, I feel like a lot of people can relate to.”″
At some point before October 3, 2016 [TF16a] - Jerry and Connie get a martial separation [AA23r, EW23a] -- not a divorce, just a separation [AA23r].
Thus, legally, they remain married, even though they are separated [AA23r.]
(As with other events in this timeline, there’s a reason I’m including this. Later on, this enables Connie to block Annie from receiving the funds her deceased father left to her.)
I infer that the separation (or divorce?) between Jerry and Connie occurred before the date that “Sam Altman’s Manifest Destiny” [TF16a] was published in the New Yorker because, in that article, Connie is referred to as “Connie Gibstine” (rather than “Connie Altman”), which implies that, by the date of the article’s publication, Connie had separated or divorced from Jerry.
October 3, 2016: “Sam Altman’s Manifest Destiny” [TF16a] is published in the New Yorker. The author, Tad Friend, includes anecdotes from his time spent observing Sam’s day-to-day activities, as well as quotes from Sam, his brothers, and their mother (Connie.)
“A blogger recently asked Altman, “How has having Asperger’s helped and hurt you?” Altman told me, “I was, like, ‘Fuck you, I don’t have Asperger’s!’ But then I thought, I can see why he thinks I do. I sit in weird ways”—he folds up like a busted umbrella—“I have narrow interests in technology, I have no patience for things I’m not interested in: parties, most people. When someone examines a photo and says, ‘Oh, he’s feeling this and this and this,’ all these subtle emotions, I look on with alien intrigue.” Altman’s great strengths are clarity of thought and an intuitive grasp of complex systems. His great weakness is his utter lack of interest in ineffective people, which unfortunately includes most of us. I found his assiduousness alarming at first, then gradually endearing. When I remarked, after a few long days together, that he never seemed to visit the men’s room, he said, “I will practice going to the bathroom more often so you humans don’t realize that I’m the A.I.””
““Well, I like racing cars,” Altman said. “I have five, including two McLarens and an old Tesla. I like flying rented planes all over California. Oh, and one odd one—I prep for survival.” Seeing their bewilderment, he explained, “My problem is that when my friends get drunk they talk about the ways the world will end. After a Dutch lab modified the H5N1 bird-flu virus, five years ago, making it super contagious, the chance of a lethal synthetic virus being released in the next twenty years became, well, nonzero. The other most popular scenarios would be A.I. that attacks us and nations fighting with nukes over scarce resources.” The Shypmates looked grave. “I try not to think about it too much,” Altman said. “But I have guns, gold, potassium iodide, antibiotics, batteries, water, gas masks from the Israeli Defense Force, and a big patch of land in Big Sur I can fly to.””
“Altman’s mother, a dermatologist named Connie Gibstine, told me, “Sam does keep an awful lot tied up inside. He’ll call and say he has a headache—and he’ll have Googled it, so there’s some cyber-chondria in there, too. I have to reassure him that he doesn’t have meningitis or lymphoma, that it’s just stress.” If the pandemic does come, Altman’s backup plan is to fly with his friend Peter Thiel, the billionaire venture capitalist, to Thiel’s house in New Zealand. Thiel told me, “Sam is not particularly religious, but he is culturally very Jewish—an optimist yet a survivalist, with a sense that things can always go deeply wrong, and that there’s no single place in the world where you’re deeply at home.”
“One evening at Altman’s house, his younger brothers, Max and Jack, were teasing him that he should run for President in 2020, when he’d be thirty-five: just old enough. Max, twenty-eight, said, “Who better than you, Sam?” As Altman tried not very vehemently to change the subject, Jack, twenty-seven, said, “It’s not purely little-brother trolling. I do think tech needs a good candidate.” “Let’s send the Jewish gay guy!” Altman said. “That’ll work!”
Jack eyed a board game called Samurai on the bookshelf and said, “Sam won every single game of Samurai when we were kids because he always declared himself the Samurai leader: ‘I have to win, and I’m in charge of everything.’ ”
Altman shot back, “You want to play speed chess right now?,” and Jack laughed.”
“Max was working at the Y Combinator company Zenefits; Jack co-founded a performance-management company, Lattice, which had just gone through YC. The two brothers moved in with Altman temporarily three years ago and never left. Altman recently hired a designer to upgrade his gray IKEA sofas to gray SummerHouse sofas, and he hung some handsomely framed photographs taken from space, but the house maintains an upscale-student-housing vibe. His mother told me, “I think Sam likes having his brothers around because they knew him when, and can give him pushback in ways that other people can’t. But it’s tricky, with the power dynamic, and I want it to end before it explodes.””
~2017: At age 22, just before her 23rd birthday, Annie stops taking birth control pills. Around this same time, she also finishes tapering off of Zoloft. She also drastically alters her diet. [AA19b]
As a result, Annie loses her period for a year. [AA19b]
(I only include this because it becomes relevant later on, in the context presented in “Period lost, period found” [AA19b].)
November 29, 2017: Sam returns to John Burroughs School, where he speaks to students about “development of startups and AI...and our collective responsibility to make sure they benefit everyone.” [JBS17a]
At point in time {it seems to me}:
Jerry (Sam’s dad) is still living and working (overtime) in St. Louis (with a heart condition) [AA24c]
Annie has been (repeatedly) asking Sam to provide money and resources to Jerry {i.e. to help with his heart condition, or so he doesn’t have to work overtime in his late 60′s, or so he can retire.} [AA23q]
From what I can tell, Sam has not provided Jerry with money or resources. [AA24c]
January 2018: Jerry sends Annie a text, part of which reads, “And just for clarification, I don’t just support your lifestyle now or your physical and emotional endeavors now; I support your life. I will always support your life. These are aspects of your life, so I support those too. And there is not a “now”, as Yoda might say. There is only life, for as long as that may be.” [AA18a]
February 1, 2018: Annie posts “My journey from beige foods” on Youtube.
You may be thinking, “Why are you including this? This doesn’t seem relevant.”
I am including this because, as I cover later on in the Responding to Objections/Comments I’ve Seen From Others section, someone noted than Annie has “ate only beige foods for most of her life”, with the implied argument being that Annie is sort of “crazy.”
I don’t think this is a convincing argument for Annie being “crazy.” To clarify: it is relatively common for some people, especially during childhood, to be sort of a “picky eater” and only want to eat “beige foods”, i.e. foods whose color is generally white or beige. {More on this in a bit.}
Also—as I understand it, Sam’s sexual abuse of Annie when she was 4 years old was the reason why she developed unusual eating patterns in the first place.
c.f. 18 reasons I spent 18 years criticizing my appearance—by Annie Altman—published March 6, 2019
Annie, in [AA23k]: “I had a history since childhood of OCD, anxiety, depression, IBS, disorder eating—all covers for PTSD. Also tonsillitis yay”
Annie (starting at 1:09 in the video): “I was a very picky eater for most of my life. I was a vegetarian by choice as a little kid...I chose {to do this} in kindergarten...I also was very picky, and a very controlling type {of} person, and so food became a thing to control...and it also became a really physical, textural thing. The textures of different foods were really freaking me out, and I had all of these taste aversions, and very real reactions...so basically for the first two decades of my life I subsisted on eggs, and cheese, and peanut butter, and bread, and potatoes, and rice, and tortillas. And a lot of those things, for the majority of that time, weren’t like...”good” quality. It was {like} Wonderbread...so I would say, up until the end of high school, sof or the first 18 years of my life, I ate no green things. I started incorporating Caesar salads, and that was a huge deal to eat greens, to give you a show of it. And then in college I got more into cooking and I would, you know, put vegetables and things in muffins, and I’d find ways to incorporate it and get myself to eat these things...{but} I was still like {mainly eating} eggs, cheese, grains...”beige” foods...{but} I still held on to this. I was like...”One day, you’re gonna crave broccoli”...If you’ve dealt with picky eating, you understand when you have something and it’s great and it just shifts your whole mindset, of...”I’ve been missing out on that for that long?” And over my first year into transitioning {to a} plant-based {diet} it was just eating more and more of these fruits and vegetables that, for so long, I hadn’t been interested in eating...my body, I think, was so excited that I was finally giving it fruits and vegetables.”
Here is an article that details and explains the preference for “beige foods” in picky eaters (especially as children): “Why Picky Eaters Are Fixated on White and Beige Foods Only!” by Alisha Grogan (MOT, OTR/L) on yourkidstable.com
“It might seem strange, but it’s common for picky eaters to eat only white or beige foods and refuse most other colors of food. But, there’s a good reason why and ways to get them eating more colors of the rainbow...”
“For some picky eaters, color of food is a big deal! We often don’t think about food color. You might not even notice that your child is choosing only certain colors of foods, especially if they’re younger. But it’s something I teach my students to be on the look out for, because it can’t be ignored. Jade had notified the pattern, but her daughter, at the age of 7 had begun to verbalize it too. If your child is 3, they likely won’t tell you they don’t want to eat that ham because it’s pink, but that could very well be what’s going on! ”
“Do All Picky Eaters Only Eat 1 Color of Food? Definitely not. In fact, it’s usually the more severe picky eaters that notice and select foods based on their color. An extreme picky eater typically eats less than 20-25 foods on a regular basis. They’ll also gag, tantrum, yell, or even throw up if you try to get them to eat, look at, touch, or tolerate a new food on their plate. Extreme picky eaters also won’t eventually eat a new food if you refuse to give them their favorites. Instead, they’ll go hungry and even make themselves sick...Eating only one or a few colors of food is another common trait of the extreme picky eater.”
“What’s a Picky Eaters Favorite Food Color? There tends to be one color that most extreme picky eaters gravitate towards: white. It’s highly unlikely that a picky eater will choose green, red, blue, brown, or purple as the color of food that they’ll consistently eat. Instead, feeding therapists like myself consistently see children that only want foods that are shades of white or beige. At first, that may seem strange, but there’s actually a few really good reasons why…”
“3 Reasons Why Picky Eaters Love White and Beige Foods
#1: It looks non-threatening
At one point in human history, children needed to have certain defensive mechanisms to survive in the wild. They needed to avoid eating anything poisonous. Green foods in particular are a signal in their child brain that the food might not be safe. Since white food is void of all color, it naturally looks very safe to them. All this decision making about food color happens on a sub-conscious level for most children.
#2: It’s the color of lots of kid’s favorite foods
In today’s culture, A LOT of processed foods that picky eaters love happen to be white or beige. Maybe that’s not totally on purpose. These are some common white and beige foods that picky eaters tend to accept:
bread • crackers • mozzarella cheese sticks • chicken nuggets • popcorn • french fries • cheerios and other cereals • applesauce • peeled apple slices • white macaroni and cheese
Some picky eaters will also branch out into yellow or orang-ish foods like cheese curls, Cheez It’s, yellow cheese, carrots, and traditional mac and cheese. When you think about it, this makes sense, yellow is the most similar color to white.
#3: They trust the color
When a child is struggling with picky eating, it’s for a reason. Eating may be difficult because of different textures of food, it could make their tummy hurt, or be too hard to chew. Kids usually don’t verbalize these difficulties, but with extreme picky eating, they almost certainly exist. Once your child is eating a few white, beige, or even yellow foods, they deem the food safe. Safe that the food won’t feel weird or hurt. Again, probably subconsciously, they identify the color as safe and will be most likely to eat other foods that are the same color, while refusing foods that are a different color.”
February 2, 2018: Sam tweets, “Check out my sister on youtube!” [SA18a]
The video that Sam linked: “Am I an egomaniac for putting myself on YouTube?”
At some point in 2018, Annie visits Sam in San Francisco, while Sam has some friends over. One of Sam’s friends asks Annie to play a song she’d written. Annie begins to play the song on her ukulele. While she is playing the song, Sam abruptly, wordlessly gets up and walks upstairs to his room [EW23a].
From [EW23a]: “The next day, she {Annie} told him {Sam} she was upset and asked him why he left. “And he was kind of like, ‘My stomach hurt,’ or ‘I was too drunk,’ or ‘too stoned, I needed to take a moment.’ And I was like, ‘Really? That moment? You couldn’t wait another 90 seconds?’””
On May 25, 2018, Annie’s Dad, Jerry Altman, has a heart attack while rowing on Creve Coeur Lake outside St. Louis, and dies at the hospital soon after, at age 67 [EW23a].
From [EW23a]: “That same year, Jerry Altman died. He’d had his heart issues, along with a lot of stress, partly, Annie told me, from driving to Kansas City to nurse along his real-estate business. The Altmans’ parents had separated. Jerry kept working because he needed the money.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Note: In my opinion, Annie and Sam tell stories about their dad’s death that, to me, seem rather different and hard to reconcile --
Annie says:
{Jerry was} “working overtime, with known heart conditions. The dream he expressed to retire in Costa Rica was never fulfilled by his millionaire son, who could have retired our father that he claimed to love.” [AA24c]
“What would have been our last family trip, I chose not to go for various reasons. I asked our Dad to be given a check for whatever would have been spent on my fancy plane ticket and accommodations. Dad didn’t ever tell me about getting money from Sam, and got quiet about his Costa Rica dream” [AA24d]
“I asked for money and resources to be given to our Dad numerous times before he died.” [AA23q]
“”One time I found a $500k watch at my oldest siblings’ place {Sam’s place}, casually in an open kitchen cabinet. Another sibling told me how much the watch was, and then got bullied for disclosing to me. I asked why our 60-something Dad (with heart conditions) was making rent and car payments.
Surely retiring the father you claimed closeness with was more valuable than a watch????????
If our Dad had his needs taken care of, I would have supported multiple fancy watches” [AA24m]
It seems (e.g. via the analysis given in this article from KeepTheTime.com [KTT23a], or in this Business Insider article [BI23b]) that this watch was the ~$500,000 Greubel Forsey Invention Piece 1 (with the Rose Gold 5N metal type [KTT23a].)
...not to be confused with the ~$100,000 Patek Philippe Perpetual Calendar Ref. 1526 wristwatch that Sam also owned as of May 23, 2018 {see the “Sam’s wristwatches” I wrote below}
Sam’s wristwatches:
Sam can be seen wearing {what seems likely to be} his Greubel Forsey Invention Piece 1 in “WIRED25: Sebastian Thrun & Sam Altman Talk Flying Vehicles and Artificial Intelligence”, published 10/16/2018:
It seems that, as of May 23, 2018, Sam also owned a ~$100K Philippe Patek Perpetual Calendar Ref. 1526 watch, which he posted a picture of to Reddit (on May 23, 2023):
The picture of the watch is not currently shown in the Reddit post. I found a link to it in the post’s source code (using Inspect Element):
I also found the date & time of the post’s creation in its source code:
(Note: as I noted on Twitter, I originally got this date wrong, accidentally mistaking the date and time at which a comment on the post was made for the date and time at which the post itself was made. Sorry about that.)
It seems this was the same watch that Sam wore when testifying to congress on Tuesday, May 16, 2023 about AI regulation:
You can make out the distinctive “moonphase window” [SW22a] (annotated in green, where I’ve traced segments along the boundary of the moonphase window itself in red), calendar info with the day and month (annotated in orange), the pure 18k yellow gold [SW22a] crown (annotated in blue), along with three of the watch’s golden numerals: 12 (at the top of the dial just above the calendar info, annotated in grey), 2 (annotated in light/aqua blue), and 4 (annotated in pink).
Sam says:
(32:28-33:49) “AGI and my family are the two main things I care about, so losing one of those is like...so yeah I mean it was just like unbelievably painful. The only comparable set of life experience that I had, and that one was of course much worse, was when my dad died. And that was like a very sudden thing. But the sense of like confusion and loss...in that case, I felt like I had a little bit of time to just like feel it all. But then there was so much to do. Like it was like so unexpected that I had to pick up the pieces of his life for a little while. And it wasn’t until, like, a week after that I really got a moment to just, like, catch my breath and be like, holy shit, like, I can’t believe this happened. So yeah, that was much worse.” [SA23a]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Charles Johnson claims—here, at around ~6:30 and ~13:18 -- that, after Jerry’s death, Sam Altman “started doing a lot more drugs.”
I am aware that Charles Johnson is not always a reliable source of information. But it seems that Charles Johnson had ties with Peter Thiel around that time (2018), so I think Johnson’s claims that he repeatedly interacted with Sam in person and at his house are plausible.
I repeatedly asked (here, here, here, here, here, and here) Charles Johnson on Twitter to comment/elaborate on the claims that he made, but he didn’t. (Some of my replies were getting marked as “spam” or “offensive” (which confused me, as I don’t think they were “spam” or “offensive”), so that probably didn’t help.)
After Jerry’s death, Sam, Jack, Max, and Connie see Jerry’s Will. They purposefully withhold it from Annie for a year. Annie only finds out about this a year later (in 2019) [AA24b].
Annie writes, “My Dad {Jerry} died in May 2018, and access to his Will was withheld from me by my mother {Connie} and three older siblings {Sam, Jack, Max} for an entire year.” [AA24b]
On May 28, 2018, Annie gives a speech at her Dad’s funeral (which she publishes online a year later [AA18a].)
She indicates that her Dad and her were very close, especially in the last few years before he died. {c.f. [AA18a] for more details.}
In [EW23a], Elizabeth Weil writes, “At the funeral, Annie told me, Sam allotted each of the four Altman children five minutes to speak. She used hers to rank her family members in terms of emotional expressivity. She put Sam, along with her mother, at the bottom.”
Quotes from Annie’s speech:
“”My dad trusted my intuition more than I ever have. He often reminded me of the strength of my mind-body connection, a concept I am both extremely passionate about and skilled at underestimating. He created and held space for all of my feelings, and those of you who have talked to me ever know that I have more than a few of those all of the time.” [AA18a]
“Sam said we could each talk for about five minutes, less if possible to not make you lovely people sit here all day, and Jack correctly pointed out how I will definitely be using all five of my minutes.” [AA18a]
“You may know that I come from a family that loves to rank things in order to make meaning of them. I love that too, and I also love talking about feelings, as someone who has so many of them. This led me to make a list about a year ago ranking my immediate family in terms of emotional expressivity, from most to least. Obviously I take “first place” on this list, which is probably part of why I wanted to make it. Next comes my dad, then Max, then Jack, and then Sam and mom alternate what would be first place if this list went from minimal to Annie levels of emotional expression. As I typed this out last night, Jack immediately questioned my list and checked in with Julia, his wife, for her opinion. (She agreed with my list, for the record.) It led to an interesting discussion on how different people express different emotions, which my dad knows is, along with family movie night, pretty much all I’ve ever wanted from my family. Also Jack last night, “I can just keep talking if you want me to write your speech, just keep it really meta, you can have my five minutes, it’ll be great.” Sam, I may really need Jack’s minutes here as when I read this out loud it was about 8 minutes — I’ll do my best to talk a little faster.” [AA18a]
The week Jerry dies {in May 2018}, Annie has one of the worst panic attacks of her life: “The most recent panic attack, and perhaps darkest one I’ve experienced, happened the week he died.” [AA18b].
C.f. [AA18b] for more details. It seems that Jerry’s death may have been what triggered, or intensified, Annie’s gradual process of recalling her repressed memories.
June 12, 2018: The first docket entry in the legal case relating to Jerry’s death, Will, and Testament (my wording here may not be the most accurate, as I’m not an expert in probate court terminology).
Connie Francis Gibstine (Jerry’s wife, and mother to Annie, Jack, Max, and Sam) is the independent personal representative. Annie Altman, Sam Altman, Jack Altman, and Max Altman are heirs.
Peter Palumbo is Connie’s attorney. Remember his name—he shows up later (in an email from Sam to Annie in 2019 -- I’ll cover this later in this timeline.)
See the images below.
I found the legal case relating to Jerry (full name: Jerold Donald Altman)’s death on the official Missouri courts government website that seem to corroborate this:
https://www.courts.mo.gov/cnet/cases/newHeader.do?inputVO.caseNumber=18SL-PR01960&inputVO.courtId=CT21
https://www.courts.mo.gov/cnet/cases/newHeader.do?inputVO.caseNumber=18SL-PR01960&inputVO.courtId=CT21#header
Image source: https://www.courts.mo.gov/cnet/cases/newHeader.do?inputVO.caseNumber=18SL-PR01960&inputVO.courtId=CT21#docket
July 9, 2018 -- the legal case regarding Jerry’s estate and Will shows a “Proof of Mailing.”
From section 473.033. Notice of letters — duty of clerk — publication — form. of Chapter 473 Probate Code—Administration of Decedents’ Estates of the Revised Statues of Missouri (bolding is my own):
”The clerk, as soon as letters testamentary or of administration are issued, shall case to be published in some newspaper a notice of the appointment of the personal representative, in which shall be included a notice to creditors of the decedent to file their claims in the court or be forever barred. The notice shall be published once a week for four consecutive weeks. The clerk shall send a copy of the notice by ordinary mail to each heir and devisee whose name and address are shown on the application for letters or other records of the court, but any heir or devisee may waive notice to such person by filing a waiver in writing. The personal representative may, but is not required to, send a copy of the notice by ordinary mail or personal service to any creditor of the decedent whose claim has not been paid, allowed or disallowed as provided in section 473.403. Proof of publication of notice under this section and proof of mailing of notice shall be filed not later than ten days after completion of the publication.”
In my (amateur) understanding, this means that Annie, being one of Jerry’s heirs, should have received a notice, by mail, of the appointment of the personal representative (her mother Connie Gibstine) in July 2018?
But it seems to me that Annie didn’t learn of her father’s will until late 2019?
~August 2018: Connie kicks Annie off of her health insurance [AA24h].
“For context: Connie (biological mother) kicked me off her health insurance less than three months after Dad died, when I was 24 and could have stayed on her work one for two more years” [AA24h]
On August 14, 2018, Annie starts a podcast, the All Humans Are Human podcast.
Annie experiences “6 months of hacking into all her accounts” [AA23d] after starting her podcast.
”″ [RE23a]
On 12-19-2019, Annie wrote: “In this calendar year I...had almost all of my personal accounts have attempted or successful logins, had people logging on my wifi and other wifi issues (4 new modems, had excessive cell phone service issues, the pity-party list continues. I’m beyond my capacity of what I can handle alone.” [AA—g]
Annie also had “a third or more” [RE23a] of her podcast ratings get deleted within a “few months” [RE23a] of starting her podcast. “When I started the podcast, before I did sex work or any other things that increased shadowbanning, I had shadowbanning immediately, and I had podcast ratings get deleted when it {the podcast} was called ‘True Shit’ right when I started it.” [RE23a]
At some point (before Annie begins sex work): Annie experiences shadowbanning on her social media accounts.
From [AA—h]:
”Almost all of my social media accounts have been/are shadowbanned...OpenAI would be tagged here also if they had a account.
{This shadowbanning} It started for me before any swork {sex work} started. I don’t mean that this account would be at 100K or some set number. I do mean it makes no sense to be unable to pass 1K, with over 100 podcasts and other creations, and consistent posting.
Old videos...get reduced to something like 2 views on @instagram and @youtube , podcast rating get frequently deleted on @apple @applepodcasts , people will get automatically unfollowed, posts will be restricted in who sees them, and more.”
In ~September 2018, Annie meets with a yoga teacher named Joe [AA18b] to record a podcast episode.
Joe asks Annie, “what is your earliest memory?”. Annie immediately responds, “‘probably a panic attack’” [AA18b].
Then, as Annie writes, “Laying in bed later that night, Joe’s question popped back into my consciousness with a kind “please make your way into child’s pose.” I realized I had deceived myself (classic humaning) with my response to his question, “what is your earliest memory?”” [AA18b]
The general idea (to me) is that Annie starts to process/realize that a panic attack is not her earliest memory. c.f. 2 bullet points below.
In ~October 2018, Annie attends a sound bath at a yoga studio: “I went to a sound bath at the yoga studio about a month ago, the second sound bath I’ve ever attended. (I cried at both and if you know me you know that I am happy about things that help me cry.) Sound baths are a guided meditation where you lay in corpse pose and receive sounds of specific frequencies, allowing vibrations to “wash” over and through you. Some shit is bound to surface in the tides.” [AA18b]
Reading [AA18b] in its entirety makes the connections a bit more clear here. The piece basically details Annie’s gradual process, from the time of her Dad’s death in May 2018, to the date of [AA18b]’s publication on November 8, 2018, of remembering/realizing that a panic attack is not her earliest memory. {Presumably, her earliest memory is her memory of being (sexually) abused by Sam, but it takes Annie a bit to fully process this memory, because it’s so traumatic, and her brain repressed the memory as a defense mechanism when she was 4 years old.}
To me, if you look through Annie’s writings over time, in chronological order, they seem to reflect a gradual process of Annie remembering that Sam sexually abused her when she was 4. Here is a sample of her writings, in which you can see how her writing changes over the course of nearly 6 years. To me, the progression encapsulates a gradual process of remembering.
11-08-2018: “Reclaiming my memories” [AA18b]
02-21-2019: “Period lost, period found” [AA19b]
03-06-2019: “18 reasons I spent 18 years criticizing my appearance” [AA19c]
09-22-2020: “An open letter to relatives” [AA20a]
06-07-2021: “An Open Letter To The EMDR Trauma Therapist Who Fired Me For Doing Sex Work” [AA21c]
11-22-2023: ““How We Do Anything Is How We Do Everything”” [AA23m]
03-27-2024: “How I Started Escorting” [AA24b]
On November 8, 2018, Annie publishes “Reclaiming my memories” [AA18b] on her blog (see dropdown):
“Two months ago I met with Joe K, the owner of Urban Exhale Hot Yoga, to discuss the podcast episode we were going to record together. (I have since recorded podcasts with four other teachers at the studio and am completely unsure how to express my gratitude to Joe — honestly perhaps less words about it?) While I would be the one asking Joe questions on the podcast, he had an important question for me. With all the casual profundity of a yoga teacher, Joe asked, “what is your earliest memory?”
“Without pause for an inhale I responded, “probably a panic attack.” I feel like Joe did his best asana poker face, based on projecting my own insecurities and/or the hyper-vigilant observance that comes with anxiety.”
“I began having panic attacks at a young age. I felt the impending doom of death before I had any concept of death. (Do I really have any concept of death now, though? Does anyone??) I define panic attacks as feeling “too alive,” like diving off the deep end into awareness of existence without any proper scuba gear or knowledge of free diving. Panic attacks, I’ve learned, come like an ambulance flashing lights and blaring a siren indicating that my mind and my body are… experiencing a missed connection in terms of communication — they’re refusing to listen to each other. More accurately: my mind is disregarding the messages from my body, convinced she can think her way through feelings, and so my body goes into panic mode like she’s on strike.”
“I went to a sound bath at the yoga studio about a month ago, the second sound bath I’ve ever attended. (I cried at both and if you know me you know that I am happy about things that help me cry.) Sound baths are a guided meditation where you lay in corpse pose and receive sounds of specific frequencies, allowing vibrations to “wash” over and through you. Some shit is bound to surface in the tides.”
“My dad died five months ago now, and to say I’ve learned a lot is an enormous understatement. I was and am a “daddy’s girl.” The most recent panic attack, and perhaps darkest one I’ve experienced, happened the week he died. My dad was one of the most genuinely positive people I’ve ever come across. He had an incredible capacity to continually focus on the light, the good, what was “right” in any situation. I felt his presence during parts of the sound bath — a concept past me would have rolled her eyes about.”
“Laying in bed later that night, Joe’s question popped back into my consciousness with a kind “please make your way into child’s pose.” I realized I had deceived myself (classic humaning) with my response to his question, “what is your earliest memory?”
“Joe, and whoever is reading, I would like to formally change my answer. I am also without an exact answer. I am non-sarcastically “trusting the process” to potentially receive one. I know that a panic attack is not my answer, and my ego likes to remind itself that knowing what is not my truth leads me at least somewhat closer to said truth.”″
“I can reflect on and connect with feelings of panic and still have space to choose a positive perspective. Searching for ways to cope with existence has lead me to yoga, dance, singing, ukulele, cooking, baking, writing… to asking all the questions I know to ask so that I can open myself up to knowing just how many more questions life has to offer. Without panic attacks, I may have lived my whole life without starting a YouTube channel, a podcast, or this blog.”
“Emotions come and go, so it keeps seeming. Emotions and memory are directly linked, re: the amygdala. I have little to no control over my emotional response; I do have control over my reaction and subsequent actions.”
“I write my own history. Though TBD on the first memory of that history. Here’s to exploring.”
On December 7, 2018, Annie records and publishes an episode of her podcast featuring Sam Altman, Max Altman, and Jack Altman, titled 21. Podcastukkah #5: Feedback is feedback with Sam Altman, Max Altman, and Jack Altman. [AA18c].
The show begins with Annie providing an introduction to the her podcast and some thoughts about honesty and truth, and then thaking her brothers for coming on her podcast. Her brothers call her “Cannie.” (“Cannie”, short for “Trash Can” [AA24o], is their nickname for her.)
Annie: “Hello. My name is Annie Altman, and I’ve spent my life on a quest for true shit. Welcome to Episode 5 of Podcastukkah. So far, I’ve learned that ‘the truth hurts’ is some true shit, and there is no ultimate true shit, because my truth is different from someone else’s truth, and my truth now is different from my truth a year ago. Some true shit that has held up over time: one, be honest, the truth will come out eventually, and lying only complicates things. Two, the truth is simple, and lies are complicated. Three, be kind, and treat people how you want to be treated. If you are uninterested in someone else imposing their true shit on to you, do your best to be mindful about imposing your true shit onto others. This show is basically an opportunity for me to shoot the shit about things I want to shoot the shit about with people I want to shoot the shit with. Thanks for listening to me practice “human”-ing. In this episode, I’ll be discussing projection with all three of my older brothers. Sam, Max, and Jack Altman, I’m very grateful and privileged that you were all willing to take some time during this Thanksgiving holiday to circle around a microphone and record some thoughts on projection. Thank you all for coming.”
Sam: “Thanks for having us on, Cannie.”
Jack: “Thrilled to be here, Cannie.”
...
Note: in my opinion, there’s sort of a pattern throughout the episode: Annie brings up something she wants to talk about, often related to projection, feelings, or working through challenging emotions; her brothers cut her off or subtly alter the topic of conversation away from what Annie originally brought up, instead discusing topics that are...less sensitive, basically. It’s sort of hard to describe. I’d recommend listening to the episode yourself—I think you’ll sort of see what I’m talking about. (This is just my interpretaiton, of course, You may disagree, and that’s understandable.)
During the episode, Annie starts to talk about projection (in psychology), as well as how people are “wired to remember painful experiences.” Sam interjects and cuts her off, moving the topic of conversation away from “remembering painful experiences” to “hypocrisy”, and then detours the topic of conversation even further away from projection & memory to “giving feedback {at work}.” Mutliple times, Annie starts to return to the topic of projection; each time, the Altman brothers interject and start talking about “feedback”, specifically in work-related contexts. (Note: perhaps this interpretation of mine is biased. This was the impression I got after listening to the podcast, specifically from 24:30 -- 39:05 (the end of the podcast.) As always, I’ve linked the source material, and you can go listen yourself and see what you think.)
Annie (24:30): ”...in some ways, we’re wired to remember painful experiences so that we do learn from them...to remember negativity, and remember those things—”
Sam (interjecting) (24:55): ”—more than that, I think one thing we’re particularly wired for, I don’t know why, is to not like hypocrisy. That’s like a very deep thing...”
In [EW23a], Elizabeth Weil writes, “Among her various art projects, Annie makes a podcast called All Humans Are Human. The first Thanksgiving after their father’s death, all the brothers agreed to record an episode with her. Annie wanted to talk on air about the psychological phenomenon of projection: what we put on other people. The brothers steered the conversation into the idea of feedback — specifically, how to give feedback at work.
After she posted the show online, Annie hoped her siblings, particularly Sam, would share it. He’d contributed to their brothers’ careers. Jack’s company, Lattice, had been through YC. “I was like, ‘You could just tweet the link. That would help. You don’t want to share your sister’s podcast that you came on?’” He did not. “Jack and Sam said it didn’t align with their businesses.”” [EW23a]
I also think it’s worth noting that, at this point in time (December 7, 2018), Sam, Jack, and Max (and Connie) have seen Jerry’s Will, and are aware that it stipulates an inheritance for Annie, but are purposefully withholding this information from Annie [AA24b].
Again: as I understand it, at this point in time, Annie still has not yet fully remembered the abuse she experienced Sam (and her other brothers) during her childhood. This is why she is ok with doing this podcast episode with Sam and her other brothers.
February 21, 2019: Annie publishes [AA19b] “Period lost, period found” on her blog.
“I started taking birth control pills at the age of 15 (I’m currently 25) and decided to stop taking them right before my 23rd birthday {~2017}. Also around this same time {~2017} I finished tapering off of Zoloft, which I started taking at age 13 {~2007} to help with symptoms of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Anxiety, and Depression. Also also around this time {~2017} I drastically altered my diet...I promptly lost my period and learned that changes relating to diet, hormonal birth control, and psychiatric medications are three of the main factors that can disrupt hormonal balance (stress being the baseline factor).”
“I’m experiencing a second puberty, or maybe an aftershock of sorts from first puberty and/or a year without my period. It feels like a hormonal “do-over” filled with moments of deja-vu: three new crushes in one week, intense crying and laughter in the same hour, and generally going about my day acting like I’m far less confused by all this internal “shifting” than I’m actually feeling. Plus days that feel exceptionally “average” leaving me extra confused about how dramatic life felt the day before. I’m fortunate to have received a liberal education and even so there were inevitable gaps in the information I was given, and open to receiving, about puberty.”
“I majored in Biopsychology in college, with a minor in dance, and took all the prerequisite courses for medical school. Then I noped out of the pre-med route to focus on movement, writing, comedy, music, and food. I got certified as a yoga teacher, worked for an online CSA (community-supported agriculture) company, began writing more frequently, started slowly going to open mic nights and putting videos on YouTube, and began a podcast and this blog. I’m learning to give myself space to explore what genuinely excites me without justification and I’ve felt levels of self-consciousness around my career swerve that I had not experienced since first puberty. HOW will I get my intellectual ego stroked without constant science classes? How can art really have no “right” answer? Am I really the only one who can validate how my feelings feel??”
“It’s been almost a year now since I got my period back and I feel I’ve been going through a sort of spiritual and scientific second puberty, to continue the soap operatics. A year extra filled with learning about my body’s cycle(s) and signals. Witnessing my hormones re-regulate has felt parallel to to self-soothing, not that I consciously remember learning that, and my first time with “my moon.” I started eating eggs again, including runny yolks for the first time, and ate fish for the first time in my life because my body very literally demanded them. A year without my period, after a decade of having it, felt like equal parts reset and emptiness.”
“I believe a large portion of shame takes root during puberty and then manifests as sexual repression, (sexual) aggression, body dysmorphia, addiction, and/or mood disorders. I can say for certain that has been my experience. Shame encourages ignorance by stifling conversations. Additionally, shame creates a feedback loop where ignorance is shamed and so questions and curiosity are discouraged.”
~March 2019: Sam Altman—at the time, president of Y Combinator—is asked to resign by the firm’s leaders, as well as by Paul Graham and (especially) his wife Jessica Livingston. [WSJ23a] Sam leaves Y Combinator in March 2019. See [WSJ23a] for details.
March 6, 2019: Annie publishes “18 reasons I spent 18 years criticizing my appearance” [AA19c] on her blog.
“1. OCD
2. Anxiety
3. Depression
...
6. A belief that any body’s appearance is fixed its entire lifetime
7. A belief that anything in this physical world is fixed, ever
...
11. A belief that I could control my body completely with enough will power
12. A belief that controlling my body could control my entire life
13. A belief that controlling my body could control its inevitable decay (lack of knowledge that fearing death is fearing actually living life)
14. Equating control with peace and happiness
15. A tendency towards being self-critical”
By ~May 2019 [EW23a], Annie has become sick with a combination of illnesses that make it hard for her to work [AA24b, AA23k, AA—f, AA—g, AA23m, EW23a, AA23r, AA24b].
(As with the rest of this post—see the dropdown for details.)
Annie’s illnesses include:
PCOS (Polycystic ovary syndrome)
A flare-up of her IBS (Irritable bowel syndrome)
Achilles tendinopathy and posterior tibial tendinopathy (aka posterior tibial tendon dysfunction), for which she has to go into a walking boot, for the 3rd time in 8 years.
1st time: Achilles tendinopathy and a bone spur
2nd time: Achilles tendinopathy
(this) 3rd time: Achilles tendinopathy and posterior tibial tendinopathy
Tonsillitis
Sources: [AA24b, AA23k, AA—f, AA—g, AA23m, EW23a]
In ~summer 2019, about a year after the death of her Dad (Jerry), Annie is notified about being the primary beneficiary of her Dad’s 401K. [AA23m, AA24a, AA24b]
In light of these situational factors, Annie makes a plan to quit her job for 6 months [AA—c] to focus on her health, expecting that she’d receive money that Jerry had left for her, which would cover her financial needs during that time. She notifies her relatives of this plan, [AA24b, AA23k, AA23m, AA24a]. She notifies her relatives that she is sick. [AA18b]
As I understand it, the relatives that Annie notifies are, specifically: Sam Altman, Jack Altman, Max Altman, and Connie Altman. [AA23m]
In the summer of 2019, Annie carries out her plan as intended, and quits her job at a dispensary [AA24b]. Annie quits her job while in the middle of a process of completing paperwork that she had to complete to receive the money. That is, she hadn’t yet received the 401K money when she quit her job, but was expecting to receive it soon {once the paperwork was completed.} [AA23r]
However, after quitting her job, while in process of completing the rest of the necessary paperwork to receive the money that Jerry left to her in his 401K, Annie discovers, to her surprise, that the money Jerry left for her in his 401K is going to be withheld until Annie {currently ~25} is in her 60′s [AA23m].
It turns out that her mother Connie used, as Annie describes it, a “legal loophole” [AA23k] of sorts to override Jerry’s wishes and block Annie from receiving the 401K funds Jerry had left to her. [AA24b, AA23k, AA23m, AA23r]
In [AA23m], Annie writes, “Though separated, my parents were still legally married and so my mother had the “surviving spouse” option to ignore Dad’s wish to make me the primary beneficiary of his 401K.”
Thus, Annie ends up with a set of serious health issues that make it hard for her to stand and hard to work, and also unemployed and low on money.
Finding herself in an increasingly-desperate financial situation, Annie starts selling some of her possessions (furniture [BB24d] and clothes [AA24b]) for money. Eventually, for the first time in her life, Annie asks her mother Connie for financial help. Connie refuses to provide help [BB24d]. Annie then asks Sam for financial help; he was “told to say no because of her {Connie} wanting him to say no.” [BB24d] See also: [AA23k, EW23a]
“She {Annie} quit her job at a dispensary because she had an injured Achilles tendon that wouldn’t heal and she was in a walking boot for the third time in seven years. She asked Sam and their mother for financial help. They refused. “That was right when I got on the sugar-dating website for the first time,” Annie told me. “I was just at such a loss, in such a state of desperation, such a state of confusion and grief.” Sam had been her favorite brother. He’d read her books at bedtime. He’d taken portraits of her on the monkey bars for a high-school project. She’d felt so understood, loved, and proud. “I was like, Why? Why are these people not helping me when they could at no real cost to themselves?””″ [EW23a]
Sunday, September 22, 2019, 1:55PM: For the first time, Sam provides Annie with access to Jerry’s will, which had been withheld from Annie for over a year following Jerry’s death {on May 25, 2018} by Sam, Connie, Jack, and Max.
See the image below:
This email is worrying on several levels:
Recall: Pete—i.e. Pete (Peter) Palumbo—from earlier. He’s the lawyer Connie hired in the legal (probate) case for Jerry’s death.
First: notice the wording: “Pete—Please meet my sister Annie.” This implies that:
Pete has not previously met Annie, but
Sam had previously met Pete
Second: Sam is asking Pete to send Annie a copy of Jerry’s will. This implies that: Annie had not yet seen the will, even though:
Connie (and Sam) already had seen the will
It had been about a year and a half since Jerry’s death.
i.e. from the date on the email (September 22, 2019).
Third: Sam and Connie had both seen Jerry’s Will, even though Annie hadn’t. Neither of them had told Annie about the Will. This implies collusion between Sam and Connie to keep the Will hidden from Annie.
Fourth: From the images above (the Docket Entries from the Missouri Courts website), Annie was a one of Jerry’s legal Heirs. It doesn’t seem right that Annie only sees the will for the first time nearly a year and a half after Jerry’s death.
In December 2019, while living in LA, Annie, running low on money, goes on the SeekingArrangements.com website—a website for sugar dating and escorting—for the first time. [AA24b]
Ellen Huet: “Now, Sam and his family have given Annie money at times, but she says it always came with heavy conditions that made her nervous. At one point, Sam wanted her to get back on Zoloft, an antidepressant, which she had started as a teen but had stopped later on. She {Annie} forwarded me an email from Sam where he asked her to share her bank statements and to allow him and his mom to sit in on some of her therapy sessions in exchange for her rent and medical expenses being covered. She felt like it was his way of exerting leverage or power over her. Of course, Sam can spend his money as he pleases, but again, he’s on stage espousing the virtues of universal basic income—giving money away for free, unconditionally, -- and Annie says he didn’t do the same here for her. There were times when I’d gone back and forth about what to include from Annie’s story. It’s a very personal, messy family situation, and I’ll confess that on occasion I’ve doubted some unrelated things she’s told me. But also, I’ve looked through corroborating emails and documents. We drove to a lot of places Annie lived, and I met people she lived with. So in late 2019, when she asked for help and says she was told no, she turned to something she considered a last resort. To make money, she started sex work. She made an account on a sugar daddy dating website where people trade money for companionship and often sex.”
Annie: “I was just...I was in a desperate place. I mean...people who have been in a position like this ever know that when you’re in a place of selling furniture, you’re in a desperate position of “I’m out options.” This is a ‘plan Z’ I would not be doing this if plans ‘A’ through ‘I’ had worked out in any capacity.”
Ellen Huet: “The first thing she tried was video chatting with a middle-aged man. She flashed him on camera and he sent her money over Zelle. She posted videos on OnlyFans and PornHub.
[AA24b] (~January 2020, I think), Annie does two in-person sessions with a family therapist with Sam and Connie. The therapist is made aware of Annie’s situation—i.e. that Annie is sick with multiple illnesses that make it hard for her to work, low on money, and is still grieving the death of her father (Jerry.)
Connie, however, tells the family therapist that she thinks it would be “best for Annie’s mental health” if Annie fully financially supports herself. Sam agrees.
The family therapist is shocked, considering Sam’s extreme wealth.
The therapist convinces Sam and Connie to agree to provide Annie with 6 months of financial support for Annie’s basic needs (i.e. rent, food, medical bills) [AA24b].
Sam and Connie end up not honoring their agreement. They send money late, or send less money than was originally agreed, or force Annie to “grovel” [AA24b] for the money.
(At this point in time, Sam’s net worth is likely in the 10′s of millions of dollars.)
Annie writes, “I sat in my therapist’s office, in my walking boot and hormonal sweat, with my oldest sibling {Sam} there in person holding his phone with our mother {Connie} on FaceTime. The woman who bore me {Connie} told the therapist that it would be “best for Annie’s mental health if she fully financially supported herself,” and my multi-millionaire sibling {Sam} agreed. The therapist was utterly shocked, I was only half-surprised.
Perhaps with her {the therapist} highlighting that I never asked them {Sam, Connie} for financial help until very ill, and it still being so early in grieving our Dad {Jerry}, and with her {the therapist} highlighting their enormous wealth, the therapist somehow persuaded them to give short-term help for my basic needs...
My mom {Connie} and my brother {Sam} didn’t honor the therapist’s plan for six months of financial support, and my rent money was late or less-than-agreed or had-to-be-groveled-for.” [AA24b].
In [AA23s], Annie specifies, “I was given some rent money for a few months in LA before moving back to Big Island for a work trade. We made a plan with the family therapist (we did two sessions with) for Sam and my mother {Connie} to help with my basic needs while I was sick. That plan was not followed.” [AA23s]
“That financial “help” became inconsistent and/or attached to strings. It would be less than the amount agreed on with the therapist, late for me to actually pay rent so I had to keep asked repeatedly, etc.” [AA23t]
My note: I’ve estimated that the family therapy session occurred in ~January 2020 based on:
Max Altman’s text message in [AA24r], where he tells Annie that he, Sam, Jack, and Connie “think it’s best” if Annie “pay{s} for things in June {herself}”, i.e. if Max, Sam, Jack, and Connie don’t adhere to the plan to pay for Annie’s basic living, food, and medical expenses that they’d previously agreed to during the sessions they did with Annie with a family therapist, and
Annie’s statement that Connie and Sam were withholding the “final month of a six month plan for basic life support...while offering a diamond Dad didn’t ask to become to be sent to a rural mailbox” [AA24b]
Somewhere around this time (I think?), Sam tells Annie he wants her to start taking Zoloft again [EW23a], which she had stopped taking at age 22 (i.e. in 2016) [AA19b] because she “hated how it made her feel” [EW23a]. Sam later tells Annie that she will only receive money {from him} if she goes back on Zoloft [AA23c].
”At one point, Sam wanted her {Annie} to get back on Zoloft, an antidepressant, which she had started as a teen but had stopped later on. She {Annie} forwarded me {Ellen Huet, reporting for Bloomberg—see [BB24d]} an email from Sam where he asked her to share her bank statements and to allow him and his mom to sit in on some of her therapy sessions in exchange for her rent and medical expenses being covered. She felt like it was his way of exerting leverage or power over her.” [BB24d]
From [BB24d]:
Ellen Huet: “Now, Sam and his family have given Annie money at times, but she says it always came with heavy conditions that made her nervous. At one point, Sam wanted her to get back on Zoloft, an antidepressant, which she had started as a teen but had stopped later on. She {Annie} forwarded me an email from Sam where he asked her to share her bank statements and to allow him and his mom to sit in on some of her therapy sessions in exchange for her rent and medical expenses being covered. She felt like it was his way of exerting leverage or power over her. Of course, Sam can spend his money as he pleases, but again, he’s on stage espousing the virtues of universal basic income—giving money away for free, unconditionally, -- and Annie says he didn’t do the same here for her. There were times when I’d gone back and forth about what to include from Annie’s story. It’s a very personal, messy family situation, and I’ll confess that on occasion I’ve doubted some unrelated things she’s told me. But also, I’ve looked through corroborating emails and documents. We drove to a lot of places Annie lived, and I met people she lived with. So in late 2019, when she asked for help and says she was told no, she turned to something she considered a last resort. To make money, she started sex work. She made an account on a sugar daddy dating website where people trade money for companionship and often sex.”
Annie: “I was just...I was in a desperate place. I mean...people who have been in a position like this ever know that when you’re in a place of selling furniture, you’re in a desperate position of “I’m out options.” This is a ‘plan Z’ I would not be doing this if plans ‘A’ through ‘I’ had worked out in any capacity.”
Ellen Huet: “The first thing she tried was video chatting with a middle-aged man. She flashed him on camera and he sent her money over Zelle. She posted videos on OnlyFans and PornHub.
In May 2020, Annie moves back to the Big Island of Hawai’i, where she’d lived before living in LA. Annie writes, “This was my plan Y — find a low-labor work trade. I found a farm with a potential for a work trade, and despite being only a couple months out of the walking boot felt it was overall more healing than staying in a studio apartment I may or may not have enough rent money for, across from a park that was taped off due to Covid restrictions. When I notified one of my siblings of finding a farm work trade, he notified the rest of the relatives who group messaged me they would not be providing any of the final month of support agreed on with the therapist. I had planned to use the rent money for food.” [AA24b]
Annie will move again later, so it’s helpful to clarify this now for those who may not know: Hawai’i (aka Hawaii) is a state in the United States of America, located far away from the rest of the states, in the Pacific Ocean. It contains 8 islands: Big Island, Maui, and 6 others.
To get an idea of the geography of Hawaii, see Hawaii on Google Maps, and:
While Annie is work-trading on the rural farm (~June 2020), Sam messages Annie and asks her where he can send a diamond made from her Dad’s ashes, even though
1) Annie is low on cash, and could use cash much more than an expensive Dad-ashes-diamond, and
2) Annie recalls that her Dad wanted just cremation, and never indicated that he wanted to be turned into a diamond.
Annie finds this to be a very odd/insensitive gesture. [AA24b, EW23a]
At this point, Annie decides to go “full no contact” with her relatives (Sam, Jack, Max, Connie), following the recommendation of the family therapist she’d done sessions with a few months earlier with Sam and Connie. [AA24b]
In [AA24b], Annie writes:
“My Father never asked to become a diamond. I never sent my sibling the farm address. The mailbox was open, in a cluster of mailboxes in the middle of nowhere on the island. Plus, the most financially reasonable thing for me to have done with a diamond at that point was to pawn it for food money — and my sibling {Sam} was aware.
I decided to go full no contact with my relatives. The family therapist we spoke with recommended I consider this more seriously, after telling me she could not professionally recommend doing more group sessions. She was not the first therapist to tell me to go no contact. Withholding the final month of a six month plan for basic life support, while I was very sick, while withholding money left to me from my Dad, while offering a diamond Dad didn’t ask to become to be sent to a rural mailbox, was my final straw to begin grieving all three of my siblings and my mother. A completely different and similar grieving process as grieving my Dad.
The distinctions between “family” and “relatives” became more clear everyday.”
My note: I’ve estimated that this occurred in June 2020 based on:
Max Altman’s text message in [AA24r], where he tells Annie that he, Sam, Jack, and Connie “think it’s best” if Annie “pay{s} for things in June {herself}”, i.e. if Max, Sam, Jack, and Connie don’t adhere to the plan to pay for Annie’s basic living, food, and medical expenses that they’d previously agreed to during the sessions they did with Annie with a family therapist, and
Annie’s statement that Connie and Sam were withholding the “final month of a six month plan for basic life support...while offering a diamond Dad didn’t ask to become to be sent to a rural mailbox” [AA24b]
Thus, it seems that the 6-month plan was for the months of January 2020 through June 2020, and that Sam offered to send the $5,000 diamond he made out of Jerry’s ashes during the final month of that plan, i.e. June 2020 -- the same month that he withheld the money he’d previously agreed to send to Annie such that she could afford rent, groceries, and medical expenses.
I think this is why Annie says that Sam was “was aware” [AA24b] that “the most financially reasonable thing for {Annie} to have done with a diamond at that point was to pawn it for food money” [AA24b].
~August-September 2020: A few months after going full no contact with her relatives (Sam, Jack, Max, Connie) Annie begins having health issues with her ankle again, which make it hard for her to stand/walk, forcing Annie to stop work-trading on the farm. An owner of the farm gives Annie some computer work, that she can do while seated, for him.
Annie also applies for EBT food stamps and Medicaid.
Annie writes:
“After a couple months, I had to stop work trading on the farm because of my ankle again. Even small plantings and weeding was too much. One of the owners of the farm kindly and graciously found computer work for him for me to do seated, which gave me more time while I scrambled with my legs up the wall in constant ankle and knee pain. I had both an Etsy Shop and Patreon for my podcast, though they didn’t make enough to even cover my phone bill.” [AA24b]
“Still unsure how to rest and heal my body, I found a room rental in town and started OnlyFans. I applied for EBT food stamps and Medicaid, which felt so surreal while sharing DNA with millionaires. I had also applied for unemployment in California in April 2020, as at first I didn’t want to clog up the system for people who weren’t directly related to millionaires who could help them. I was one of the millions who had identity theft on their unemployment, and so had to go through paperwork and hearings for it to finally come through in November 2020.” [AA24b]
September 2020: Annie starts having PTSD flashbacks (to being sexually abused by Sam when she was 4.) [AA24b] These flashbacks continue for 18 months (i.e. from ~September 2020 to February 2022). [AA—f]
(From [AA24p], it seems that Annie still has PTSD as of August 9, 2024.
)Annie writes: “I had considered and attempted various mindless computer jobs, and found myself completely incapable. After going no contact because of financial and emotional abuse, I was flooded with memories of sexual abuse I had repressed...I had flashbacks of the sexual and physical abuses my whole life, though it wasn’t until the silence of no contact that I had the space to connect the dots...My days were hazes of PTSD flashbacks with whatever grounding exercises I could do, whatever floor yoga and stretching I could do, and physical therapy. I had to budget basic things like grocery trips based on how much I could walk or carry...I was constantly stressing about my health and money, and feeling hopeless and powerless.” [AA24b
]As a “plan Z last resort” [AA24b], Annie starts posting content on OnlyFans.
(As with the rest of this post—read the dropdown section.)
“{In summer 2020} I decided to go full no contact with my relatives {Sam, Jack, Max, and Connie.}...After a couple months, I had to stop work trading on the farm because of {health issues with} my ankle again. Even small plantings and weeding was too much...I scrambled with my legs up the wall in constant ankle and knee pain...So back to September 2020, starting OnlyFans. I started very softcore, for all sorts of reasons. I was uncomfortable showing much of my body, both because of a history of eating disorders and body dysmorphia and because my body was physically hurting in so many ways. I enjoyed parts of posting, and being front-facing about it all. Sharing pictures and videos on my own terms felt healing for years of insecurities with my body and sexuality and preferences, like exposure therapy for all my conditioning to hide. It felt like a very specific art therapy project. I was confused about liking parts of something that was a plan Z last resort. I was still too sick to teach yoga. I had considered and attempted various mindless computer jobs, and found myself completely incapable.
After going no contact because of financial and emotional abuse, I was flooded with memories of sexual abuse I had repressed. I had flashbacks of the sexual and physical abuses my whole life, though it wasn’t until the silence of no contact that I had the space to connect the dots. In college and after, I had projectile vomited multiple times during sex with men I loved and trusted. I remember talking about this and related things with therapists, unable to wrap my mind around how violently my body had responded. *
Now, literally on my ass from tendon and nerve and hormonal and digestive and ovarian cyst pain, I had a lot of time to remember the flashbacks’ details.” [AA24b]
September 22, 2020: Annie publishes “An open letter to relatives” [AA20a] on her blog.
To me, this letter seems to be somewhat sarcastic. Annie is “thanking” her relatives in a way that carries subliminal criticisms.
Example: “Thank you for strengthening my sense of self. I am where I am and doing what I’m doing in part because of each of you. My tenacity and gentleness to take care of myself has increased because of you. The lessons I’ve received from my relationships with you have shifted my perspectives beyond their limitations. Thank you for providing contrast.”—What I think Annie is referencing here is how her relatives screwed her out of her money and (esp. Sam) abused her for a very long time. To this, she had to adapt by developing better ways to take care of herself, and was also forced to move around in a state of relative financial poverty.
As with the rest of the letter, Annie includes seemingly-upbeat, purposefully vague one-liners throughout the letter, such as “Thank you for providing me with contrast.” (The implied negative connotation isn’t too hard to infer.)
Annie experiences two sexual assaults. These sexual assaults intensify Annie’s PTSD flashbacks to the sexual abuse she experienced from Sam when she was 4 years old.
“I had two adulthood sexual assaults while living on Maui that triggered more flashbacks. I’m grateful for those assaults in a fucked up way, for the clarities they gifted me. Half awake feeling unequivocally, “I’ve experienced exactly this before.” Though I was more set back emotionally and financially, managing even more flashbacks of old memories flooding in and incapacitating me.” [AA24b]
“The two assaults were outside of in-person sex work, both right before I started and another final straw of sorts. Adulthood assault{s} are common triggers for remembering more childhood information, patterns get repeated until they are sorted.”
Source: https://x.com/anniealtman108/status/1830774211465617685
Annie gets on the SeekingArrangements.com website again. She starts escorting and in-person sex work, as a sort of last-resort means of obtaining the money she needs to survive. A particular experience with an in-person sex work client of hers causes Annie to have more PTSD flashbacks. (See: “How I Started Escorting” on Annie’s blog.)
(As with the rest of this post—read the dropdown section.)
“While deep in my own tendon and hormone and trauma healing, I turned to escorting. Most of my emotional and thought space was on various sexual healings of my own, so extending it to include others felt less intimidating. My days were hazes of PTSD flashbacks with whatever grounding exercises I could do, whatever floor yoga and stretching I could do, and physical therapy. I had to budget basic things like grocery trips based on how much I could walk or carry. I couldn’t carry heavy things or go on long walks, and could manage even shorter beach walks because of the uneven surface. I was constantly stressing about my health and money, and feeling hopeless and powerless. Being sick is very expensive, and also a very challenging state to be in attempting to make money.” [AA24b]
“My ankle and knee and hips would hurt extra some days, and it wasn’t for another year when I was referred to a pelvic floor physical therapist that I knew I was also managing nerve pain.” [AA24b]
“I decided to get on SeekingArrangements again, now living on Maui. My disabilities and desperation made me more open to navigate the website, and I figured it would be very different than in LA. It was different, though I was still resistant to actually meet anyone in person...{eventually,} I took the plunge to meet someone in person.” [AA24b]
“The first client I ever had was in an open relationship, where his partner gave him permission for “paid play partners” that she approved of. We met on video chat, then I met him for coffee, then a few days later he was at my place. We talked, we fucked, he sent me a Venmo, he left.” [AA24b]
“I logged on my computer and paid a bill I was behind on, immediately.” [AA24b]
“My last escorting experience was with a man who was experimenting with his queerness, and wanted me to bring another man in. I invited a filming partner, as I had started making hardcore porn on OnlyFans and PornHub at that point. Before the filming partner came over, the client said “I’m so gay!” — while his dick was in my mouth between words of the dick about to be in his mouth — followed by “omg I’ve never said that before” and a distant stare. I felt that stare, back to a stare I’d experienced decades ago.” [AA24b]
“In the shower after I prayed that would be my last experience in person, and I could switch to all virtual. I knew an article would be coming out soon quoting me in New York Magazine, and I prayed it would give me the exposure to support myself with OnlyFans.” [AA24b]
While deep in my own tendon and hormone and trauma healing, I turned to escorting. Most of my emotional and thought space was on various sexual healings of my own...My days were hazes of PTSD flashbacks with whatever grounding exercises I could do, whatever floor yoga and stretching I could do, and physical therapy......My last escorting experience was with a man who was experimenting with his queerness, and wanted me to bring another man in. I invited a filming partner, as I had started making hardcore porn on OnlyFans and PornHub at that point. Before the filming partner came over, the client said “I’m so gay!” — while his dick was in my mouth between words of the dick about to be in his mouth — followed by “omg I’ve never said that before” and a distant stare. I felt that stare, back to a stare I’d experienced decades ago.” [AA24b]
“”My last in-person client came out to me as gay followed with “omg I haven’t ever said that out loud before,” as I flashbacked and did my best to stay in “work mode.” Will be more/less something when less ptsd-y” [AA24q]
From [AA24j]: “Can you imagine how much more I’ll scare them now that I’m getting my tendon/nerve/ovaries cared for, not sucking dick for rent money while my Dad’s Trust was completely withheld, and learning it’s safe and allowed for me to share my story on my terms 🥰”
From [AA—b]: “Yeah I was super sick...and houseless...and sucking “parts” for...{money?}...and so now—well, first of all, ’cause that was some outrageously good fuckery (abuse), and—now I’m un-fuck-with-able!”
Annie, unable to afford a stable place to live, experiences a long period of housing insecurity, at times living with strangers from the internet, sleeping on the floor, and living in numerous places with no running water or electricity.
Ellen Huet {see [BB24d]}: “{Annie} also did in-person sex work for two years. She says she didn’t want to, but it was the work that she was able to fit into her unpredictable schedule of dealing with her health issues. Her lack of stable income, led to a long period of housing insecurity. At times, she lived with sex work clients, or even with strangers from the internet. Her sex work contributed to her precarious housing. She didn’t have pay stubs or regular income, which limited the kind of leases she could get. It felt like this interconnected web, exactly the kind of vicious cycle that something like universal basic income tries to break.” [BB24d]
Annie Altman: “If I had a security deposit in my bank account - {I} never would have lived with this man, not, not even a little bit of a chance, would I have lived with this man. There’s some unhealthy sex work experiences, and I’ve also had very traumatizing experiences from in-person work that would not have happened if I had secure housing. I’m still in and, have been so long in, survival mode that it really shifts everything. It really shifts everything. Times when it’s been really like...places...like staying just for a week and a half {somewhere} and then the floor for a week, and then someone’s place for a night, and then a floor for a week—in those places of really moving that much in a short period of time, there’s no—I had no energy for anything else. Really feeling a sense of helplessness and powerlessness that I have never experienced, ever.” [BB24d]
More from [BB24c]:
Ellen Huet: “I’m driving through the lush green forests of Maui. Annie Altman, Sam Altman’s little sister is sitting in the passenger seat. You heard from her briefly in the first episode.”
...
Ellen Huet: “We’re taking a tour of the different places Annie has moved around in the last couple of years, driving down dirt roads to look at cabins and houses hidden behind enormous tropical plants.”
Ellen Huet: “For much of the past two years, Annie hasn’t been able to afford a stable place to live.”
Annie Altman: “The place you just passed is one of the places I stayed at longer-term in all of the houselessness...{I spent} two months on a newly-built, {with} no running water or no electricity, house, at the far end, back, of the property.”
Ellen Huet: “And I think she’s an important part of Sam’s story.”
Annie Altman: “And at the time I had nowhere to stay and no rent money, certainly no deposit money, and barely enough room, barely enough money for rent.”
Ellen Huet: “Recently, over the course of just a year, she moved twenty two times, and that’s on average about twice a month. Sometimes she has stayed places for a week at a time, or even just a night or two. Some of them have been illegal rentals without running water. She says she’s slept on floors and friends’ houses. She stayed with strangers when she didn’t have another option.”
...
Annie Altman: “The man who lived in the front house messaged me on Instagram, and I stayed in his kids’ room the week that they weren’t there, and then slept on the floor in the common room the week that the kids were there.
Annie Altman: “I was houseless. I didn’t have somewhere to go.”
Annie Altman: “I stayed in this cabin with the slanty roof right there for three months.”
{A podcast host}: “How many different places have you lived in that didn’t have running water?”
Annie: “Maybe five-ish? Five or six? I don’t know.”
Ellen Huet: “Meanwhile, thousands of miles away in San Francisco, her brother Sam was having a spectacular year in 2023. The success of ChatGPT had launched OpenAI into the stratosphere. Sam was named CEO of the Year by Time magazine. He spent months flying around the globe talking to world leaders about AI.”
Ellen Huet: “It sounds wonderful, almost utopian. But Sam was saying on stage that everyone should have enough money, enough food, everyone should have a place to live, while his own sister was struggling with homelessness. I want to believe Sam’s promises about abundance, but Annie’s story complicates a lot of the things Sam has projected about the future.”
Early 2020 -- mid-2021: Sam is in the middle of an $85 million “real-estate shopping spree” [BI23a], that took place between early 2020 and mid-2021 [BI23a].
From [BI23a]:
The properties Sam bought include:
“A $43 million dollar estate in Hawaii, on Big Island, in 2021, with a private inlet, several houses, and “adventurous amenities”, including motorboating, cliff jumping, wakesurfing, Jet Ski-ing, and scuba diving. Business Insider reports that:”
A $27 million dollar home in San Francisco with a wellness center, “cantilevered infinity pool”, and an underground garage with a “car turntable”
A $15.7 million, 950-acre ranch in Napa, with five homes and vineyards
Annie had been “unaware that her oldest brother {Sam} owned property in Hawaii until BI asked her about it” [BI23a]
The land was bought by an LLC owned by Sam’s cousin, Jennifer Serralta
The purchase of this property had not been previously reported
“In a March post on her personal blog, Serralta wrote that she stayed at a Kailua-Kona property owned by “a friend” while vacationing in Hawaii. Last year, Altman tweeted a photo of himself wakesurfing in Hawaii; the view of the Big Island in the background of the photo precisely matches the view from the Kailua-Kona compound.”
Note: Business Insider’s statement seems accurate; c.f. my analysis using Google Maps in [BI23a].
The Tweet that Sam posted:
June 7, 2021: Annie publishes “An Open Letter To The EMDR Trauma Therapist Who Fired Me For Doing Sex Work” on her blog. [AA21c]
It seems Annie was trying to use EMDR to heal her PTSD, which, as she claims, resulted from having flashbacks to and stronger memories the abuse, e.g. sexual abuse from Sam, that she was subjected to during her childhood.
It seems her therapist rejected her as a client on the basis of her position as a sex worker.
In late 2021, Sam reaches out to Annie with “seemingly kind words” [AA23m] 1 year after full contact (or, equivalently, 1.5 years after the two family therapy sessions) [AA24k]. Annie writes, “We spoke on the phone three times, and through these conversations I began to suspect the offer was another attempt at control. It seemed I would never have direct ownership of the house. Also, given the nature of my PTSD flashbacks, the house felt like an unsafe place to actually heal my mind and body.” [AA23m] Thus, Annie refuses Sam’s offer.
Also (as it seems to me), during these phone calls, Annie tells Sam that she is doing sex work, even though she doesn’t want to (i.e. she is doing so out of desperation, to survive, while burdened with various illnesses that prevent her from doing a normal job.) Sam responds: “Good.” [BB24d]. (Though “A person close to Sam says that Sam remembers the conversation differently.” [BB24d].)
Annie has stated: “There were other strings attached they made it feel like an unsafe place to actually heal from the experiences I had with him.” [AA23g] “The offer was after a year and half no contact {with Sam}, and {I} had started speaking up {about Sam, and his abuse/misconduct} online. I had already started survival sex work. The offer was for the house to be connected with a lawyer, and the last time I had a Sam-lawyer connection I didn’t get to see my Dad’s will for a year.” [AA23h]
On November 13, 2021, Annie makes some posts (Tweets) to X (Twitter) -- [AA21a] and [AA21b] -- where she publicly states that she “experienced sexual, physical, emotional, verbal, financial, and technological abuse from my biological siblings, mostly Sam Altman and some from Jack Altman”, among other things --
One month later {~December 2021}, Annie’s “long term home was broken into” [AA24e], and her “two most valuable items were left untouched.” [AA24l]:
A picture Annie posted in [AA24e], i.e. relating to her house being broken into:
2023: Annie seems to think that Sam was hoping that Annie would die or commit suicide before she could do too much damage to Sam’ s reputation, carrying her knowledge to the grave. [AA23b, AA23e].
2023-present: Annie continues to speak out against Sam on social media, including through various posts on Twitter/X (c.f. the References, and key excerpts from them section of this post.)
~September 2023 (before September 25, 2023): Elizabeth Weil interviews & does fact-checking with both Sam Altman and Annie Altman, in person, prior to publishing Sam Altman is the Oppenheimer of Our Age.
Sam does not talk about Annie with Elizabeth Weil.
September 24, 2023: After speaking in-person with Elizabeth Weil, the day before Weil’s article is published, Sam reaches out to Annie via email, apologizing to Annie and asking for forgiveness about not sending money to Annie in the years prior, when Annie was in a desperate financial situation.
September 25, 2023: Elizabeth Weil publishes Sam Altman is the Oppenheimer of Our Age.
October 4, 2023: some of Annie’s X (Twitter) posts receive newfound attention / rediscovery on X (Twitter). One of the people who sees them first the first time is me.
October 5, 2023: Multiple people attempt to edit the Sam Altman Wikipedia page and add details about Annie’s allegations that Sam sexually abused her into the Personal Life section of the Sam Altman Wikipedia page—only for those edits to removed just minutes later.
Over the course of the following months, on the Talk page the Sam Altman article on Wikipedia, Wikipedia editors get into extensive, heated discussions about whether or not to include Annie’s claims on Sam’s Wikipedia page. (Ultimately, after much discussion, they finally do include Annie’s claims on Sam’s Wikipedia page.)
From here on the Internet Archive (I just searched for the URL, “https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Altman″, in the WayBack Machine on the Internet Archive):
As of 14:50:52 (military time, I assume) on October 5, 2023: the Sam Altman Wikipedia article does not contain any details about Annie’s allegations that Sam sexually abused her:
No details about Annie’s allegations are present.
Then: As of 22:50:05, the Sam Altman Wikipedia article does contain details about Annie’s allegations that Sam sexually abused her:
Details about Annie’s allegations have been added.
Then: As of 12:09:09 on October 6, 2023, the Sam Altman Wikipedia article DOES NOT contain details about Annie’s allegations that Sam sexually abused her
The details about Annie’s allegations have been removed.
From the Revision history of the Sam Altman Wikipedia article:
It seems various people repeatedly tried to edit Sam’s Wikipedia page to include details about Annie’s allegations that Sam sexually abused her, but that, within literal minutes of each edit being made, Wikipedia users—primarily Wikipedia user “Panamitsu”, among others—removed the edits.
It also seems that all information about what those edits actually were has also been removed.
That is—from what I can tell, usually, when someone makes an edit to a Wikipedia article, you can go into the Revision history page for that Wikipedia article, and see what edits were made.
But with these edits, the links you could normally click on to see the edit details have been removed—they’ve got strikethroughs (i.e. like
this) applied to them, and you can’t click on them, and there’s a note that says, “edit summary removed” next to all of them:Wikipedia user “Panamitsu” (primarily), along with the other Wikipedia users who repeatedly removed the details, seem to have provided the following explanations for their removals:
“possible BLP issue or vandalism”
“Undid revision 1178799350 by 2A00:23EE:19D8:4A3:D9A4:325D:C151:C18F (talk) It is a WP:BLP violation. Twitter is not a reliable source and people make false accusations all the time”
“Undid revision 1178799655 by 2A00:23EE:1828:A9A0:E292:E724:64E0:FC4A (talk) vandalism”
“twitter isn’t a reliable source for gossipsheet content.,, reverted”
“Take it to talk page, I don’t think it should be here, it seems like a WP:BLP violation. I can’t even verify if that is his siter”
{I think there is a typo here, i.e. I think “siter” was supposed to say “sister”}
“Protected “Sam Altman”: Violations of the biographies of living persons policy: WP:EXTRAORDINARY WP:BURDEN ([Edit=Require autoconfirmed or confirmed access] (expires 01:26, 16 October 2023 (UTC)) [Move=Require autoconfirmed or confirmed access] (expires 01:26, 16 October 2023 (UTC)))”
The version history of the Sam Altman Wikipedia indicates that that the Wikipedia users who made the removals wanted people to “Take it to {the} talk page”. That is, they instructed anyone who might want to add details about Annie’s allegations to the Sam Altman Wikipedia article to first discuss their intent to do so on the Talk page of the Sam Altman Wikipedia article.
It seems that, on 01:26 on October 6, 2023, Wikipedia user “EI C” “protected” the Sam Altman Wikipedia article:
To be clear: I don’t understand exactly what “Protected” means in this context. I don’t know what Wikipedia user “EI C” did to make the article “Protected.” (I’m not an expert in Wikipedia article revisions.) It seems that Wikipedia user “EI C” made it such that people couldn’t add details about Annie’s allegations unless they had “autoconfirmed or confirmed access”. (I have no clue what that means either.) It also seems that this status was set to expire 10 days from the date & time it was instated (i.e. expire on 01;26, 16 October 2023.)
October 9, 2023:
09:08 on Oct 9, 2023 -- Wikipedia user “Allbirdy” edits the Sam Altman Wikipedia article, adding details about Annie’s allegations:
Just 25 minutes later: 09:33 on Oct 9, 2023 -- Wikipedia user “Panamitsu”, once again, removes these edits:
November 20, 2023:
08:36 on Nov 20, 2023 -- Wikipedia user “Rei” edits the Sam Altman Wikipedia article, adding details about Annie’s allegations:
Just 14 minutes later: 08:50 on Nov 20, 2023 -- Wikipedia user “Panamitsu”, once again, removes these edits:
09:05 on Nov 20, 2023: Wikipedia user “Rei” re-makes their edit with the details about Annie’s allegations, stating, “{My previous edit was} Very much NOT a BLP violation. Matches tone reqs, credits statements to specific individuals, cites secondary sources, etc. If you want to accuse a BLP violation, you need to cite the part of the BLP policy violated. Talk created.”
Over the next hour (primarily), i.e. 09:05-10:50 -- “Rei” argues back and forth with other Wikipeditor editors about including their edits. Ultimately, Rei’s edits are removed by Wikipedia editor “Isabelle Belato”, with a note that says “Protected “Sam Altman”: Edit warring / content dispute;WP:BLP issues. ([Edit=Require administrator access] (expires 10:30, 4 December 2023 (UTC)))”
May 23, 2024: Wikipedia user “Somewordswrittendown” adds details about Annie’s allegations of abuse, incorporating “guidelines across the various discussion pages that have opened up around this topic; namely, this doesn’t source from twitter (stupid rule that needs to be updated) and only includes direct quotes from noted publications.”
October 5, 2023 -- October, 6, 2023: Some posts on Hacker News regarding Annie’s claims that Sam sexually assaulted her at age 4 are repeatedly flagged and/or removed (according to some comments on Hacker News).
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37790899
Post before it was flagged & removed: https://web.archive.org/web/20231006140717/https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37790899
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37785072
https://x.com/JOSourcing/status/1710390512455401888
October 7, 2023: I post the original version of this post.
I create an account, “@prometheus5015” on X (Twitter), and make some posts on X indicating that I made this Lesswrong post and that I’d be interested in hearing more from Annie and Sam about these claims.
I also reply to a Tweet of Annie’s, explaining that I made this post on LessWrong, and asking Annie if she’d be willing to “confirm/deny the accuracy of my post”.
October 8, 2023: Annie Reposts my reply, confirming that the post is (generally) accurate, but noting that she needs some time to process.
October 15, 2023: Annie makes another Repost of my reply, stating that my post is accurate while also providing a few corrections and some additional information (which I appreciate, and have since included in this LessWrong post.)
https://archive.is/p5A3E
https://archive.is/Y6Szf
https://archive.is/f6bOH
https://archive.is/56MzK
https://archive.is/qd4Rh
https://archive.is/HXj24
https://archive.is/YWDiw
https://archive.is/QiB8C
https://archive.is/TqBaH
https://archive.is/VvVb5
https://archive.is/XBfdt
https://archive.is/1LTgf
https://archive.is/ccvnb
https://archive.is/2vPcA
https://archive.is/G28P0
https://archive.is/bTMiP
https://archive.is/Qq5Wf
https://archive.is/qkrDX
https://archive.is/JSoNJ
https://archive.is/opIq9
https://archive.is/rxHte
https://archive.is/HulHZ
https://archive.is/0yYYP
https://archive.is/4JC1B
https://archive.is/U2WQ0
https://archive.is/mLBhK
https://archive.is/BFAvO
https://archive.is/gcT9e
https://archive.is/UKdME
https://archive.is/xcdoG
https://archive.is/yeSpn
https://archive.is/AkcqL
https://archive.is/eRv4b
https://archive.is/i196X
https://archive.is/PcqbJ
https://archive.is/C7GVo
https://archive.is/Kqj0f
https://archive.is/ioWu9
https://archive.is/SsS1r
https://archive.is/CdvIk
https://archive.is/kVtow
https://archive.is/emMf0
https://archive.is/yt4xx
https://archive.is/Erjxl
https://archive.is/Hzizq
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https://archive.is/dsA2W
https://archive.is/4OzS2
https://archive.is/kLd7N
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https://archive.is/sNM8Z
https://archive.is/uS7an
https://archive.is/j9LY5
https://archive.is/5GZC0
https://archive.is/mGiSs
https://archive.is/0aXvb
https://archive.is/HQgaG
https://archive.is/w6UZo
https://archive.is/w6UZo
https://archive.is/1Xysd
https://archive.is/45xui
https://archive.is/9gbw4
https://archive.is/4bmhe
https://archive.is/AOAG5
https://archive.is/viyzg
https://archive.is/hgY5a
https://archive.is/lrC7W
October 14, 2023: Sam Altman visits John Burroughs School (JBS) in St. Louis, Missouri.
November 17, 2023: OpenAI’s board of directors fire Sam Altman.
November 22, 2023: Sam Altman is reinstated as CEO of OpenAI.
Removal of Sam Altman from OpenAI—Wikipedia
OpenAI: Facts from a Weekend—Zvi, LessWrong
Sam Altman’s Knack for Dodging Bullets—With a Little Help From Bigshot Friends—by Deepa Seetharaman, The Wall Street Journal
See [WSJ23a] for details.
November 22, 2023: Annie writes, “At one point recently a high school faculty member, from our same school {John Burroughs School}, spoke with me and attempted to convince me to break no contact.” [AA23m]
December 24, 2023: Sam Altman’s Knack for Dodging Bullets—With a Little Help From Bigshot Friends [WSJ23a], by Deepa Seetharaman, The Wall Street Journal, is published.
“Altman’s firing and swift reversal of fortune followed a pattern in his career, which began when he dropped out of Stanford University in 2005 and gained the reputation as a Silicon Valley visionary. Over the past two decades, Altman has lost the confidence of several top leaders in the three organizations he has directed. At every crisis point, Altman, 38 years old, not only rebounded but climbed to more powerful roles with the help of an expanding network of powerful allies.”
“A group of senior employees at Altman’s first startup, Loopt—a location-based social-media network started in the flip-phone era—twice urged board members to fire him as CEO over what they described as deceptive and chaotic behavior, said people familiar with the matter. But the board, with support from investors at venture-capital firm Sequoia, kept Altman until Loopt was sold in 2012.”
“In 2019, Altman was asked to resign from Y Combinator after partners alleged he had put personal projects, including OpenAI, ahead of his duties as president, said people familiar with the matter.”
“This fall, Altman also faced a crisis of trust at OpenAI, the company he navigated to the front of the artificial-intelligence field. In early October {2023}, OpenAI’s chief scientist {Ilya Sutskever} approached some fellow board members to recommend Altman be fired, citing roughly 20 examples of when he believed Altman misled OpenAI executives over the years. That set off weeks of closed-door talks, ending with Altman’s surprise ouster days before Thanksgiving.”
“This article is based on interviews with dozens of executives, engineers, current and former employees and friends of Altman’s, as well as investors.”
“A few years after {Loopt’s} launch, some Loopt executives voiced frustration with Altman’s management. There were complaints about Altman pursuing side projects, at one point diverting engineers to work on a gay dating app, which they felt came at the expense of the company’s main work.”
“Senior executives approached the board with concerns that Altman at times failed to tell the truth—sometimes about matters so insignificant one person described them as paper cuts. At one point, they threatened to leave the company if he wasn’t removed as CEO, according to people familiar with the matter. The board backed Altman.”
““If he imagines something to be true, it sort of becomes true in his head,” said Mark Jacobstein, co-founder of Jimini Health who served as Loopt’s chief operating officer. “That is an extraordinary trait for entrepreneurs who want to do super ambitious things. It may or may not lead one to stretch, and that can make people uncomfortable.””
“Altman doesn’t recall employee complaints beyond the normal annual CEO review process, according to people familiar with his thinking.”
“Michael Moritz, who led Sequoia, personally advised Altman. When Loopt struggled to find buyers, Moritz helped engineer an acquisition by another Sequoia-backed company, the financial technology firm Green Dot.”
“Altman turned Y Combinator into an investing powerhouse. While serving as the president, he kept his own venture-capital firm, Hydrazine, which he launched in 2012. He caused tensions after barring other partners at Y Combinator from running their own funds, including the current chief executive, Garry Tan, and Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian. Tan and Ohanian didn’t respond to requests for comment.”
“Altman also expanded Y Combinator through a nonprofit he created called YC Research, which served as an incubator for Altman’s own projects, including OpenAI. From its founding in 2015, YC Research operated without the involvement of the firm’s longtime partners, fueling their concern that Altman was straying too far from running the firm’s core business.”
“By early 2018, Altman was barely present at Y Combinator’s headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., spending more time at OpenAI, at the time a small research nonprofit, according to people familiar with the matter.”
“The increasing amount of time Altman spent at OpenAI riled longtime partners at Y Combinator, who began losing faith in him as a leader. The firm’s leaders asked him to resign, and he left as president in March 2019.”
“Graham said it was his wife’s doing. “If anyone ‘fired’ Sam, it was Jessica, not me,” he said. “But it would be wrong to use the word ‘fired’ because he agreed immediately.”
“Jessica Livingston said her husband was correct.”
“To smooth his exit, Altman proposed he move from president to chairman. He pre-emptively published a blog post on the firm’s website announcing the change. But the firm’s partnership had never agreed, and the announcement was later scrubbed from the post.”
“For years, even some of Altman’s closest associates—including Peter Thiel, Altman’s first backer for Hydrazine—didn’t know the circumstances behind Altman’s departure.”
“As the company grew, management complaints about Altman surfaced.”
“In early fall this year, Sutskever, also a board member, was upset because Altman had elevated another AI researcher, Jakub Pachocki, to director of research, according to people familiar with the matter.”
“Sutskever told his board colleagues that the episode reflected a long-running pattern of Altman’s tendency to pit employees against one another or promise resources and responsibilities to two different executives at the same time, yielding conflicts, according to people familiar with the matter.”
“Other board members already had concerns about Altman’s management. Tasha McCauley, an adjunct senior management scientist at Rand Corp., tried to cultivate relationships with employees as a board member. Past board members chatted regularly with OpenAI executives without informing Altman. Yet during the pandemic, Altman told McCauley he needed to be told if the board spoke to employees, a request that some on the board viewed as Altman limiting the board’s power, people familiar with the matter said.”
“Around the time Sutskever aired his complaints, the independent board members heard similar concerns from some senior OpenAI executives, people familiar with the discussions said. Some considered leaving the company over Altman’s leadership, the people said.”
“Altman also misled board members, leaving the impression with one board member that another wanted board member Helen Toner removed, even though it wasn’t true, according to people familiar with the matter, The Wall Street Journal reported.”
“Altman also misled board members, leaving the impression with one board member that another wanted board member Helen Toner removed, even though it wasn’t true, according to people familiar with the matter, The Wall Street Journal reported.”
June 6, 2024: OpenAI Part 1: The Most Silicon Valley Man Alive [BB24a] is released. It’s the first in a 5-part “OpenAI” series on Bloomberg’s The Foundering podcast.
The 5 episodes (“OpenAI Part 1″ through “OpenAI Part 5”) provide a history of Sam and his rise in the tech world. Also, episodes 3 and 4 feature interviews with Annie. It seems, from the 3rd episode, that the podcast hosts actually went to Hawaii and spent time with Annie in person, and she showed them some of the (many) places she’d lived during her years of housing instability on Hawaii. (c.f. OpenAI Part 3 later on in this Timeline.)
Note: in the link I provided, there’s a transcript. The transcript has this feature where it highlights the current word being spoken, with the idea being that you can “follow along” reading the transcript while you’re listening to the podcast. Unfortunately, the feature is broken. I think this is due to the inclusion of some ads/commercials at various points throughout the podcast, which create a mismatch between the transcript and the audio.) Specifically, the word highlighted in the transcript is usually a few minutes later than the actual audio.
Example from OpenAI Part 1: The Most Silicon Valley Man Alive:
June 13, 2024: OpenAI Part 3: Heaven and Hell, Part 1 [BB24c] is released.
In this episode, it seems the podcasts hosts went to Hawaii and spent time in-person with Annie. As I mentioned above, Annie showed them the (cheap/non-ideal) places she lived during her years of housing instability and financial insecurity in Hawaii.
I’ve included relevant excerpts from the episode transcript in the dropdown section here.
See the dropdown for details.
Ellen Huet (host of the podcast): “Today, we’re going to start on a drive in Hawaii.”
Annie Altman: “We’re on north Shore, going deeper into the jungle on the north shore, so we’re passing twin falls right now.
Ellen Huet: “I’m driving through the lush green forests of Maui. Annie Altman, Sam Altman’s little sister is sitting in the passenger seat. You heard from her briefly in the first episode.”
...
Ellen Huet: “We’re taking a tour of the different places Annie has moved around in the last couple of years, driving down dirt roads to look at cabins and houses hidden behind enormous tropical plants.”
..,
Ellen Huet: “For much of the past two years, Annie hasn’t been able to afford a stable place to live.”
Annie Altman: “The place you just passed is one of the places I stayed at longer-term in all of the houselessness...{I spent} two months on a newly-built, {with} no running water or no electricity, house, at the far end, back, of the property.”
Ellen Huet: “And I think she’s an important part of Sam’s story.”
Annie Altman: “And at the time I had nowhere to stay and no rent money, certainly no deposit money, and barely enough room, barely enough money for rent.”
Ellen Huet: “Recently, over the course of just a year, she moved twenty two times, and that’s on average about twice a month. Sometimes she has stayed places for a week at a time, or even just a night or two. Some of them have been illegal rentals without running water. She says she’s slept on floors and friends’ houses. She stayed with strangers when she didn’t have another option.”
...
Annie Altman: “The man who lived in the front house messaged me on Instagram, and I stayed in his kids’ room the week that they weren’t there, and then slept on the floor in the common room the week that the kids were there.
Annie Altman: “I was houseless. I didn’t have somewhere to go.”
Annie Altman: “I stayed in this cabin with the slanty roof right there for three months.”
{A podcast host}: “How many different places have you lived in that didn’t have running water?”
Annie: “Maybe five-ish? Five or six? I don’t know.”
Ellen Huet: “Meanwhile, thousands of miles away in San Francisco, her brother Sam was having a spectacular year in 2023. The success of ChatGPT had launched OpenAI into the stratosphere. Sam was named CEO of the Year by Time magazine. He spent months flying around the globe talking to world leaders about AI.”
...
Ellen Huet: “On stage, on podcasts and interviews, people kept turning to Sam for answers. They were asking him what our AI future would hold. In May of that year, he confidently suggested a future where no one is poor. It’s an idea he’s talked about for years, and the remarks show that his tune hasn’t changed despite growing renown and wealth.
Sam Altman: “One thing I think we all could agree on is that we just shouldn’t have poverty in the world.”
...
Ellen Huet: “It sounds wonderful, almost utopian. But Sam was saying on stage that everyone should have enough money, enough food, everyone should have a place to live, while his own sister was struggling with homelessness. I want to believe Sam’s promises about abundance, but Annie’s story complicates a lot of the things Sam has projected about the future.”
...
Ellen Huet: “Sam is a savvy guy. As his profile has gotten bigger after he helped build the world’s leading AI company, he has stopped saying things like AI will kill us all. Instead, he talks about how society will be profoundly changed, but overall it will be for the better. Since his newfound chat GPT fame, he has shifted toward presenting himself and by extension, open AI, as more middle of the road. Sam is allowed to change his views, but people have also so complain to me in private that Sam has a tendency to talk out of both sides of his mouth. He’s good at telling people what they want to hear in that moment, so it’s not surprising that if it’s advantageous for him to seem more moderate, that he would start to sound that way.”
June 13, 2024: OpenAI Part 4: Heaven and Hell, Part 2 [BB24d] is released.
I’ve included relevant excerpts from the episode transcript in the dropdown section here.
See the dropdown for details.
Ellen Huet: “What really strikes me is that Sam positions himself as the visionary behind this AI that might put us all out of work, and the visionary behind systems that will save us from that chaos. He’s offering fixes to the problems that his own technology will create. Imagine a future where Sam Altman’s company has invented AI so powerful that it upends the entire labor economy. We no longer work for money. Instead, we get monthly checks from Sam Altman’s income distribution system. I can imagine that his intentions might be good, and that he wants to make a difference here. But what Sam’s proposing is ending poverty through systems overseen by him, basically, and that’s asking us to put a huge amount of trust in him. Remember, Sam is really good at gaining power. He has a deep drive to be in charge. His company has made promises about adhering to certain principles and then moved away from them. It brings me back to this question we asked in episode one, what I think is the key question of this series. Should we trust this person?”
Ellen Huet: “Like we said earlier, there’s a part of Sam’s life that really complicates this image of him. It’s the story of his little sister Annie. She says she lives in poverty. Sometimes she struggles with homelessness. She says she survives by doing sex work. Sam is pitching this dream future in which universal basic income will protect everyone who needs it. That sounds lovely in theory, but when it’s held up next to Annie’s messy, everyday reality, that promise starts to sound a bit hollow. Housing insecurity has defined Annie’s life for the past few years. This is a complex and sensitive situation, so I wanted to hear from her myself.”
Annie Altman: “In my experience, it’s not only hard to do anything when you are housing insecure, it is impossible. I haven’t had a typical day in four years because of how much energy both physically like looking for places or doing things, or looking for jobs and emotionally goes into housing insecurity. It has been the single biggest energy output of my past year.”
Ellen Huet: “In person, Annie is upbeat and smiley. She has good suggestions for health food stores on Maui. She has the word love tattooed across her knuckles. She makes a podcast, Hello and Welcome to the Annie Altman Show All Humans or Human Podcast, and posts videos of her singing on YouTube.”
...
Ellen Huet: “Sometimes, I and to better understand her story, I want to rewind to her childhood. When we heard from Annie briefly in the first episode, she talked about Sam’s domineering attitude within their family, how he dictated they wouldn’t have Christmas trees and put himself in charge of how long each sibling could speak at their dad’s funeral. Their family has three boys. Sam’s the oldest, then Max, then Jack. Annie is the youngest, nine years younger than Sam and the only girl. Her brothers loved science, math, games, nerdy stuff. She was always the artistic, sensitive one. Even when they were children, she sometimes felt like the odd one out, and as they became adults, the bonds between the brothers tightened both personally and professionally. While Sam was running YC, Jack founded a software company that was funded by YC. Jack and Max also both worked with Sam, helping run his investment fund with money from Peter Teel. Then all three started another investment fund together in which they used Sam’s personal wealth. The three brothers lived together in San Francisco, brothers, coworkers, roommates, a tight, messy knot of family, business and money. Annie, on the other hand, was not part of the Altman family brand. With each new step in her life, she seemed to veer farther away from the path she felt was expected of her. She completed pre med requirements, but decided not to pursue that further. She did improv classes, stand up comedy, yoga, teacher training. She said her dad was supportive of this turn away from a more traditional path. Her mom, who was a physician, was less excited.”
Annie Altman: “My siblings and mother were very judgmental about the shift and also very “This is just a phase.” I was an am at total daddy’s girl. With my mother, there was closeness only when I was doing what she wanted me to do, which is a story {that} sadly, I feel like a lot of people can relate to.”
Ellen Huet: “Just a note. We reached out to Sam, his siblings, and his mom for comment in this episode. His mom, Connie Gibstine, responded with this statement:”
Connie Gibstine: “We love Annie and are very concerned about her well being. Over the years, we have offered her financial support and help and continue to offer it today. Navigating the balance between providing support without enabling self-destructive behavior for a family member with mental health struggles is extraordinarily difficult. We only want the best for Annie and hope everyone will treat her with compassion.”
Ellen Huet: “In 2018, Annie’s father died suddenly of a heart attack, and the grief hit her {Annie} hard. Meanwhile, she also started dealing with some chronic health issues, including tendonitis in her ankle that made it difficult to do work that required standing. She quit her job. She was still mourning her dad. She had gotten some life insurance money after he died, but when that ran out a year later, she still found herself in a desperate financial situation. In order to pay rent, she started selling her furniture. She says she asked her family directly for money to pay rent and cover groceries.”
Annie Altman: “I asked my mother for help and she said no, And then {I} asked Sam and he was told to say no because of her {Connie} wanting him to say no, and he’s a grown man in his thirties, {worth} millions of dollars.”
Ellen Huet: “Now, Sam and his family have given Annie money at times, but she says it always came with heavy conditions that made her nervous. At one point, Sam wanted her to get back on Zoloft, an antidepressant, which she had started as a teen but had stopped later on. She {Annie} forwarded me an email from Sam where he asked her to share her bank statements and to allow him and his mom to sit in on some of her therapy sessions in exchange for her rent and medical expenses being covered. She felt like it was his way of exerting leverage or power over her. Of course, Sam can spend his money as he pleases, but again, he’s on stage espousing the virtues of universal basic income—giving money away for free, unconditionally, -- and Annie says he didn’t do the same here for her. There were times when I’d gone back and forth about what to include from Annie’s story. It’s a very personal, messy family situation, and I’ll confess that on occasion I’ve doubted some unrelated things she’s told me. But also, I’ve looked through corroborating emails and documents. We drove to a lot of places Annie lived, and I met people she lived with. So in late 2019, when she asked for help and says she was told no, she turned to something she considered a last resort. To make money, she started sex work. She made an account on a sugar daddy dating website where people trade money for companionship and often sex.”
Annie: “I was just...I was in a desperate place. I mean...people who have been in a position like this ever know that when you’re in a place of selling furniture, you’re in a desperate position of “I’m out options.” This is a ‘plan Z’ I would not be doing this if plans ‘A’ through ‘I’ had worked out in any capacity.”
Ellen Huet: “The first thing she tried was video chatting with a middle-aged man. She flashed him on camera and he sent her money over Zelle. She posted videos on OnlyFans and PornHub. She also did in-person sex work for two years. She says she didn’t want to, but it was the work that she was able to fit into her unpredictable schedule of dealing with her health issues. Her lack of stable income, led to a long period of housing insecurity. At times, she lived with sex work clients, or even with strangers from the internet. Her sex work contributed to her precarious housing. She didn’t have pay stubs or regular income, which limited the kind of leases she could get. It felt like this interconnected web, exactly the kind of vicious cycle that something like universal basic income tries to break.”
Annie Altman: “If I had a security deposit in my bank account - {I} never would have lived with this man, not, not even a little bit of a chance, would I have lived with this man. There’s some unhealthy sex work experiences, and I’ve also had very traumatizing experiences from in-person work that would not have happened if I had secure housing. I’m still in and, have been so long in, survival mode that it really shifts everything. It really shifts everything. Times when it’s been really like...places...like staying just for a week and a half {somewhere} and then the floor for a week, and then someone’s place for a night, and then a floor for a week—in those places of really moving that much in a short period of time, there’s no—I had no energy for anything else. Really feeling a sense of helplessness and powerlessness that I have never experienced, ever.”
Ellen Huet: “It’s not a clean cut situation. In twenty twenty two, Sam offered to buy Annie a house, but she says it wasn’t going to be in her name, and the conditions made her uncomfortable.”
Annie Altman: “It became clear to me that it was not an offer for my house. It was an offer for a house of Sam’s—or a lawyer of his—that I would be allowed to live in.”
Ellen Huet: “She felt like it was a throwback to Sam’s attempts to get her on Zoloft and to peer into her bank statements, so she said no. I do want to pause on this because I know it may sound illogical. After all, it would have been a place to live. But from her point of view, Sam had exerted control over her throughout their lives, and this seemed like one more attempt to control her. During those conversations, she was clear with Sam about the hardships she had endured in the past couple of years.”
Annie Altman: “I told him over the series of those phone calls too, that I had started sex work, and distinctly remember when I first told him about doing sex work and he said, quote, ‘Good.’”
Ellen Huet: “Annie was stung, because she remembers that he didn’t ask anything more about it. Like she was sharing something that was painful for her and he was blowing past it.”
Annie Altman: “To hear your little sister tell you she’s doing something she doesn’t want to do related to sex, and for the response to be ‘Good.’ So I was like, ‘Oh, you’re glad that I’m starting to post on OnlyFans. It sounds ‘good’ to you because I’m supporting myself, even if I’m telling you I’m doing this as a plan Z because I don’t know what else to do.’”
Ellen Huet: “A person close to Sam says that Sam remembers the conversation differently. Annie and Sam are mostly estranged. After that conversation, she kept living in Hawaii, struggling in obscurity. Meanwhile, Sam was ascendant. He was doing world tours. {He was} CEO of the year {in Time Magazine.} He officially became a billionaire. Most of the world had no idea Annie Altman existed, let alone that she was depending on OnlyFans for survival. But last fall, New York Magazine published a profile of Sam, and the journalist, Elizabeth Weil, interviewed Annie. The article was the first time a lot of people found out Sam even had a sister, myself included.”
Annie Altman: “Some of the trippiest messages I got from reporters, when that article first came out, were reporters who have watched every interview Sam has ever done, saying ‘He’s never mentioned a sister.’”
Ellen Huet: “Annie worries that because she’s basically invisible in Sam’s public life life, especially compared to his tight relationship with his brothers, reporters won’t take her story seriously.”
Annie Altman: “That they will then question my validity, or {be like} ‘Oh, well, she’s crazy. Maybe...he’s just not talking about her because she’s so mentally unstable, and so now let’s recycle the ‘Annie’s crazy’ narrative and ‘This is why she can’t be trusted’, or ‘We should just ignore her.’”
Ellen Huet: “In the days leading up to the article coming out, New York Magazine reached out to Sam and his family and OpenAI for fact-checking and to confirm details. So Sam knew the story was going to mention Annie. And then the day before the article ran, something spurred Sam to make an unexpected move. He emailed Annie.”
Annie Altman: “And the night before it {the Elizabeth Weil article} came out was Yom Kippur --
Ellen Huet: “—the Jewish day of forgiveness—”
Annie Altman: “Sam emailed me, ‘no subject’ and in all lowercase, and said, ‘hi annie. in the spirit of it almost being yom kippur, i wanted to apologize and ask for forgiveness for something. i should have kept sending you money without conditions even though our family had concerns; i was in a tough position of wanting to let mom drive decisions as the parent and seeing how much stress you were causing her (and also agreeing it would be better for everyone if you were able to support yourself, and thinking that you needed medical help) and it being clear you just weren’t really able to function very well. still, i made the wrong call and should just have just kept supporting you; i sincerely apologize. i hope you find peace.’ There’s no mention of this article that’s coming out tomorrow, and there’s no mention of the fact checking that he just went through.”
Ellen Huet: “Annie felt that the timing of this email was really telling. That for all this time, while Annie was staying in the background, Sam didn’t feel any need to apologize. Then, just as she’s about to exert a little bit of power over him, by complicating his image, he reaches out, and invokes their shared Jewish heritage to ask for forgiveness. I asked Annie how she felt about Sam speaking publicly about universal basic income and ending poverty when he hasn’t done the same for her.”
Annie Altman: “It was a very big slap in the face. It feels embarrassing to be related to him. It’s beyond depressing and heartbreaking and disappointing that someone who I thought had a different moral compass, or who I thought would be there for me when I needed someone and was really sick, wasn’t...in the same way I’m gonna be grieving my dad for the rest of my life, I’m gonna be grieving Sam for the rest of my life. And the sadness of...of someone who saw me in a walking boot and didn’t say, ‘How can I help you.’ It’s why I use the term ‘sibling’ and not ‘brother.’”
Ellen Huet: “Even though Annie’s story is really complicated, I think it’s relevant to all of us. Because when Sam is going around talking about our AI future, he acknowledges that AI could take our jobs and upend society and money as we know it. And he says he’ll come up with a solution for us: universal basic income. But, when he’s faced with the messy reality of his own sister, suddenly it’s not so simple. In public, he is literally saying that there shouldn’t be poverty. {That} money will be given away to everyone. In private, when Annie asked for help, he didn’t come through for her in the way she needed.”
September 13, 2024: Sam returns to St. Louis. He re-visits John Burroughs School (& talks to students about AI, o1, etc.), and is interviewed on the St. Louis on the Air podcast (also available here on YouTube.)
Have Sam or his other family members responded to these claims?
Sam himself has not directly responded, as far as I know.
However, I did see the following responses from his family. These are the only instances of Annie’s family members responding to Annie’s claims that I currently know of:
From Sam Altman is the Oppenheimer of Our Age by Elizabeth Weil (published September 25, 2023) --
”The Altman family would like the world to know: “We love Annie and will continue our best efforts to support and protect her, as any family would.”″
c.f. [EW23a] and Sam Altman is the Oppenheimer of Our Age for the full context.
More of the context in which the quote was provided:
“Annie has moved more than 20 times in the past year. When she called me in mid-September, her housing was unstable yet again. She had $1,000 in her bank account.
Since 2020, she has been having flashbacks. She knows everybody takes the bits of their life and arranges them into narratives to make sense of their world.
As Annie tells her life story, Sam, their brothers, and her mother kept money her father left her from her.
As Annie tells her life story, she felt special and loved when, as a child, Sam read her bedtime stories. Now those memories feel like abuse.
The Altman family would like the world to know: “We love Annie and will continue our best efforts to support and protect her, as any family would.”
Annie is working on a one-woman show called the HumAnnie about how nobody really knows how to be a human. We’re all winging it.”
From OpenAI Part 4: Heaven and Hell, Part 2 from Bloomberg’s the Foundering podcast (published June 20, 2024):
Ellen Huet (host of the podcast): “We reached out to Sam his siblings, and his mom for comment in this episode. His mom, Connie Gibstine, responded with this statement:”
Connie Gibstine: “We love Annie and are very concerned about her well being. Over the years, we have offered her financial support and help and continued to offer it today. Navigating the balance between providing support without enabling self destructive behavior for a family member with mental health struggles is extraordinarily difficult. We only want the best for Annie and hope everyone will treat her with compassion.”
Ellen Huet: “What really strikes me is that Sam positions himself as the visionary behind this AI that might put us all out of work, and the visionary behind systems that will save us from that chaos. He’s offering fixes to the problems that his own technology will create. Imagine a future where Sam Altman’s company has invented AI so powerful that it upends the entire labor economy. We no longer work for money. Instead, we get monthly checks from Sam Altman’s income distribution system. I can imagine that his intentions might be good, and that he wants to make a difference here. But what Sam’s proposing is ending poverty through systems overseen by him, basically, and that’s asking us to put a huge amount of trust in him. Remember, Sam is really good at gaining power. He has a deep drive to be in charge. His company has made promises about adhering to certain principles and then moved away from them. It brings me back to this question we asked in episode one, what I think is the key question of this series. Should we trust this person?”
Ellen Huet: “Like we said earlier, there’s a part of Sam’s life that really complicates this image of him. It’s the story of his little sister Annie. She says she lives in poverty. Sometimes she struggles with homelessness. She says she survives by doing sex work. Sam is pitching this dream future in which universal basic income will protect everyone who needs it. That sounds lovely in theory, but when it’s held up next to Annie’s messy, everyday reality, that promise starts to sound a bit hollow. Housing insecurity has defined Annie’s life for the past few years. This is a complex and sensitive situation, so I wanted to hear from her myself.”
Annie Altman: “In my experience, it’s not only hard to do anything when you are housing insecure, it is impossible. I haven’t had a typical day in four years because of how much energy both physically like looking for places or doing things, or looking for jobs and emotionally goes into housing insecurity. It has been the single biggest energy output of my past year.”
Ellen Huet: “In person, Annie is upbeat and smiley. She has good suggestions for health food stores on Maui. She has the word love tattooed across her knuckles. She makes a podcast, Hello and Welcome to the Annie Altman Show All Humans or Human Podcast, and posts videos of her singing on YouTube.”
...
Ellen Huet: “Sometimes, I and to better understand her story, I want to rewind to her childhood. When we heard from Annie briefly in the first episode, she talked about Sam’s domineering attitude within their family, how he dictated they wouldn’t have Christmas trees and put himself in charge of how long each sibling could speak at their dad’s funeral. Their family has three boys. Sam’s the oldest, then Max, then Jack. Annie is the youngest, nine years younger than Sam and the only girl. Her brothers loved science, math, games, nerdy stuff. She was always the artistic, sensitive one. Even when they were children, she sometimes felt like the odd one out, and as they became adults, the bonds between the brothers tightened both personally and professionally. While Sam was running YC, Jack founded a software company that was funded by YC. Jack and Max also both worked with Sam, helping run his investment fund with money from Peter Teel. Then all three started another investment fund together in which they used Sam’s personal wealth. The three brothers lived together in San Francisco, brothers, coworkers, roommates, a tight, messy knot of family, business and money. Annie, on the other hand, was not part of the Altman family brand. With each new step in her life, she seemed to veer farther away from the path she felt was expected of her. She completed pre med requirements, but decided not to pursue that further. She did improv classes, stand up comedy, yoga, teacher training. She said her dad was supportive of this turn away from a more traditional path. Her mom, who was a physician, was less excited.”
Annie Altman: “My siblings and mother were very judgmental about the shift and also very “This is just a phase.” I was an am at total daddy’s girl. With my mother, there was closeness only when I was doing what she wanted me to do, which is a story {that} sadly, I feel like a lot of people can relate to.”
Ellen Huet: “Just a note. We reached out to Sam, his siblings, and his mom for comment in this episode. His mom, Connie Gibstine, responded with this statement:”
Connie Gibstine: “We love Annie and are very concerned about her well being. Over the years, we have offered her financial support and help and continue to offer it today. Navigating the balance between providing support without enabling self-destructive behavior for a family member with mental health struggles is extraordinarily difficult. We only want the best for Annie and hope everyone will treat her with compassion.”
Ellen Huet: “In 2018, Annie’s father died suddenly of a heart attack, and the grief hit her {Annie} hard. Meanwhile, she also started dealing with some chronic health issues, including tendonitis in her ankle that made it difficult to do work that required standing. She quit her job. She was still mourning her dad. She had gotten some life insurance money after he died, but when that ran out a year later, she still found herself in a desperate financial situation. In order to pay rent, she started selling her furniture. She says she asked her family directly for money to pay rent and cover groceries.”
Annie Altman: “I asked my mother for help and she said no, And then {I} asked Sam and he was told to say no because of her {Connie} wanting him to say no, and he’s a grown man in his thirties, {worth} millions of dollars.”
Ellen Huet: “Now, Sam and his family have given Annie money at times, but she says it always came with heavy conditions that made her nervous. At one point, Sam wanted her to get back on Zoloft, an antidepressant, which she had started as a teen but had stopped later on. She {Annie} forwarded me an email from Sam where he asked her to share her bank statements and to allow him and his mom to sit in on some of her therapy sessions in exchange for her rent and medical expenses being covered. She felt like it was his way of exerting leverage or power over her. Of course, Sam can spend his money as he pleases, but again, he’s on stage espousing the virtues of universal basic income—giving money away for free, unconditionally, -- and Annie says he didn’t do the same here for her. There were times when I’d gone back and forth about what to include from Annie’s story. It’s a very personal, messy family situation, and I’ll confess that on occasion I’ve doubted some unrelated things she’s told me. But also, I’ve looked through corroborating emails and documents. We drove to a lot of places Annie lived, and I met people she lived with. So in late 2019, when she asked for help and says she was told no, she turned to something she considered a last resort. To make money, she started sex work. She made an account on a sugar daddy dating website where people trade money for companionship and often sex.”
Annie: “I was just...I was in a desperate place. I mean...people who have been in a position like this ever know that when you’re in a place of selling furniture, you’re in a desperate position of “I’m out options.” This is a ‘plan Z’ I would not be doing this if plans ‘A’ through ‘I’ had worked out in any capacity.”
Ellen Huet: “The first thing she tried was video chatting with a middle-aged man. She flashed him on camera and he sent her money over Zelle. She posted videos on OnlyFans and PornHub. She also did in-person sex work for two years. She says she didn’t want to, but it was the work that she was able to fit into her unpredictable schedule of dealing with her health issues. Her lack of stable income, led to a long period of housing insecurity. At times, she lived with sex work clients, or even with strangers from the internet. Her sex work contributed to her precarious housing. She didn’t have pay stubs or regular income, which limited the kind of leases she could get. It felt like this interconnected web, exactly the kind of vicious cycle that something like universal basic income tries to break.”
Annie Altman: “If I had a security deposit in my bank account - {I} never would have lived with this man, not, not even a little bit of a chance, would I have lived with this man. There’s some unhealthy sex work experiences, and I’ve also had very traumatizing experiences from in-person work that would not have happened if I had secure housing. I’m still in and, have been so long in, survival mode that it really shifts everything. It really shifts everything. Times when it’s been really like...places...like staying just for a week and a half {somewhere} and then the floor for a week, and then someone’s place for a night, and then a floor for a week—in those places of really moving that much in a short period of time, there’s no—I had no energy for anything else. Really feeling a sense of helplessness and powerlessness that I have never experienced, ever.”
Ellen Huet: “It’s not a clean cut situation. In twenty twenty two, Sam offered to buy Annie a house, but she says it wasn’t going to be in her name, and the conditions made her uncomfortable.”
Annie Altman: “It became clear to me that it was not an offer for my house. It was an offer for a house of Sam’s—or a lawyer of his—that I would be allowed to live in.”
Ellen Huet: “She felt like it was a throwback to Sam’s attempts to get her on Zoloft and to peer into her bank statements, so she said no. I do want to pause on this because I know it may sound illogical. After all, it would have been a place to live. But from her point of view, Sam had exerted control over her throughout their lives, and this seemed like one more attempt to control her. During those conversations, she was clear with Sam about the hardships she had endured in the past couple of years.”
Annie Altman: “I told him over the series of those phone calls too, that I had started sex work, and distinctly remember when I first told him about doing sex work and he said, quote, ‘Good.’”
Ellen Huet: “Annie was stung, because she remembers that he didn’t ask anything more about it. Like she was sharing something that was painful for her and he was blowing past it.”
Annie Altman: “To hear your little sister tell you she’s doing something she doesn’t want to do related to sex, and for the response to be ‘Good.’ So I was like, ‘Oh, you’re glad that I’m starting to post on OnlyFans. It sounds ‘good’ to you because I’m supporting myself, even if I’m telling you I’m doing this as a plan Z because I don’t know what else to do.’”
Ellen Huet: “A person close to Sam says that Sam remembers the conversation differently. Annie and Sam are mostly estranged. After that conversation, she kept living in Hawaii, struggling in obscurity. Meanwhile, Sam was ascendant. He was doing world tours. {He was} CEO of the year {in Time Magazine.} He officially became a billionaire. Most of the world had no idea Annie Altman existed, let alone that she was depending on OnlyFans for survival. But last fall, New York Magazine published a profile of Sam, and the journalist, Elizabeth Weil, interviewed Annie. The article was the first time a lot of people found out Sam even had a sister, myself included.”
Annie Altman: “Some of the trippiest messages I got from reporters, when that article first came out, were reporters who have watched every interview Sam has ever done, saying ‘He’s never mentioned a sister.’”
Ellen Huet: “Annie worries that because she’s basically invisible in Sam’s public life life, especially compared to his tight relationship with his brothers, reporters won’t take her story seriously.”
Annie Altman: “That they will then question my validity, or {be like} ‘Oh, well, she’s crazy. Maybe...he’s just not talking about her because she’s so mentally unstable, and so now let’s recycle the ‘Annie’s crazy’ narrative and ‘This is why she can’t be trusted’, or ‘We should just ignore her.’”
Ellen Huet: “In the days leading up to the article coming out, New York Magazine reached out to Sam and his family and OpenAI for fact-checking and to confirm details. So Sam knew the story was going to mention Annie. And then the day before the article ran, something spurred Sam to make an unexpected move. He emailed Annie.”
Annie Altman: “And the night before it {the Elizabeth Weil article} came out was Yom Kippur --
Ellen Huet: “—the Jewish day of forgiveness—”
Annie Altman: “Sam emailed me, ‘no subject’ and in all lowercase, and said, ‘hi annie. in the spirit of it almost being yom kippur, i wanted to apologize and ask for forgiveness for something. i should have kept sending you money without conditions even though our family had concerns; i was in a tough position of wanting to let mom drive decisions as the parent and seeing how much stress you were causing her (and also agreeing it would be better for everyone if you were able to support yourself, and thinking that you needed medical help) and it being clear you just weren’t really able to function very well. still, i made the wrong call and should just have just kept supporting you; i sincerely apologize. i hope you find peace.’ There’s no mention of this article that’s coming out tomorrow, and there’s no mention of the fact checking that he just went through.”
Ellen Huet: “Annie felt that the timing of this email was really telling. That for all this time, while Annie was staying in the background, Sam didn’t feel any need to apologize. Then, just as she’s about to exert a little bit of power over him, by complicating his image, he reaches out, and invokes their shared Jewish heritage to ask for forgiveness. I asked Annie how she felt about Sam speaking publicly about universal basic income and ending poverty when he hasn’t done the same for her.”
Annie Altman: “It was a very big slap in the face. It feels embarrassing to be related to him. It’s beyond depressing and heartbreaking and disappointing that someone who I thought had a different moral compass, or who I thought would be there for me when I needed someone and was really sick, wasn’t...in the same way I’m gonna be grieving my dad for the rest of my life, I’m gonna be grieving Sam for the rest of my life. And the sadness of...of someone who saw me in a walking boot and didn’t say, ‘How can I help you.’ It’s why I use the term ‘sibling’ and not ‘brother.’”
Ellen Huet: “Even though Annie’s story is really complicated, I think it’s relevant to all of us. Because when Sam is going around talking about our AI future, he acknowledges that AI could take our jobs and upend society and money as we know it. And he says he’ll come up with a solution for us: universal basic income. But, when he’s faced with the messy reality of his own sister, suddenly it’s not so simple. In public, he is literally saying that there shouldn’t be poverty. {That} money will be given away to everyone. In private, when Annie asked for help, he didn’t come through for her in the way she needed.”
My Perspective
Opening Comments
This post began when I stumbled upon a repost on X of a post from Annie Altman in which she claimed that her brother, Sam Altman, sexually assaulted/abused her as a child (she was 4, he was 13), and that she has endured various other forms of abuse from him throughout her life. As it turns out, Annie has made a lot of very serious claims about Sam Altman.
I believe there is a very high probability that Annie Altman is who she claims to be—the sister of Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI. I believe this because:
Sam Altman posted a link on Twitter in 2018 to Annie’s YouTube channel (“Go check out my sister on Youtube!”)
Annie did an episode for her podcast featuring her brothers Sam Altman, Jack Altman, and Max Altman in 2018.
There are old newspaper reports in various places around the Internet listing Annie as a sibling of Sam, Jack, and Max Altman in, for example, obituary-type webpages related to the death and funeral of their father, Jerry Altman.
Both Sam Altman and Annie Altman spoke personally to Elizabeth Weil of nymag for her “Sam Altman Is the Oppenheimer of Our Age” article she published in September 2023.
I believe there is a high probability that Sam knows of the claims that Annie has made about him. I believe this because:
Sam shared a link to Annie’s Youtube channel in 2018. From this, I infer he is aware of her other social media profiles, where she has made her claims about Sam.
Sam and Annie both personally interviewed Elizabeth Weil for her September 2023 nymag article. The article was published, and I infer that Sam, having consented to be interviewed for the article, knows that the article exists and has read it.
Annie Altman has been posting consistently about being abused by Sam Altman (and Jack Altman, to a lesser extent) for about 4 years (~2019-present) across multiple social media platforms. Annie is largely self-consistent with the claims she makes over time.
In my view, Annie’s claims have been paid little attention, considering the power and notoriety of the person about whom she is making them—Sam Altman—and the seriousness of the claims she has been making. Besides Elizabeth Weil’s nymag article, there has been virtually zero (mainstream) media coverage of the extremely serious claims that Annie has consistently made many, many times against Sam Altman over the past 4 years.
How to interpret these claims?
Annie has been making these claims for a long time, and has been self-consistent in the way she has been making them, from what I can tell.
However, Annie has not yet provided what I would consider direct / indisputable proof that her claims are true. Thus, rationally, I must consider Sam Altman innocent.
However, this is not to say that think Annie’s claims are entirely false or implausible. Rather, I simply do not know whether Annie’s claims are true or false.
Given the degree to which Annie has pursued these claims, I think one of the following is likely:
The severe mental / psychological problems which Annie is dealing with have unfortunately caused her to misunderstand, misrepresent, disconnect (to some degree from), or selectively-filter reality into an incomplete understanding.
Or, relatedly, perhaps some of the (less serious) things Annie has claimed (e.g. that she had problems with her phone service, had low engagement / potential shadowbanning on some of her social media accounts) did indeed occur, but she overextrapolated to a larger narrative behind these events that is innaccurate.
Annie is indeed telling the truth, in whole or in part.
I don’t know which is true. Both are certainly plausible explanations.
Things I find Questionable/Unexplained
Annie claims her grandmother saw {Annie’s brothers?} playing “dwarf tossing” with Annie’s baby body, and condemned it. Did Annie’s grandmother ever tell Jerry about this? Did Jerry or Connie ever witness this behavior? If so, how did they respond to it?
At what age did Sam develop vocal fry? Was the onset gradual, or sudden? Was it precipitated by a traumatic event that Sam experienced?
(Vocal fry can develop as a result of trauma. See: Vocal Fry: Defining a Common Language Register—verywellhealth.com.)
If Sam molested Annie, what caused this highly abnormal behavior? Was it genetic factors, e.g. those encoding psychopathy, anti-social disorder, or related traits? Or might it have been learned behavior? Or was it perhaps downstream of a traumatic experience that Sam himself went through?
If Connie did indeed tell Annie to keep quiet about the sexual abuse she experienced from Sam—why? Such a response is not normal. Why exactly did Connie not want Annie to speak about this? What motives did she have for having Annie not tell other people about getting molested by Sam?
Annie claims that, around ~2016-2018, before he died, Jerry was working overtime, commuting between St. Louis and Kansas city, with a heart condition, because he needed the money. But I am a bit confused—Jerry was a lawyer, and Connie was a dermatologist. Both of those professions pay relatively well. Both Jack and Annie attended John Burroughs School, a private school (for grades 7-12) that currently charges students a staggering $36,300 per year in tuition. Though I can imagine ways in which it could be possible, I still wonder why exactly Jerry didn’t have enough money to retire, and why Jerry needed to work overtime for money all the way up until he died at age 67.
Jerry sent Annie a text message in January 2018, part of which read “I don’t just support your lifestyle now or your physical and emotional endeavors now; I support your life. I will always support your life. These are aspects of your life, so I support those too.” What was the other part of this text message? What prompted Jerry to say this to Annie?
Annie has noted that Connie and her brothers were not as supportive of her career transition (away from a pre-med track and into yoga and more creative & artistic pursuits) after she graduated college, though Jerry was supportive. Is this related?
Jerry had a known heart condition. Why was he rowing on Creve Coeur Lake just before he died at age 67? Wouldn’t he have known that this would have put him at risk for heart-related problems, e.g. a heart attack?
Did Jerry intentionally attempt to give himself a heart attack? Would Jerry have had any motives for killing himself?
How much did Jerry Altman know? Did he know anything?
Jerry was in the same household with Sam, Jack, Max, and Connie for many years. I think it’s unlikely that he would have been completely ignorant of, at minimum, the various mental health issues that Annie experienced beginning in early childhood.
Some specific examples:
- Annie told Elizabeth Weil that she was thinking of suicide by age 5, and getting up in the middle of the night needing to take baths to calm her anxiety. Was 5-year-old Annie able to fill up the bath & take a bath unassisted? Or was there a family member who would help her? If so—who was that family member? Did Jerry ever see this happen?
- On May 28, 2018 (3 years before Annie publicly acused Sam of molesting her), Annie wrote that her and Jerry were “always very close, talking about all the feels, all the music, and all the athletic activities.” This seems especially notable to me. In light of this, I think it’s extremely likely that Jerry was well-aware of Annie’s various mental health problems. Additionally—note that Annie said that her and Jerry were “always” very close. Hmm. It seems Annie told Elizabeth Weil that, at age 5, she began waking up in the middle of the night, needing to take baths to calm her anxiety [EW23a], and then by age 6, she was thinking about suicide, even though she didn’t know the word. From [AA19c], it seems that Annie was about 7 when she began to criticize her appearance. If Jerry and Annie were “always” close, then it seems pretty likely to me that Jerry would have known about some of this. Additionally, Jerry likely witnessed his son Jack being a “tired” kid, falling asleep face-first in his mac-and-cheese at dinner. So, more questions: was Jerry, a lawyer, ever suspicious of the abnormal behavior he observed in two of his children (Jack, Annie)? Did he ever suspect that something was awry? Did he ever suspect anything of his oldest child, Sam? Did he ever witness abusive behavior from Sam?
As I stated earlier in the timeline—I find it hard to reconcile the different stories Annie and Sam tell about their Dad’s death? I’ll copy-paste what I wrote above in the timeline here, regarding my confusion:
Note: In my opinion, Annie and Sam tell stories about their dad’s death that, to me, seem rather different and hard to reconcile --
Annie says:
{Jerry was} “working overtime, with known heart conditions. The dream he expressed to retire in Costa Rica was never fulfilled by his millionaire son, who could have retired our father that he claimed to love.” [AA24c]
“What would have been our last family trip, I chose not to go for various reasons. I asked our Dad to be given a check for whatever would have been spent on my fancy plane ticket and accommodations. Dad didn’t ever tell me about getting money from Sam, and got quiet about his Costa Rica dream” [AA24d]
“I asked for money and resources to be given to our Dad numerous times before he died.” [AA23q]
“”One time I found a $500k watch at my oldest siblings’ place {Sam’s place}, casually in an open kitchen cabinet. Another sibling told me how much the watch was, and then got bullied for disclosing to me. I asked why our 60-something Dad (with heart conditions) was making rent and car payments.
Surely retiring the father you claimed closeness with was more valuable than a watch????????
If our Dad had his needs taken care of, I would have supported multiple fancy watches” [AA24m]
It seems (e.g. via the analysis given in this article from KeepTheTime.com [KTT23a], or in this Business Insider article [BI23b]) that this watch was the ~$500,000 Greubel Forsey Invention Piece 1 (with the Rose Gold 5N metal type [KTT23a].)
...not to be confused with the ~$100,000 Patek Philippe Perpetual Calendar Ref. 1526 wristwatch that Sam also owned as of May 23, 2018 {see the “Sam’s wristwatches” I wrote below}
Sam’s wristwatches:
Sam can be seen wearing {what seems likely to be} his Greubel Forsey Invention Piece 1 in “WIRED25: Sebastian Thrun & Sam Altman Talk Flying Vehicles and Artificial Intelligence”, published 10/16/2018:
It seems that, as of May 23, 2018, Sam also owned a ~$100K Philippe Patek Perpetual Calendar Ref. 1526 watch, which he posted a picture of to Reddit (on May 23, 2023):
The picture of the watch is not currently shown in the Reddit post. I found a link to it in the post’s source code (using Inspect Element):
I also found the date & time of the post’s creation in its source code:
(Note: as I noted on Twitter, I originally got this date wrong, accidentally mistaking the date and time at which a comment on the post was made for the date and time at which the post itself was made. Sorry about that.)
It seems this was the same watch that Sam wore when testifying to congress on Tuesday, May 16, 2023 about AI regulation:
You can make out the distinctive “moonphase window” [SW22a] (annotated in green, where I’ve traced segments along the boundary of the moonphase window itself in red), calendar info with the day and month (annotated in orange), the pure 18k yellow gold [SW22a] crown (annotated in blue), along with three of the watch’s golden numerals: 12 (at the top of the dial just above the calendar info, annotated in grey), 2 (annotated in light/aqua blue), and 4 (annotated in pink).
Sam says:
(32:28-33:49) “AGI and my family are the two main things I care about, so losing one of those is like...so yeah I mean it was just like unbelievably painful. The only comparable set of life experience that I had, and that one was of course much worse, was when my dad died. And that was like a very sudden thing. But the sense of like confusion and loss...in that case, I felt like I had a little bit of time to just like feel it all. But then there was so much to do. Like it was like so unexpected that I had to pick up the pieces of his life for a little while. And it wasn’t until, like, a week after that I really got a moment to just, like, catch my breath and be like, holy shit, like, I can’t believe this happened. So yeah, that was much worse.” [SA23a]
If was Sam Altman was completely fine with posting a link to Annie’s Youtube channel on Twitter on Feb 2, 2018, why did he (and Jack Altman) refuse to post a link to the podcast episode he filmed with Annie on Dec 7, 2018 on the basis that it “didn’t align with {his} businesses”, as Annie claimed to Elizabeth Weil?
If Sam did indeed say this, I am a bit confused, as it seems a bit inconsistent to me that Sam identified Annie’s Youtube channel as “aligning with his businesses”, yet identified the podcast that he recorded with Annie as “not aligning with his businesses.” The reason I state that this seems inconsistent is because I don’t see what exactly what it was about Annie’s podcast that made it “not align” with Sam’s businesses given that Annie’s Youtube channel “did align.”
In the legal (probate) case (case number: 18SL-PR01960) relating to Jerry’s Will and Estate had (opened 06/12/2018), a “Proof of Mailing” was submitted on 07/09/2018.
In my (amateur) understanding, this means that Annie should have received a notice in the mail from the court clerk notifying her that her mother (Connie) had been appointed as the legal representative for the legal (probate) case regarding Jerry’s will and estate.
In light of this, I’m surprised that Annie, one of her father Jerry’s legal heirs, only met Pete for the first time around 09/22/2019 (see the email that Sam Altman sent to Pete Palumbo and Annie Altman the Timeline above), so long after her father’s death. Why was it that Sam both knew Pete before Annie did? Furthermore, Pete was working attorney for as Connie (the personal representative) as of 06/12/2018. Thus, at minimum, Connie knew Pete for over 1 year and 3 months before Sam sent the email instructing Pete to “meet” Annie on 09/22/2019. Why did Connie know Pete for so long, but (as it seems to me) never introduce Annie to him/tell Annie about him? Annie was an heir of Jerry’s just like Sam was. Why was Sam in contact with Pete before Annie was? Why was Sam the one making the introduction? Shouldn’t Pete have reached out to Annie himself, given that she was one of Jerry’s legal heirs?
Annie notes that a passport was stolen from her mail around the time she started her podcast. The first episode of Annie’s podcast came out on 08/14/2018. Hmm. Was Annie’s passport the only thing stolen from Annie’s mail around that time, or were other items stolen as well? Was the legally-required information regarding the legal (probate) case relating to Jerry’s death/Will/Estate indeed mailed to Annie as legally required, only for it to be stolen out of Annie’s mail? Who might have had a motive to steal such a thing from Annie’s mail?
Why was the judge for the legal (probate) case regarding Jerry’s Will and Estate reassigned twice (for a total of three different judges), within the span of 18 days?
Annie references a variety of things in [AA24a] Email about my Dad’s Trust (which is addressed to Annie’s “mother’s laywer” [AA24a], which I think is Pete Palumbo), including things that her short-term lawyer mentioned, that I don’t fully understand:
-- something related to Hydrazine?
-- something related to “a fund of my siblings’, and one of my Dad’s buildings with my-Dad’s-old-boss” [AA24a]?
-- divisions of {Jerry’s Trust, which was established per his Will}?
-- delayment of the funding of Jerry’s Trust?
-- Jerry’s Trust now being funded, even though Pete Palumbo previously said it couldn’t be funded?
-- why did Annie only learn that she could “make an as of the Trust with a monthly budget” [AA24a] after Annie’s short-term lawyer talked to Pete Palumbo?
-- why was Anie not contacted about “the potential to request a non-prejudicial lump sum in accordance with my wishes” [AA24a]?
-- Annie writes, “The Trust makes it clear that my Dad’s wish was for me to have been supported in tese six years since his death. In the absence of the support intended for me in my Dad’s Trust, I’ve experienced two and a half years of houseless and homelessness and daily PTSD flashbacks, and I’ve had to resort to survival sex work to support myself financially while still navigating physical illnesses.” [AA24a]. Why was the fufillment of Jerry’s wishes collectively blocked by Sam Altman, Connie Gibstine, and Pete Palumbo?
Why has it taken over 6 years for Jerry’s estate to be administered? Why has Pete Palumbo repeatedly filed for extensions?
I thought that Jerry was working overtime up until his death until he died. But his personal property was valued at $727,107.49 less than 5 months after his death (and is now valued at over 1 million dollars.) This should have been enough money for Jerry to retire on. So why was Jerry still working?
Also—what is this “personal property” of Jerry’s? Where did it come from?
Annie has been speaking out about Sam for roughly 3 years now. In 2021, she made her claims quite clear on her X account. I am confused as to why there has been basically 0 coverage of her claims in the media? In general, why is Annie so absent in anything related to Sam Altman on the Internet, especially considering the nature of her relationship with Sam?
The sole exception here, of course, is Elizabeth Weil’s nymag article, but even this article doesn’t directly state the entirety of the claims that Annie has made. Instead, it kind of vaguely addresses them, using somewhat inspecific phrasing like “Now those memories feel like abuse”, or “Since 2020, she has been having flashbacks” that don’t quite capture the gravity of what Annie has been claiming.
Why, as some commenters on Hacker News claim, has a post regarding Annie’s claims that Sam sexually assaulted her at age 4 been repeatedly removed?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37785072
https://x.com/JOSourcing/status/1710390512455401888
Sam returned to his high school, John Burroughs School (JBS), on October 14, 2023. On November 22, 2023, Annie wrote “At one point recently a high school faculty member, from our same school {John Burroughs School}, spoke with me and attempted to convince me to break no contact.” Did Sam return to JBS on October 14, 2023 so he could speak with a faculty member who knew both him and Annie and convince them to reach out to Annie to try to get him to break no contact?
Some Twitter post’s of Annie’s were rediscovered around October 4, 2023. I published (the first version of) this post on October 7, 2023. Did these factors motivate Sam’s return to JBS, and his attempts to get Anine to break no contact using a JBS faculty member as a middleman?
If Sam did use a JBS faculty member as a middleman to try to get Annie to start talking to him again, who was that faculty member? Was there a reason in particular that Sam chose that faculty member? What does that faculty member know about Sam? What does that faculty member know about Annie?
What exactly is the nature of Sam’s relationship to JBS, and specific members of its faculty? Why exactly has Sam returned to JBS numerous times? Is there a member of the JBS faculty who knows something important about Sam and/or Annie?
Anticipating and Responding to Potential Objections
I initially hesitated to make this post, because I was initially skeptical of Annie’s claims. However, I changed my mind—I think there is a nonzero probability that Annie is telling the truth, in whole or in part, and thus believe her claims ought to receive greater attention and further investigation.
Assuming that my personal understanding of Annie’s story, as presented above, is correct, Annie’s behavior potentially makes sense.
So—assuming my understanding is correct, I provide the following responses to (potential) objections regarding (the validity of) Annie’s claims:
Objection 1 (to Annie’s claims): “It seems like Annie is just doing this for money. She’s linking to her OnlyFans and to her Venmo, CashApp, and PayPal on X.”
My response: I do think this is a reasonable objection. However, I think this behavior could be plausible in light of the timeline of Annie’s life:
A 13-year-old Sam sexually assaults a 4-year-old Annie.
As Annie grows older, she does not explicitly remember this event (until 2020), but experiences a multitude of severe psychological and mental traumas and illnesses stemming from this early sexual abuse (see above.)
When she begins to remember this event in 2020, it takes a severe toll on her (and she had already been dealing with many mental health issues since the age of 4 even without explicitly remembering Sam’s sexual assault of her (as the source of her psychological maladies)), and weakens her ability to financially support herself.
Objection 2: “Annie hosted a podcast in 2018 with her brothers (Sam, Jack, and Max), but seems to have been unhappy that her brothers, particularly Sam, refused her request to share (the link to) her podcast (e.g. on Twitter.) This seems to potentially be part of a pattern of behavior wherein Annie tries to exploit the status of her brothers for her own gain.”
My response: I do think that this objection holds merit. In her nymag article, Elizabeth Weil writes, “Among her various art projects, Annie makes a podcast called All Humans Are Human. The first Thanksgiving after their father’s death, all the brothers agreed to record an episode with her. Annie wanted to talk on air about the psychological phenomenon of projection: what we put on other people. The brothers steered the conversation into the idea of feedback — specifically, how to give feedback at work. After she posted the show online, Annie hoped her siblings, particularly Sam, would share it. He’d contributed to their brothers’ careers. Jack’s company, Lattice, had been through YC. “I was like, ‘You could just tweet the link. That would help. You don’t want to share your sister’s podcast that you came on?’” He did not. “Jack and Sam said it didn’t align with their businesses.”” I find this account to be plausible, yet do not think it entirely dispels the objection.
Objection 3: “It seems Annie has been dealing with a variety of severe mental and psychological ailments throughout her life. She also seems to smoke/drink occasionally. It may well be that these claims are borne purely out these sorts of ailments of hers (or are of some other untrustworthy origin).”
My response: I think this is a valid concern to raise. As with much of the information presented here, I would be interested in hearing more from Annie.
Objection 4: “While Annie’s claims are concerning, and her online activity and presence across a variety of media platforms does potentially support her claims, Annie has provided no direct evidence to corroborate her claims. We ought to hold Sam Altman innocent until proven guilty.”
My response: I think this is a valid position. I actually agree with it. Hopefully, as a result of this post, we potentially receive a more detailed account or perspective on this matter from Annie, Sam, or others close to this matter (e.g. Jack Altman, Max Altman, etc.)
Responding to Objections/Comments I’ve Seen From Others
It’s been some time since I originally made my post, and I’ve seen a lot of comments, objections, and feedback from others. I”ll try to respond to some here.
I responded to this on X (Twitter) a bit ago, but I’ll respond here as well.
I will provide a counterargument to each point that Kat Woods made in these Tweets. Before I do so, a few notes:
In my opinion, Kat Woods has not provided the key facts. Rather, she has provided a highly-filtered subset of the full set of facts/the full story.
However—I don’t want to unfairly villianize Kat. This story is, as one can clearly sees with the length of this LessWrong, a long story. There is a lot of information to process. I understand that it may be easy to miss key details.
So—my point-by-point response:
Kat Woods: “She only started accusing Sam after she wanted money and didn’t get it. She disputed the inheritance from a trust fund she felt she was owed after her father died. She blamed her family and started publicly attacking them, including Sam.”
“Wanted money and didn’t get it” --
this is a a misleading characterization. Annie’s dad left money to her, but then Connie (in communication with Sam, Jack, Max) overrode Jerry’s wishes and blocked Annie from receiving the money, right after Annie quit her job due to a variety of health issues that had cropped up for her that made it hard to work. Annie had told Connie (and, iiuc, Sam, Jack, and Max) before quitting her job that she was going to quit her job with the expectation that she would be receiving the money that Jerry had left to her, with the expectation being that this money would cover Annie’s financial needs while she was temporarily unemployed. Connie then blocked Annie from receiving this money only after Annie had already quit her job. Connie knew this was going to happen. So, of course Annie “wanted” the money:
She was supposed to get the money—Jerry had wanted her to have it
She was in a desperate financial situation
She had told Connie (and Sam, Jack, Max) that she expected that she’d receive the money before she quit her job, and then they withheld it from only after she had already quit her job, putting Annie in a precarious financial position in a way she had not at all been expecting.
“after she wanted money and didn’t get it” --
this is a misleading characterization. As far as I know, Annie hadn’t began directly speaking out against her relatives (Sam, Max, Jack, and Connie) on social media until she made these 3 Tweets on November 13, 2021. This was roughly two years after Connie, Sam, Max, and Jack blocked Annie from getting the money that her father (Jerry) left to her. Saying “She only started accusing Sam after she wanted money and didn’t get it” makes it sound like 1) Annie didn’t have a valid reason for the money, she just “wanted” it, and 2) When Annie didn’t get the money, she got on social media and started defaming her relatives on social media. Neither of these seem to be the case, as far as I can tell. As I detailed in the previous bullet point, Annie actually did have multiple valid reasons to expect the money: firstly, that her father had left it to her, and secondly, that she had told her family members that she was going to temporarily quit her job to try to fix her health issues with the expectation that she’d be receiving money, and (I presume) those relatives hadn’t given any indication that they’d be withholding the money from Annie after she quit her job.
“She disputed the inheritance from a trust fund she felt she was owed after her father died.” --
“Felt she was owed” is a misleading characterization that makes it seem like Annie just felt entitled, for no good reason, to money that wasn’t supposed to be hers. This is not at all the impression I get. My understanding is that Annie’s father, in legal documents (will, 401k), indicated that he wanted Annie to receive money. Annie’s relatives overrode these wishes, to block/withhold that money from getting to Annie.
“She blamed her family and started publicly attacking them, including Sam.” --
“Blamed” makes it seem like Annie blamed her family without a good reason. But that isn’t what happened:
Annie’s family (Connie, Sam, Jack, and Max) actively intervened to prevent Annie from seeing Jerry’s will for ~1 year after his death
In 2019, Annie told her family she was going to quit her job, as she wanted time to try to cure her health problems (which were making it hard for her to stand ⟹hard for her to do her job), and was expecting to receive money that her father had left. So, Annie’s relatives:
KNEW that Annie expected to receive her father’s money
KNEW she was going to quit her job
Then, only after Annie quit her job, did Annie’s relatives then tell her that they were going to withhold the money from her.
This put Annie into a desperate financial situation. She was now jobless, low on money, and plagued by health problems that made it hard for her to get a new job.
“And started publicly attacking them” --
Again, Kat’s writing is missing key context about the timeline here. Annie’s relatives blocked her from receiving Jerry’s money in 2019. Annie only started speaking out against them (including Sam) on November 13, 2021. There was a period of 2 years between those events.
Kat Woods: “—The accusation is based on “repressed memories” from when she was 4 that she “didn’t remember until she was 26”—right after she wanted her inheritance and was told she’d get it in monthly installments instead of a lump sum. She refused the conditions then went around saying she’d been denied her inheritance.”
“The accusation is based on “repressed memories” from when she was 4 that she “didn’t remember until she was 26”” --
This is incorrect.
Though, I can see how one could easily come to this incorrect conclusion.
Again, if Kat was writing with genuine good intent in her Tweets, then I don’t want to unfairly villainize her. Again, there is a lot of information here, and it’s easy to miss small details here and there.
In my understanding, Annie
Concluding Remarks
To be clear, in this post, I am not definitively stating that I believe Annie’s claims. Annie, to the best of my knowledge, has not provided direct proof—the sort that would be usable in court—of the claims she’s made of Sam Altman.
I currently hold that I do not know if Annie’s claims are true or not, though I will note that her online activity have been self-consistent over a long period of time, and seems to match up with activity from Sam in a few places (e.g. in the podcast episode she recorded with him.) I currently cannot disprove Sam Altman’s innocence, as I do not think I can say that he has been proven guilty.
Rather, as previously stated, I am hoping to draw attention to a body of information that I think warrants further investigation, as I think that there is a nonzero probability that Annie is telling the truth, in whole or in part, and that this must be taken extremely seriously in light of the gravity of the claims she is making and the position of the person about whom she is making them.
The information provided above makes me think it is likely that Sam Altman is aware of the claims that Annie Altman has made about him. To my knowledge, he has not directly, publicly responded to any of her claims.
Given the gravity of Sam Altman’s position at the helm of the company leading the development of an artificial superintelligence which it does not yet know how to align—to imbue with morality and ethics—I feel Annie’s claims warrant a far greater level of investigation than they’ve received thus far.
I made an account on X (Twitter) (to reach out to Annie & Sam)
I made an X account (formerly “@prometheus5105”, now “@pythagoras5015″ -- I changed it for the reasons I provided here) where I responded to a recent post of Annie’s (on X) asking her to confirm/deny the accuracy of my post.
Unfortunately, within minutes of creating my account, I received the following message:
So, for now, my account is going to look suspicious, following only 1 account. Sorry.
Disclaimer
Disclaimer: I would like to note that this is my first post on LessWrong. I have tried my best to meet the writing standards of this website, and to incorporate the advice given in the New User Guide. I apologize in advance for any shortcomings in my writing, and am very much open to feedback and commentary.
List of Annie’s various online accounts:
https://theanniealtmanshow.medium.com/
https://x.com/anniealtman108
https://www.instagram.com/allhumansarehuman/
https://www.youtube.com/@AnnieAltman
https://www.tiktok.com/@phuckfilosophy
https://open.spotify.com/show/0SKQ3vKzn2pSYXWRWwWb7J
https://www.allhumansarehuman.com/
https://www.facebook.com/theanniealtmanshow/
References, and key excerpts from them
Note: throughout the excerpts, I’ll bold sections I feel are particularly important or relevant.
[AA15a] My Denied Appeal Letter For Early College Graduation—originally written
3-30-2015 (according to Annie). Posted on Annie’s Medium page on 3-21-2019
“After several meetings I am writing to make a formal request to graduate at the end of this spring, with almost seven semesters of Tufts residency. I have been a full-time student for six semesters...At the end of this semester I will have completed my Biopsychology major, as well as the university’s distribution and credit requirements.”
“Because I have so treasured my experiences, choosing I was ready to leave was extremely difficult. There is simply no need for the sadness and anxiety I’ve felt relating to school; but it took me a while to both figure that out and to accept it. Education should be a gift, however I’ve recently found it to feel more like a burden. I came to Tufts on the pre-medical track, and it was not until this semester that I let go of my rigid attachment to that plan. While a MD or DO degree may still be in my future, I want to more openly look into becoming a nurse or physician’s assistant, as well as a therapist through psychology or social work graduate programs. I feel confident that I want to go into the healthcare field but I am still discovering what role would be the best fit for me and my happiness, allowing me to make the greatest possible positive contribution to the world. I feel extremely thankful for the support I’ve had, both from teachers and friends, in working through this decision. I am also very fortunate for my relationship with my parents and the emotional and logistical support they have given me in this process.”
“My dream would be a summer of my own therapy: taking counseling seriously in a way I have never before felt ready to, focusing on art projects, dance classes, and guitar lessons, as well as attending yoga and meditation retreats — working towards whatever euphemism you prefer for “getting my head on straight” or “re-centering.” I then want to spend a year traveling the world, creating my own education while carrying with me many important lessons learned from Tufts.”
“Sometimes in meditation the most mindful moments come not from feeling fully aware, but rather from realizing you had momentarily lost your awareness and coming back to the present moment. Depressed feelings usually linger from the past, and anxious thoughts are often about the future — a focus on the present brings me a sense of peace. I have come to the realization that being at Tufts is not giving me the potential to be my best self, and I feel as though staying here another year is not in my best interest. I would like to reiterate that many of my issues are not specific to Tufts, but rather regarding where I am at this point in my life. I am grateful for your time and consideration in reading my words and I hope that you will honor my request.”
[YC16a] “Sam Altman: How to Build the Future”—published September 27, 2016
Jack: “Switching into a...topic of sort of money and sort of the long-term view of it and how people can think about it most clearly, I’m actually to start with a quick story that I think illustrates a bit of some of your views. This is from when we were very young and our grandma gave us each some stock—”
Sam: “—oh this is a good story—”
Jack: “—in a company—”
Sam: “—alright, you can tell this one.”
Jack: “Okay. So she gave us each some stock in a company that she thought we would like. And so, as you like to point out, I was heavier as a child, and one of the things I liked was Applebee’s.”
[TF16a] Sam Altman’s Manifest Destiny”—published October 3, 2016 in the New Yorker by Tad Friend
“A blogger recently asked Altman, “How has having Asperger’s helped and hurt you?” Altman told me, “I was, like, ‘Fuck you, I don’t have Asperger’s!’ But then I thought, I can see why he thinks I do. I sit in weird ways”—he folds up like a busted umbrella—“I have narrow interests in technology, I have no patience for things I’m not interested in: parties, most people. When someone examines a photo and says, ‘Oh, he’s feeling this and this and this,’ all these subtle emotions, I look on with alien intrigue.” Altman’s great strengths are clarity of thought and an intuitive grasp of complex systems. His great weakness is his utter lack of interest in ineffective people, which unfortunately includes most of us. I found his assiduousness alarming at first, then gradually endearing. When I remarked, after a few long days together, that he never seemed to visit the men’s room, he said, “I will practice going to the bathroom more often so you humans don’t realize that I’m the A.I.””
““Well, I like racing cars,” Altman said. “I have five, including two McLarens and an old Tesla. I like flying rented planes all over California. Oh, and one odd one—I prep for survival.” Seeing their bewilderment, he explained, “My problem is that when my friends get drunk they talk about the ways the world will end. After a Dutch lab modified the H5N1 bird-flu virus, five years ago, making it super contagious, the chance of a lethal synthetic virus being released in the next twenty years became, well, nonzero. The other most popular scenarios would be A.I. that attacks us and nations fighting with nukes over scarce resources.” The Shypmates looked grave. “I try not to think about it too much,” Altman said. “But I have guns, gold, potassium iodide, antibiotics, batteries, water, gas masks from the Israeli Defense Force, and a big patch of land in Big Sur I can fly to.””
“Altman’s mother, a dermatologist named Connie Gibstine, told me, “Sam does keep an awful lot tied up inside. He’ll call and say he has a headache—and he’ll have Googled it, so there’s some cyber-chondria in there, too. I have to reassure him that he doesn’t have meningitis or lymphoma, that it’s just stress.” If the pandemic does come, Altman’s backup plan is to fly with his friend Peter Thiel, the billionaire venture capitalist, to Thiel’s house in New Zealand. Thiel told me, “Sam is not particularly religious, but he is culturally very Jewish—an optimist yet a survivalist, with a sense that things can always go deeply wrong, and that there’s no single place in the world where you’re deeply at home.”
“One evening at Altman’s house, his younger brothers, Max and Jack, were teasing him that he should run for President in 2020, when he’d be thirty-five: just old enough. Max, twenty-eight, said, “Who better than you, Sam?” As Altman tried not very vehemently to change the subject, Jack, twenty-seven, said, “It’s not purely little-brother trolling. I do think tech needs a good candidate.” “Let’s send the Jewish gay guy!” Altman said. “That’ll work!”
Jack eyed a board game called Samurai on the bookshelf and said, “Sam won every single game of Samurai when we were kids because he always declared himself the Samurai leader: ‘I have to win, and I’m in charge of everything.’ ”
Altman shot back, “You want to play speed chess right now?,” and Jack laughed.”
“Max was working at the Y Combinator company Zenefits; Jack co-founded a performance-management company, Lattice, which had just gone through YC. The two brothers moved in with Altman temporarily three years ago and never left. Altman recently hired a designer to upgrade his gray IKEA sofas to gray SummerHouse sofas, and he hung some handsomely framed photographs taken from space, but the house maintains an upscale-student-housing vibe. His mother told me, “I think Sam likes having his brothers around because they knew him when, and can give him pushback in ways that other people can’t. But it’s tricky, with the power dynamic, and I want it to end before it explodes.””
[JBS17a] https://x.com/JBSchool/status/935883960017674240 - November 29, 2017
“Sam Altman ’03 speaks to students about the development of startups and AI … and our collective responsibility to make sure they benefit everyone. https://jburroughs.org/news-and-events/sam-altman-03-startups-ai-for-good #JBSalum”
[SA18a] https://x.com/sama/status/959528971913146368 - posted 2-2-2018
“Check out my sister {Annie} on youtube!”
[AA18a] The Speech I Gave At My Dad’s Funeral—originally read aloud at Jerry’s funeral service on 5-28-2018 (according to Annie); posted on Annie’s Medium page on 3-28-2019
“My dad trusted my intuition more than I ever have. He often reminded me of the strength of my mind-body connection, a concept I am both extremely passionate about and skilled at underestimating. He created and held space for all of my feelings, and those of you who have talked to me ever know that I have more than a few of those all of the time.”
“Sam said we could each talk for about five minutes, less if possible to not make you lovely people sit here all day, and Jack correctly pointed out how I will definitely be using all five of my minutes. I’ll apparently even spend some sharing this backstory with you.”
“You may know that I come from a family that loves to rank things in order to make meaning of them. I love that too, and I also love talking about feelings, as someone who has so many of them. This led me to make a list about a year ago ranking my immediate family in terms of emotional expressivity, from most to least. Obviously I take “first place” on this list, which is probably part of why I wanted to make it. Next comes my dad, then Max, then Jack, and then Sam and mom alternate what would be first place if this list went from minimal to Annie levels of emotional expression.”
“My dad and I were always very close, talking about all the feels, all the music, and all the athletic activities.”
“We grew even closer in the past few years, as he was my #1 supporter and confidant in all my choices and adventures, most recently in moving to the Big Island of Hawaii, teaching yoga knowing full well it is not a “career” one can “support themselves” with, and even choosing to live in a car for a few months (re: there is little money in yoga and also Annie goes into extreme minimal hippie phase).”
“My dad came out to visit me in February, when I finally moved into a non-mobile home...My brothers are convinced that he changed his diet to be closer to me, much like his interest in rowing and involvement with the St. Louis Rowing Club, and I know they are right.”
“In January my dad sent me a text, part of which read, “And just for clarification, I don’t just support your lifestyle now or your physical and emotional endeavors now; I support your life. I will always support your life. These are aspects of your life, so I support those too. And there is not a “now”, as Yoda might say. There is only life, for as long as that may be.””
“My dad was active, with people, and doing what he loved, I had said up until his last day before my mom correctly clarified it as “his last hour.””
[AA18b] Reclaiming my memories—posted on 11-8-2018
“Two months ago I met with Joe K, the owner of Urban Exhale Hot Yoga, to discuss the podcast episode we were going to record together. (I have since recorded podcasts with four other teachers at the studio and am completely unsure how to express my gratitude to Joe — honestly perhaps less words about it?) While I would be the one asking Joe questions on the podcast, he had an important question for me. With all the casual profundity of a yoga teacher, Joe asked, “what is your earliest memory?”
“Without pause for an inhale I responded, “probably a panic attack.” I feel like Joe did his best asana poker face, based on projecting my own insecurities and/or the hyper-vigilant observance that comes with anxiety.”
“I began having panic attacks at a young age. I felt the impending doom of death before I had any concept of death. (Do I really have any concept of death now, though? Does anyone??) I define panic attacks as feeling “too alive,” like diving off the deep end into awareness of existence without any proper scuba gear or knowledge of free diving. Panic attacks, I’ve learned, come like an ambulance flashing lights and blaring a siren indicating that my mind and my body are… experiencing a missed connection in terms of communication — they’re refusing to listen to each other. More accurately: my mind is disregarding the messages from my body, convinced she can think her way through feelings, and so my body goes into panic mode like she’s on strike.”
“I went to a sound bath at the yoga studio about a month ago, the second sound bath I’ve ever attended. (I cried at both and if you know me you know that I am happy about things that help me cry.) Sound baths are a guided meditation where you lay in corpse pose and receive sounds of specific frequencies, allowing vibrations to “wash” over and through you. Some shit is bound to surface in the tides.”
“My dad died five months ago now, and to say I’ve learned a lot is an enormous understatement. I was and am a “daddy’s girl.” The most recent panic attack, and perhaps darkest one I’ve experienced, happened the week he died. My dad was one of the most genuinely positive people I’ve ever come across. He had an incredible capacity to continually focus on the light, the good, what was “right” in any situation. I felt his presence during parts of the sound bath — a concept past me would have rolled her eyes about.”
“Laying in bed later that night, Joe’s question popped back into my consciousness with a kind “please make your way into child’s pose.” I realized I had deceived myself (classic humaning) with my response to his question, “what is your earliest memory?”
“Joe, and whoever is reading, I would like to formally change my answer. I am also without an exact answer. I am non-sarcastically “trusting the process” to potentially receive one. I know that a panic attack is not my answer, and my ego likes to remind itself that knowing what is not my truth leads me at least somewhat closer to said truth.”″
“I can reflect on and connect with feelings of panic and still have space to choose a positive perspective. Searching for ways to cope with existence has lead me to yoga, dance, singing, ukulele, cooking, baking, writing… to asking all the questions I know to ask so that I can open myself up to knowing just how many more questions life has to offer. Without panic attacks, I may have lived my whole life without starting a YouTube channel, a podcast, or this blog.”
“Emotions come and go, so it keeps seeming. Emotions and memory are directly linked, re: the amygdala. I have little to no control over my emotional response; I do have control over my reaction and subsequent actions.”
“I write my own history. Though TBD on the first memory of that history. Here’s to exploring.”
[AA18c] 21. Podcastukkah #5: Feedback is feedback with Sam Altman, Max Altman, and Jack Altman—All Humans Are Human | Podcast on Spotify. - published 12-7-2018
A relevant snippet begins around ~24:30.
Context: “projection” is a recurring motif of discussion throughout the podcast episode.
Annie: “This is where, well—I do believe that projecting can be deflecting and it can be another buzzword in a lot of ways, and also, as you brought up, it points to very intense feelings and very, as you brought up Max {Altman}, {with the} human psychology of things, of, in some ways, we’re wired to remember painful experiences so that we do learn from them, and so—to remember negativity, and to remember those things—”
Sam {interjecting}: “More than that, I think one thing we’re particularly wired for, I don’t know why, is to not like hypocrisy...”
Note: as reported in Elizabeth Weil’s nymag article, Sam (and Jack) refuse (Annie’s requests to) share a link to the podcast. Annie finds this unfair, seeing as how Sam had been willing to help his other siblings’ careers in quite major ways. Sam (and Jack) apparently cited that the podcast episode “did not align with their businesses” [EW23a] as the reason they refused to post the link.
From [EW23a]: “Among her various art projects, Annie makes a podcast called All Humans Are Human. The first Thanksgiving after their father’s death, all the brothers agreed to record an episode with her. Annie wanted to talk on air about the psychological phenomenon of projection: what we put on other people. The brothers steered the conversation into the idea of feedback — specifically, how to give feedback at work. After she posted the show online, Annie hoped her siblings, particularly Sam, would share it. He’d contributed to their brothers’ careers. Jack’s company, Lattice, had been through YC. “I was like, ‘You could just tweet the link. That would help. You don’t want to share your sister’s podcast that you came on?’” He did not. “Jack and Sam said it didn’t align with their businesses.”” [EW23a]
[AA19b] Period lost, period found—posted on 2-21-2019
“I started taking birth control pills at the age of 15 (I’m currently 25) and decided to stop taking them right before my 23rd birthday {~2017}. Also around this same time {~2017} I finished tapering off of Zoloft, which I started taking at age 13 {~2007} to help with symptoms of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Anxiety, and Depression. Also also around this time {~2017} I drastically altered my diet...I promptly lost my period and learned that changes relating to diet, hormonal birth control, and psychiatric medications are three of the main factors that can disrupt hormonal balance (stress being the baseline factor).”
“I’m experiencing a second puberty, or maybe an aftershock of sorts from first puberty and/or a year without my period. It feels like a hormonal “do-over” filled with moments of deja-vu: three new crushes in one week, intense crying and laughter in the same hour, and generally going about my day acting like I’m far less confused by all this internal “shifting” than I’m actually feeling. Plus days that feel exceptionally “average” leaving me extra confused about how dramatic life felt the day before. I’m fortunate to have received a liberal education and even so there were inevitable gaps in the information I was given, and open to receiving, about puberty.”
“I majored in Biopsychology in college, with a minor in dance, and took all the prerequisite courses for medical school. Then I noped out of the pre-med route to focus on movement, writing, comedy, music, and food. I got certified as a yoga teacher, worked for an online CSA (community-supported agriculture) company, began writing more frequently, started slowly going to open mic nights and putting videos on YouTube, and began a podcast and this blog. I’m learning to give myself space to explore what genuinely excites me without justification and I’ve felt levels of self-consciousness around my career swerve that I had not experienced since first puberty. HOW will I get my intellectual ego stroked without constant science classes? How can art really have no “right” answer? Am I really the only one who can validate how my feelings feel??”
“It’s been almost a year now since I got my period back and I feel I’ve been going through a sort of spiritual and scientific second puberty, to continue the soap operatics. A year extra filled with learning about my body’s cycle(s) and signals. Witnessing my hormones re-regulate has felt parallel to to self-soothing, not that I consciously remember learning that, and my first time with “my moon.” I started eating eggs again, including runny yolks for the first time, and ate fish for the first time in my life because my body very literally demanded them. A year without my period, after a decade of having it, felt like equal parts reset and emptiness.”
“I believe a large portion of shame takes root during puberty and then manifests as sexual repression, (sexual) aggression, body dysmorphia, addiction, and/or mood disorders. I can say for certain that has been my experience. Shame encourages ignorance by stifling conversations. Additionally, shame creates a feedback loop where ignorance is shamed and so questions and curiosity are discouraged.”
[AA19c] 18 reasons I spent 18 years criticizing my appearance—published 3-6-2019
“1. OCD
2. Anxiety
3. Depression
...
6. A belief that any body’s appearance is fixed its entire lifetime
7. A belief that anything in this physical world is fixed, ever
...
11. A belief that I could control my body completely with enough will power
12. A belief that controlling my body could control my entire life
13. A belief that controlling my body could control its inevitable decay (lack of knowledge that fearing death is fearing actually living life)
14. Equating control with peace and happiness
15. A tendency towards being self-critical”
[AA20a] An open letter to relatives—published 9-22-2020
To me, this letter seems to be somewhat sarcastic. Annie is “thanking” her relatives in a way that carries subliminal criticisms.
Example: “Thank you for strengthening my sense of self. I am where I am and doing what I’m doing in part because of each of you. My tenacity and gentleness to take care of myself has increased because of you. The lessons I’ve received from my relationships with you have shifted my perspectives beyond their limitations. Thank you for providing contrast.”—What I think Annie is referencing here is how her relatives screwed her out of her money and (esp. Sam) abused her for a very long time. To this, she had to adapt by developing better ways to take care of herself, and was also forced to move around in a state of relative financial poverty.
As with the rest of the letter, Annie includes seemingly-upbeat, purposefully vague one-liners throughout the letter, such as “Thank you for providing me with contrast.” (The implied negative connotation isn’t too hard to infer.)
[AA21c] An Open Letter To The EMDR Trauma Therapist Who Fired Me For Doing Sex Work—published 6-7-2021
It seems Annie was trying to use EMDR to heal her PTSD, which, as she claims, resulted from having flashbacks to and stronger memories the abuse, e.g. sexual abuse from Sam, that she was subjected to during her childhood.
It seems her therapist rejected her as a client on the basis of her position as a sex worker.
[AA21a] https://x.com/anniealtman108/status/1459696444802142213 -- posted on
11-13-2021
“I experienced sexual, physical, emotional, verbal, financial, and technological abuse from my biological siblings, mostly Sam Altman and some from Jack Altman.”
[AA21b] https://x.com/anniealtman108/status/1459696500540248068 -- posted on 11-13-2021
“I feel strongly that others have also been abused by these perpetrators. I’m seeking people to join me in pursuing legal justice, safety for others in the future, and group healing. Please message me with any information, you can remain however anonymous you feel safe.”
[AA22a] https://x.com/anniealtman108/status/1568689744951005185 -- posted on
9-10-2022
“Sam and Jack, I know you remember my Torah portion was about Moses forgiving his brothers. “Forgive them father for they know not what they’ve done” Sexual, physical, emotional, verbal, financial, and technological abuse. Never forgotten.”
[AA23a] https://x.com/anniealtman108/status/1635704398939832321 - posted on
3-14-2023
“I’m not four years old with a 13 year old “brother” climbing into my bed non-consensually anymore. (You’re welcome for helping you figure out your sexuality.) I’ve finally accepted that you’ve always been and always will be more scared of me than I’ve been of you.”
Note: The “brother” in question (obviously) being Sam Altman.
[AA23x] https://x.com/anniealtman108/status/1661087295657869312 - posted on 3-23-2023
“Must be strange to stalk your younger sibling’s social media after she went no contact from your abuse.”
“Must be stranger to see her pussy and asshole that you touched non-consensually, now posted publicly.”
[AA23f] https://x.com/anniealtman108/status/1640418558927863808 -- posted on
3-27-2023
{Jokingly} “{Sam’s ‘nuclear backpack’} may also hold our Dad and Grandma’s trusts {which} him {Sam} and my birth mother are still withholding from me, knowing I started sex work for survival because of being sick and broke with a millionaire “brother””
Note: [PO23] is a reply to this post.
[AA23l] https://x.com/anniealtman108/status/1697712455013847372 -- posted on
4-21-2023
Note: this poem seems to be pretty clearly talking about Sam.
[AA23k] https://x.com/anniealtman108/status/1649586084928704512 -- posted on
4-21-2023
“I got diagnosed with PCOS, and got walking boot for a third time in 8 years for the same tendinopathy, all in the first year of grieving my Dad.”
“I had a history since childhood of OCD, anxiety, depression, IBS, disorder eating—all covers for PTSD. Also tonsillitis yay”
“I got notified almost exactly a year after his death about my Dad leaving me money, so make a plan to stop working for 6 months and focus on my health.
“I got notified almost exactly a year after his death about my Dad leaving me money, so make a plan to stop working for 6 months and focus on my health. I had started a podcast and had other art proects I could do sitting down!”
“After quitting my dispensary job, my relatives find a loophole to withhold said money. They knew the health conditions and my plan, and they’re millionaires. I sell some things, go back to an older job, and eventually ask (for the first time ever) my millionaire relatives for financial help and am essentially told to “work harder.” I got $100 for an ankle MRI copay, after much ‘discussion’”
“I do two family therapy sessions and am professionally advised to stop doing family therapy sessions.”
“I move back to Big Island so I can work trade for rent, be around community, and actually heal. I’m offered {by Sam} a diamond made from Dad’s ashes instead of money for rent or groceries. Dad just wanted cremation.”
“I go {opt for} no contact with relatives.”
“I start spicy work which ends up being way more therapeutic than anticipated, though definitely challenging.”
“I end up moving to Maui. Unemployment comes through after identity theft, so I have a deposit {on?} a place to live.”
“I have two years of remembering horrific things I’d buried and told myself I made up, and experience adult SAs that brought up even more memories.”
[AA23j] https://x.com/anniealtman108/status/1655474350777311233 -- posted on
5-8-2023
Annie states that (Sam’s) technological abuse (shadowbanning) has made it hard for her to make an income / financially support herself.
She refers to Sam as her “first client” in her (current) sexual line of work.
“{I have been} under the thumb of this deeply depressed human {Sam Altman}, dealing with his guilt about our dad dying much earlier than he needed to—because our dad was not given money while he was alive, even though he’d had heart issues, and was 67 - can you imagine being a fucking multimillionaire and not giving your dad—that’s for me to talk about in therapy”
Context: Annie is (somewhat jokingly) talking about making shirts saying she survived Sam Altman’s shadowbanning. “The shirts—they’re gonna say ‘I survived Sam Altman’s shadowbanning.’ And it’s gonna be such a clusterfuck—because the longer that this has gone on—and it’s been 4 years now—I no longer care about sounding like a crazy person. There’s so much proof—go to my Instagram for “Hi Censorship” highlights. Also, the amount of friends I have had and tested things out with—and seen, when they share things, {versus} when I share things; sharing anything about the podcast...”
[EW23a] Sam Altman is the Oppenheimer of Our Age, by Elizabeth Weil. Published 9-25-2023.
“Altman grew up the oldest of four siblings in suburban St. Louis: three boys, Sam, Max, and Jack, each two years apart, then a girl, Annie, nine years younger than Sam.”
“In 1993, for his 8th birthday, Altman’s parents — Connie Gibstine, a dermatologist, and Jerry Altman, a real-estate broker — bought him a Mac LC II.”
“Several months later, in late May, Altman’s father had a heart attack, at age 67, while rowing on Creve Coeur Lake outside St. Louis. He died at the hospital soon after. At the funeral, Annie told me, Sam allotted each of the four Altman children five minutes to speak. She used hers to rank her family members in terms of emotional expressivity. She put Sam, along with her mother, at the bottom.”
“Altman continued racing his cars (among his favorites: the Lexus LFA, which was discontinued by 2013 and, according to HotCars, “set you back by at least $950,000”). In the early days of the pandemic, he wore his Israeli Defense Forces gas mask. He bought a ranch in Napa. (Altman is a vegetarian, but his partner, Oliver Mulherin, a computer programmer from Melbourne, “likes cows,” Altman says.) He purchased a $27 million house on San Francisco’s Russian Hill. He racked up fancy friends.”
“This is not the portfolio of a man with ambitions like Zuckerberg, who appears, somewhat quaintly compared with Altman, to be content “with building a city-state to rule over,” as the tech writer and podcaster Jathan Sadowski put it. This is the portfolio of a man with ambitions like Musk’s, a man taking the “imperialist approach.” “He really sees himself as this world-bestriding Übermensch, as a superhuman in a really Nietzschean kind of way,” Sadowski said. “He will at once create the thing that destroys us and save us from it.””
“Families replicate social dynamics. Power differentials hurt and often explode. This is true of the Altmans. Jerry Altman’s 2018 death notice describes him as: “Husband of Connie Gibstine; dear father and father-in-law of Sam Altman, Max Altman, Jack (Julia) Altman” — Julia is Jack’s wife — “and Annie Altman …”
“Annie Altman? Readers of Altman’s blog; his tweets; his manifesto, Startup Playbook; along with the hundreds of articles about him will be familiar with Jack and Max. They pop up all over the place, most notably in a dashing photo in Forbes, atop the profile that accompanied the announcement of their joint fund, Apollo. They’re also featured in Tad Friend’s 2016 Altman profile in The New Yorker and in much chummy public banter.
@jaltma: I find it really upsetting when I see articles calling Sam a tech bro. He’s a technology brother.
@maxaltman: He *is* technology, brother.
@sama: love you, (tech) bros”
“Annie does not exist in Sam’s public life. She was never going to be in the club. She was never going to be an Übermensch. She’s always been someone who felt the pain of the world. At age 5, she began waking up in the middle of the night, needing to take a bath to calm her anxiety. By 6, she thought about suicide, though she didn’t know the word.”
“Like her eldest brother, she is extremely intelligent, and like her eldest brother, she left college early — though not because her start-up was funded by Sequoia. She had completed all of her Tufts credits, and she was severely depressed. She wanted to live in a place that felt better to her. She wanted to make art. She felt her survival depended on it. She graduated after seven semesters.”
“When I visited Annie on Maui this summer, she told me stories that will resonate with anyone who has been the emo-artsy person in a businessy family, or who has felt profoundly hurt by experiences family members seem not to understand. Annie — her long dark hair braided, her voice low, measured, and intense — told me about visiting Sam in San Francisco in 2018. He had some friends over. One of them asked Annie to sing a song she’d written. She found her ukulele. She began. “Midway through, Sam gets up wordlessly and walks upstairs to his room,” she told me over a smoothie in Paia, a hippie town on Maui’s North Shore. “I’m like, Do I keep playing? Is he okay? What just happened?” The next day, she told him she was upset and asked him why he left. “And he was kind of like, ‘My stomach hurt,’ or ‘I was too drunk,’ or ‘too stoned, I needed to take a moment.’ And I was like, ‘Really? That moment? You couldn’t wait another 90 seconds?’””
“That same year, Jerry Altman died. He’d had his heart issues, along with a lot of stress, partly, Annie told me, from driving to Kansas City to nurse along his real-estate business. The Altmans’ parents had separated. Jerry kept working because he needed the money. After his death, Annie cracked. Her body fell apart. Her mental health fell apart. She’d always been the family’s pain sponge. She absorbed more than she could take now.”
“Sam offered to help her with money for a while, then he stopped. In their email and text exchanges, his love — and leverage — is clear. He wants to encourage Annie to get on her feet. He wants to encourage her to get back on Zoloft, which she’d quit under the care of a psychiatrist because she hated how it made her feel.”
“Among her various art projects, Annie makes a podcast called All Humans Are Human. The first Thanksgiving after their father’s death, all the brothers agreed to record an episode with her. Annie wanted to talk on air about the psychological phenomenon of projection: what we put on other people. The brothers steered the conversation into the idea of feedback — specifically, how to give feedback at work. After she posted the show online, Annie hoped her siblings, particularly Sam, would share it. He’d contributed to their brothers’ careers. Jack’s company, Lattice, had been through YC. “I was like, ‘You could just tweet the link. That would help. You don’t want to share your sister’s podcast that you came on?’” He did not. “Jack and Sam said it didn’t align with their businesses.”
“On the first anniversary of Jerry Altman’s death, Annie had the word sch’ma — “listen” in Hebrew — tattooed on her neck. She quit her job at a dispensary because she had an injured Achilles tendon that wouldn’t heal and she was in a walking boot for the third time in seven years. She asked Sam and their mother for financial help. They refused. “That was right when I got on the sugar-dating website for the first time,” Annie told me. “I was just at such a loss, in such a state of desperation, such a state of confusion and grief.” Sam had been her favorite brother. He’d read her books at bedtime. He’d taken portraits of her on the monkey bars for a high-school project. She’d felt so understood, loved, and proud. “I was like, Why? Why are these people not helping me when they could at no real cost to themselves?””
“In May 2020, she relocated to the Big Island of Hawaii. One day, shortly after she’d moved to a farm to do a live-work trade, she got an email from Sam asking for her address. He wanted to send her a memorial diamond he’d made out of some of their father’s ashes. “Picturing him sending a diamond of my dad’s ashes to the mailbox where it’s one of those rural places where there are all these open boxes for all these farms … It was so heavy and sad and angering, but it was also so hilarious and so ridiculous. So disconnected-feeling. Just the lack of fucks given.” Their father never asked to be a diamond. Annie’s mental health was fragile. She worried about money for groceries. It was hard to interact with somebody for whom money meant everything but also so little. “Like, either you aren’t realizing or you are not caring about this whole situation here,” she said. By “whole situation,” she meant her life. “You’re willing to spend $5,000 — for each one — to make this thing that was your idea, not Dad’s, and you’re wanting to send that to me instead of sending me $300 so I can have food security. What?””
“The two are now estranged. Sam offered to buy Annie a house. She doesn’t want to be controlled. For the past three years, she has supported herself doing sex work, “both in person and virtual,” she told me. She posts porn on OnlyFans. She posts on Instagram Stories about mutual aid, trying to connect people who have money to share with those who need financial help.”
“Annie has moved more than 20 times in the past year. When she called me in mid-September, her housing was unstable yet again. She had $1,000 in her bank account.”
“Since 2020, she has been having flashbacks. She knows everybody takes the bits of their life and arranges them into narratives to make sense of their world.”
“As Annie tells her life story, Sam, their brothers, and her mother kept money her father left her from her.”
“As Annie tells her life story, she felt special and loved when, as a child, Sam read her bedtime stories. Now those memories feel like abuse.”
“The Altman family would like the world to know: “We love Annie and will continue our best efforts to support and protect her, as any family would.””
“Annie is working on a one-woman show called the HumAnnie about how nobody really knows how to be a human. We’re all winging it.”
Note: c.f. [EW23b], [EW23c], [EW23d], and [EW23e] for some comments that Elizabeth Weil made on X (Twitter) about this article.
[AA23c] https://x.com/anniealtman108/status/1708193951319306299 -- posted on
9-30-2023
“Thank you for the love and for calling I spade a spade. I experienced every single form of abuse with him—sexual, physical, verbal, psychology, pharmacological (forced Zoloft, also later told I’d receive money only if I went back on it), and technological (shadowbanning)”
[AA23b] https://x.com/anniealtman108/status/1709629089366348100 - posted on
10-4-2023
“Aww you’re nervous I’m defending myself? Refusing to die with your secrets, refusing to allow you to harm more people? If only there was little sister with a bed you could uninvited crawl in, or sick 20-something sister you could withhold your dead dad’s money from, to cope.”
[AA23e] https://x.com/anniealtman108/status/1709629659242242058 -- posted on
10-4-2023
“This tweet endorsed to come out of my drafts by our Dad
[EW23b] https://x.com/lizweil/status/1709975840598130982 -- posted
10-5-2023
“@RemmeltE This is also a story about the tech media & its entanglement with industry. Annie was not hard to find. Nobody did the basic reporting on his family — or no one wanted to risk losing access by including Annie in a piece.” / X (twitter.com)
[EW23c] https://x.com/lizweil/status/1709977506533806527 -- posted 10-5-2023
“@RemmeltE @phuckfilosophy of course — worry about losing access to pals, allies, people he funds, people he might fund, others in tech who don’t want to talk with journalists who might independently report out a story and not rely on comms....” / X (twitter.com)”
[EW23d] https://x.com/lizweil/status/1709978166771781730
“@RemmeltE @phuckfilosophy i’m not a tech reporter primarily and i’ve been in this industry for a long time (and it’s a rough industry to be in), so less career risk for me”
[EW23e] https://x.com/lizweil/status/1709979130635424203
“@RemmeltE @phuckfilosophy Or accept the version of personal lives as delivered by the source. Sam talked about his personal life with me a bit, as did Jack. Just didn’t ever reference Annie.”
[AA23d] https://x.com/anniealtman108/status/1709978285424378027 -- posted on
10-5-2023
“{I experienced} Shadowbanning across all platforms except onlyfans and pornhub. Also had 6 months of hacking into almost all my accounts and wifi when I first started the podcast”
Note: Some commenters on Hacker News claim that a post regarding Annie’s claims that Sam sexually assaulted her at age 4 has been being repeatedly removed. c.f. [HN23a], [NM23]
[HN23a] https://web.archive.org/web/20231202200938/https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37785072
[PO23] A reply to Annie’s post: https://x.com/percyo_/status/1709962822854336667 -- posted on 10-5-2023
“https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/sam-altman-artificial-intelligence-openai-profile.html… I feel like you are misrepresenting things here. If the article is correct of course. “Sam offered to buy Annie a house.” Isn’t that a big financial help?”
Note: Annie’s replies are given in [AA23g] and [AA23h].
[AA23g] https://x.com/anniealtman108/status/1709978018364723500 -- posted on
10-5-2023
Note: this is Annie’s reply reply to [PO23].
“There were other strings attached they made it feel like an unsafe place to actually heal from the experiences I had with him.”
[AA23h] https://x.com/anniealtman108/status/1709977862252658703 -- posted on
10-5-2023
Note: this is Annie’s reply reply to [PO23] and [AA23g].
“The offer was after a year and half no contact {with Sam}, and {I} had started speaking up online. I had already started survival sex work. The offer was for the house to be connected with a lawyer, and the last time I had a Sam-lawyer connection I didn’t get to see my Dad’s will for a year.”
[AA23i] https://x.com/anniealtman108/status/1710039207878734139 -- posted on
10-5-2023
“I was too sick for “normal” standing jobs. Tendon and nerve pain, and ovarian cysts. “Pathetic” to you seems to mean something outside of your understanding”
[AA23n] https://x.com/anniealtman108/status/1710039374224933175 -- posted on
10-5-2023
“Also PTSD from sexual traumas. I’m grateful to sex work for how much sex therapy I’ve gotten from the work”
[NM23] https://x.com/JOSourcing/status/1710390512455401888 -- posted on
10-6-2023
″.@hackernews keeps removing links to Annie Altman’s revelations. Her shadow ban is real. And yours probably is too.”
[AA23w] https://x.com/anniealtman108/status/1711139134138663101 -- posted on 10-8-2023
Annie {addressing Sam}: “What must it be like, to be an almost-tech billionaire, terrified of the little sibling—you’ve lost privileges to call me your sister—who you repeatedly molested, and physically abused, and emotionally and verbally and then financially and then technologically—and oh also chemically with forced Zoloft—and I’m still alive, and you’re still scared, ’cause you’re sad. And I’m sad too—the difference is that I’ve processed it, and I do other things with it..instead of directly abusing people. And what must it be like to be more scared? Because you know the longer this goes on, the worse it’s all gonna be when it comes out for you. And knowing my Torah portion was about forgiving my brothers—wow. I mean, you’re forgiven, and also—fuck off, forever.”
[AA23o] https://x.com/anniealtman108/status/1713642615105798460 -- posted on
10-15-2023
“Thank you more than words for your time and attention researching.
All accurate in the current form, except there was no lawyer connected to the “I’ll give you rent and physical therapy money if you go back on Zoloft””
[AA23p] https://x.com/anniealtman108/status/1713643755910148238 -- posted on
10-15-2023
“The house offer came after a year and half of no contact.
Also after both: 1) starting sex work virtually and in person for survival, and 2) speaking out online.
The offer came connected to a lawyer, and I was told it was so I could not sell the house.”
[AA23q] https://x.com/anniealtman108/status/1713644026120053244 -- posted on
10-15-2023
“I asked for money and resources to be given to our Dad numerous times before he died.”
[AA23r] https://x.com/anniealtman108/status/1713644849436807597 -- posted on 10-15-2023
“Because my parents were still legally married, though separated, my mother was able to block my Dad’s wish and signature to make me the primary beneficiary of his 401k. I had quit the job I was working because of my Achilles and PCOS, while mid-paperwork to receive this money.”
[AA23u] https://x.com/anniealtman108/status/1713647632554553444 -- posted on 10-15-2023
“I had only fuzzy memories of sexual abuse until I went no contact, because of the emotional and financial and other abuses. I was unpacking my own sexual health, both by myself and in therapy, since 2012. Attempting to understand experiences like mid-sex projectile vomiting.”
[AA23v] https://x.com/anniealtman108/status/1713648185099571687 -- posted on
10-15-2023
“I also lost my period for 13 months from 2018-2019, after stopping Zoloft and hormonal birth control, and from various old disordered eating habits.”
[AA23s] https://x.com/anniealtman108/status/1713646231816392961 -- posted on
10-15-2023
“I was given some rent money for a few months in LA before moving back to Big Island for a work trade.
We made a plan with the family therapist (we did two sessions with) for Sam and my mother to help with my basic needs while I was sick. That plan was not followed.”
[AA23t] https://x.com/anniealtman108/status/1713646586230980717 -- posted on
10-15-2023
“That financial “help” became inconsistent and/or attached to strings. It would be less than the amount agreed on with the therapist, late for me to actually pay rent so I had to keep asked repeatedly, etc”
[RE23a] 144. All Creation of Safety with Remmelt Ellen—All Humans Are Human {podcast} -- published 11-21-2023
Alternate link
32:07 -- Annie’s passport got stolen in the mail
32:48
Annie: “When I started the podcast, before I did sex work or any other things that increased shadowbanning, I had shadowbanning immediately, and I had podcast ratings get deleted when it {the podcast} was called ‘True Shit’ right when I started it. And I could not get through to a real person.”
Remmelt: “And you don’t even know why. You can suspect why, but...”
Annie: “Oh yeah. I have all of my theories, and I have emails. I got some emails back and forth with Apple Podcasts about it. There wasn’t a phone number, ther wasn’t any way I could have the real accountability of, ‘Hey, I have this teeny podcast, it’s only a few motnhs old, and I’m having a third or more of the ratings get deleted, and I don’t underertand why.’ And that makes it obviously challenging to grow a podcast.’”
[AA23m] “How We Do Anything Is How We Do Everything”—published
11-22-2023
“I have experienced drama like the OpenAI drama — I grew up in it. I was repeatedly told “not to talk about it,” and to allow another person to remove my human agency.
I have lived under my sibling’s authority my whole life.
The narrative of “Annie is crazy” and “Annie doesn’t know how to take care of herself” is what I was raised and conditioned in. That narrative, along with intentionally conditional love, is what was used to control me my whole life.
When I went “no contact,” I learned even more about the control he wielded. It’s not just me, it’s his social and professional circles also. It’s terrifying how many people have told me privately they support me, but are terrified to speak publicly on my behalf.
Since going no contact from my living relatives in 2020, my literal and virtual life continue to be extremely restricted. I’ve had multiple accounts get hacked. My podcast ratings and YouTube views seemed to be removed. My presence seems difficult to find on Google. I am not sure how this is happening, and I don’t have the resources to investigate further. At one point recently a high school faculty member, from our same school, spoke with me and attempted to convince me to break no contact.
Going no contact was far from an easy decision.
I attempted every other possibility, including family therapy in early 2020. After two sessions together with my mother and brother, my therapist privately advised me that no contact was my best option, which I resisted for another four months. During this time, I was managing PCOS (several ovarian cysts) and repeat Achilles tendinopathy that severely limited my walking and normal movement abilities. I was also grieving our Dad who died in May 2018.
I quit a job because of being notified of money left to me from my Dad, and made a plan to take six months to heal my body. I notified my relatives of my health and my plan. While in the paperwork process, I was notified that the money was withheld from me until I’m in my 60s. Though separated, my parents were still legally married and so my mother had the “surviving spouse” option to ignore Dad’s wish to make me the primary beneficiary of his 401K.
Dad had a known heart condition, but still had to work full time until his death in 2018. Dad was very involved in affordable housing and reconstruction of historic buildings in St. Louis City. I had asked my sibling for years to give our Dad the financial help to stop working. Dad openly expressed his dream to retire in Costa Rica.
Jerry Altman died of a heart attack at age 67, without the dream his son could have fulfilled.
While still very physically ill and simultaneously managing intense and horrific flashbacks from PTSD, I began in person sex work in late 2020. I was unable to fully financially support myself with the virtual sex work I had already started, and with unemployment benefits from California. I applied for unemployment in 2020, at first not wanting to apply and “clog up” the process, because of my millionaire relatives I naively assumed would help me, and then was delayed in receiving benefits due to identity theft.
I was too physically ill with PCOS (several ovarian cysts) and repeat Achilles tendinopathy that severely limited my walking and normal movement abilities to work a standing job, and too mentally ill with daily flashbacks to do computer work.
I also desperately needed money for physical therapy so I could become healthier and support myself in the future. I felt like a zombie getting through every day while budgeting how much labor my body and brain could manage.
My sibling offered to buy me a home in 2021, reaching out with seemingly kind words after a year and half of no contact. We spoke on the phone three times, and through these conversations I began to suspect the offer was another attempt at control. It seemed I would never have direct ownership of the house. Also, given the nature of my PTSD flashbacks, the house felt like an unsafe place to actually heal my mind and body.
With regard to the current situation at OpenAI (and with tech in general), I feel the drama is a red herring.
The best case scenario is middle school-style interpersonal drama, with much higher money and power stakes. The worst case scenario is a distraction from something(s) that are more dangerous.
Calling employees in the middle of night to secure their public display of loyalty seems like cultish hazing.
Given my belief that “how you do anything is how you do everything”, and given the power of the technological revolution, I am concerned with where and how that power is being inequitably distributed. I am also concerned about who will benefit from that power, and in what ways.
I would love to see and support technology being used to equitably distribute basic human resources, which is far different from its current use.
My intention in sharing my story is to share my most personal and human truth, and to heal. In my own sharing, I wish to encourage others to find their truth and their healing.
I seek sovereignty for myself, and for child-me who was told to stay quiet about other people’s secrets — even when it made me physically ill.
I aim to give others the information of my story, while healing my own pains. My wish is to help others find their personal truth and healing from their pains — we’re all human.
We all advance as humans when we all tell our story.
Love,
Annie”
[BI23a] OpenAI CEO Sam Altman went on an 18-month, $85 million real-estate shopping spree — including a previously unknown Hawaii estate—Business Insider, published 11-30-2023
“OpenAI CEO Sam Altman snapped up a $43 million estate in Hawaii in 2021, adding to his impressive real-estate portfolio.”
“OpenAI CEO Sam Altman owns multimillion-dollar properties in San Francisco, Napa, and Hawaii.”
“Altman, fired then reinstated as OpenAI’s CEO this month, has tried to keep a relatively low profile.”
“When Business Insider set out to catalog his assets, we found a previously unknown giant estate.”
“Years before the recent drama at OpenAI turned CEO Sam Altman into a household name, the former Y Combinator president went on an extraordinary 18-month, $85 million real-estate shopping spree, according to records reviewed by Business Insider — including a previously unreported $43 million Hawaii estate on land that locals describe as historically significant.”
“The purchases, which also include multimillion-dollar residences in San Francisco and Napa, California, took place between early 2020 and mid-2021, when Altman was ginning up support for his eyeball-scanning crypto startup, Worldcoin, and releasing OpenAI products in private beta, BI’s review of business and real-estate filings found.”
“A spokesperson for Altman declined to comment.”
“Earlier this year, Altman seemed to take a subtle dig at his fellow tech executives for amassing too much wealth.”
“”This concept of having enough money is not something that is easy to get across to other people,” Altman said at the Bloomberg Technology Summit in San Francisco.”
“But as Altman’s wealth has grown, he’s become increasingly removed from the daily life of the non-ultra-ultra-rich. His mother told The Wall Street Journal in March that Altman hadn’t been to a grocery store in four or five years. In 2021, he hired his cousin to manage his family office.”
“In July 2021, Altman bought a 12-bedroom estate in Kailua-Kona, on the Big Island of Hawaii, for $43 million. Judging by listing photos, the property has a private inlet and several houses. The estate is adjacent to a national landmark {Kamakahonu (here’s its Wikipedia page)} a reconstruction of the royal temple of King Kamehameha I, the first ruler of the unified Hawaiian islands.”
“A second video highlighted the estate’s adventurous amenities, including cliff jumping, motorboating, wakesurfing, Jet Ski-ing, and scuba diving. A person who worked on the second video said the intent was to produce something that friends and family could watch to remember their trips to the residence. (Both videos were removed from YouTube after BI requested comment for this article.)”
“Altman’s purchase of the Hawaii property has not been previously reported. BI linked the property to Altman by examining business and real-estate filings showing the land was owned by an LLC managed by Jennifer Serralta, whose name appears as a manager on paperwork for other businesses known to be owned by Altman. Serralta, who previously worked in the automotive industry, describes herself on LinkedIn as the chief operating officer of a family office — presumably Altman’s — and is his cousin, according to an obituary for their grandmother. Reached by phone, Serralta declined to comment.”
“In a March post on her personal blog, Serralta wrote that she stayed at a Kailua-Kona property owned by “a friend” while vacationing in Hawaii. Last year, Altman tweeted a photo of himself wakesurfing in Hawaii; the view of the Big Island in the background of the photo precisely matches the view from the Kailua-Kona compound.”
The Tweet referenced:
[SA22a] https://x.com/sama/status/1512111914939154434 -- posted on April 7, 2022
“wake surfing but otherwise exactly that!”
Here’s where I think Sam is in the wake surfing picture, just from visual estimates moving around to different Google Street View Images on Google Maps (with the little orange dude you can drag-and-drop around) near Kamakahonu:
3d view #1:
3d view #2:
3d view #3 (aerial/drone shot)
3d view #4:
This matches up with:
how the background/landscape looks in Sam’s wake surfing photo
the location of Kamakahonu
what Business Insider wrote
“Altman has one family connection to Hawaii: His youngest sibling, Annie Altman, has lived on the islands on and off since 2017. Annie Altman, an artist and entertainer who has supported herself through in-person and virtual sex work, lives a much-different life from her brother’s. Annie is teetering on financial insolvency, she told BI, after a lengthy stretch of illnesses. She has not spoken with her brother since 2021, when she refused his offer to buy her a home after learning that a lawyer would control the property, she said.
She had been unaware that her oldest brother owned property in Hawaii until BI asked her about it, she said.”
Sam also bought:
a $27 million home in San Francisco, which “is the home base for a number of Altman’s investment vehicles, according to business and Securities and Exchange Commission filings, including the venture firm Apollo Projects, 9Point Ventures, and Uncommon Ventures. In recent weeks, the property functioned as a war room for Altman and his closest allies as he planned his return to OpenAI.”
The home includes a wellness center, “cantilevered infinity pool”, and an underground garage with a “car turntable”
a $15.7 million, 950-acre ranch in Napa, with five homes and vineyards
“Several Altman companies are or have been registered to the address, including the opaquely named Project 2024 LLC, as well as another Altman venture firm, Hydrazine Capital.”
a “big patch of land” in Big Sur
[SA23a] Sam Altman Speaks Out About What Happened at OpenAI—on What Now? with Trevor Noah—December 2023
(32:28-33:49) Sam: “AGI and my family are the two main things I care about, so losing one of those is like...so yeah I mean it was just like unbelievably painful. The only comparable set of life experience that I had, and that one was of course much worse, was when my dad died. And that was like a very sudden thing. But the sense of like confusion and loss...in that case, I felt like I had a little bit of time to just like feel it all. But then there was so much to do. Like it was like so unexpected that I had to pick up the pieces of his life for a little while. And it wasn’t until, like, a week after that I really got a moment to just, like, catch my breath and be like, holy shit, like, I can’t believe this happened. So yeah, that was much worse.”
[WSJ23a] Sam Altman’s Knack for Dodging Bullets—With a Little Help From Bigshot Friends—by Deepa Seetharaman, The Wall Street Journal—published 12-24-2023
“Altman’s firing and swift reversal of fortune followed a pattern in his career, which began when he dropped out of Stanford University in 2005 and gained the reputation as a Silicon Valley visionary. Over the past two decades, Altman has lost the confidence of several top leaders in the three organizations he has directed. At every crisis point, Altman, 38 years old, not only rebounded but climbed to more powerful roles with the help of an expanding network of powerful allies.”
“A group of senior employees at Altman’s first startup, Loopt—a location-based social-media network started in the flip-phone era—twice urged board members to fire him as CEO over what they described as deceptive and chaotic behavior, said people familiar with the matter. But the board, with support from investors at venture-capital firm Sequoia, kept Altman until Loopt was sold in 2012.”
“In 2019, Altman was asked to resign from Y Combinator after partners alleged he had put personal projects, including OpenAI, ahead of his duties as president, said people familiar with the matter.”
“This fall, Altman also faced a crisis of trust at OpenAI, the company he navigated to the front of the artificial-intelligence field. In early October {2023}, OpenAI’s chief scientist {Ilya Sutskever} approached some fellow board members to recommend Altman be fired, citing roughly 20 examples of when he believed Altman misled OpenAI executives over the years. That set off weeks of closed-door talks, ending with Altman’s surprise ouster days before Thanksgiving.”
“This article is based on interviews with dozens of executives, engineers, current and former employees and friends of Altman’s, as well as investors.”
“A few years after {Loopt’s} launch, some Loopt executives voiced frustration with Altman’s management. There were complaints about Altman pursuing side projects, at one point diverting engineers to work on a gay dating app, which they felt came at the expense of the company’s main work.”
“Senior executives approached the board with concerns that Altman at times failed to tell the truth—sometimes about matters so insignificant one person described them as paper cuts. At one point, they threatened to leave the company if he wasn’t removed as CEO, according to people familiar with the matter. The board backed Altman.”
““If he imagines something to be true, it sort of becomes true in his head,” said Mark Jacobstein, co-founder of Jimini Health who served as Loopt’s chief operating officer. “That is an extraordinary trait for entrepreneurs who want to do super ambitious things. It may or may not lead one to stretch, and that can make people uncomfortable.””
“Altman doesn’t recall employee complaints beyond the normal annual CEO review process, according to people familiar with his thinking.”
“Michael Moritz, who led Sequoia, personally advised Altman. When Loopt struggled to find buyers, Moritz helped engineer an acquisition by another Sequoia-backed company, the financial technology firm Green Dot.”
“Altman turned Y Combinator into an investing powerhouse. While serving as the president, he kept his own venture-capital firm, Hydrazine, which he launched in 2012. He caused tensions after barring other partners at Y Combinator from running their own funds, including the current chief executive, Garry Tan, and Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian. Tan and Ohanian didn’t respond to requests for comment.”
“Altman also expanded Y Combinator through a nonprofit he created called YC Research, which served as an incubator for Altman’s own projects, including OpenAI. From its founding in 2015, YC Research operated without the involvement of the firm’s longtime partners, fueling their concern that Altman was straying too far from running the firm’s core business.”
“By early 2018, Altman was barely present at Y Combinator’s headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., spending more time at OpenAI, at the time a small research nonprofit, according to people familiar with the matter.”
“The increasing amount of time Altman spent at OpenAI riled longtime partners at Y Combinator, who began losing faith in him as a leader. The firm’s leaders asked him to resign, and he left as president in March 2019.”
“Graham said it was his wife’s doing. “If anyone ‘fired’ Sam, it was Jessica, not me,” he said. “But it would be wrong to use the word ‘fired’ because he agreed immediately.”
“Jessica Livingston said her husband was correct.”
“To smooth his exit, Altman proposed he move from president to chairman. He pre-emptively published a blog post on the firm’s website announcing the change. But the firm’s partnership had never agreed, and the announcement was later scrubbed from the post.”
“For years, even some of Altman’s closest associates—including Peter Thiel, Altman’s first backer for Hydrazine—didn’t know the circumstances behind Altman’s departure.”
“As the company grew, management complaints about Altman surfaced.”
“In early fall this year, Sutskever, also a board member, was upset because Altman had elevated another AI researcher, Jakub Pachocki, to director of research, according to people familiar with the matter.”
“Sutskever told his board colleagues that the episode reflected a long-running pattern of Altman’s tendency to pit employees against one another or promise resources and responsibilities to two different executives at the same time, yielding conflicts, according to people familiar with the matter.”
“Other board members already had concerns about Altman’s management. Tasha McCauley, an adjunct senior management scientist at Rand Corp., tried to cultivate relationships with employees as a board member. Past board members chatted regularly with OpenAI executives without informing Altman. Yet during the pandemic, Altman told McCauley he needed to be told if the board spoke to employees, a request that some on the board viewed as Altman limiting the board’s power, people familiar with the matter said.”
“Around the time Sutskever aired his complaints, the independent board members heard similar concerns from some senior OpenAI executives, people familiar with the discussions said. Some considered leaving the company over Altman’s leadership, the people said.”
“Altman also misled board members, leaving the impression with one board member that another wanted board member Helen Toner removed, even though it wasn’t true, according to people familiar with the matter, The Wall Street Journal reported.”
“Altman also misled board members, leaving the impression with one board member that another wanted board member Helen Toner removed, even though it wasn’t true, according to people familiar with the matter, The Wall Street Journal reported.”
[AA24a] Email about my Dad’s Trust—published 3-12-2024
“Hello mother’s-lawyer,
Contrary to your email here, my-short-term-lawyer shared with me that my Father’s Trust has been funded before my mother’s death.
As I turned 30 this January, I am considering requesting the funds for which my Father’s Trust was established per my Father’s wishes, according to my understanding of my Father’s Will.
Before I do so, I would like to know the following information:
How much was the Trust funded for, and when exactly?
Please send details of all assets and all information about the Trust. My-short-term-lawyer mentioned Hydrazine, a fund of my siblings’, and one of my Dad’s buildings with my-Dad’s-old-boss?
Please send all documentation you have concerning the Trust, including but not limited to: documents and numbers related to the institution holding the Trust, the trustees, and communication regarding how the trust was funded.
Have there been any divisions of the Trust? Please send any information if yes.
Please send all documents related in any way to the Trust that I may not be aware of at this point.
Why was the funding of the Trust delayed? Why was the Trust funded now after you previously said it couldn’t be funded?
My-short-term-lawyer (cc’d), who you spoke with about getting the Trust funded, let me know you said my next step was to “make an ask of the Trust with a monthly budget.” Will you please point to where in the Trust it specifies that stipulation?
The Trust mentions different stipulations for different ages, and my 30th birthday was in January. Why was I not contacted about the potential to request a non-prejudicial lump sum in accordance with my Father’s wishes?
As you may also know, I quit my job in 2019 a year after my Father’s death, understanding that I was the primary beneficiary of my Father’s 401K. I planned to take my time away from work to focus on my health, which had declined severely in my mid-20s. My relatives are aware of my repeated tendinopathy, three times in a walking boot for the same ankle, and Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome. I did not receive any such funding, and as a result, my health and well-being have continued to suffer — in direct contradiction to the stipulations in my Father’s Will. The Trust makes it clear that my Dad’s wish was for me to have been supported in these six years since his death. In the absence of the support intended for me in my Dad’s Trust, I’ve experienced two and a half years of houseless and homelessness and daily PTSD flashbacks, and I’ve had to resort to survival sex work to support myself financially while still navigating physical illnesses.
Please send your confirmation of receipt of this email within 24 hours, and all requested documentation and answers, within 10 business days.
Thank you,
Annie”
[AA24b] How I Started Escorting—published 3-27-2024
“Promise you it’s not something I ever thought I’d start.
In 2019, while living in LA, I got diagnosed with Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome. PCOS is a diagnosis of elimination, and/or “oh hey this ultrasound shows a cyst on your ovary.” Around the same time, I went into a walking boot for my Achilles for the third time in eight years. The first time was Achilles tendinopathy and a bone spur, the second time was plain old Achilles tendinopathy, and this third time was now both Achilles and posterior tibial tendinopathy.
I got my fourth or fifth tonsillitis in there too, to round things out, or something.
I had quit a job at a dispensary in the summer of 2019, while in the paperwork process about being the primary beneficiary of my Father’s 401K. My Dad died in May 2018, and access to his Will was withheld from me by my mother and three older siblings for an entire year. The 401K situation, a year after his death, motivated me to finally demand access to my Dad’s Will and other information.
When notified by the company about my Dad’s 401K, while sitting at a reception desk because I could no longer do the standing shifts, I was both relieved for the help and shocked that information about my Dad would be hidden from me. Especially shocked because my relatives knew about my various physical illnesses and need for financial support.
All three of my siblings and my mother, all wealthy, had seen the Will the entire time. I told them all about my health challenges, about the money I was receiving from Dad, and about my six month plan to work on my podcast and music and one human show, seated creative projects that would help me as I healed my tendons and hormones and digestion and grief.
I naively trusted these relatives. I figured the worst case scenario was not being able to monetize my art projects. I accepted this potential worst case because working on my projects would still help me rest my ankle, by giving me a creative outlet other than dancing and yoga, which my health impacted my abilities to continue. I had first gone to the Big Island of Hawai’i in 2017 for yoga teacher training, and then moved back there and taught yoga. (Seems like a place to note that I paid for training, and if I had gone to medical school like was tracked for me it would have been paid for by my relatives.) My relatives knew how important yoga and dance were and are to me, and mocked my interest aside from one singular time two of them took a yoga class taught by me.
I was very wrong about the potential worst case. Said 401K money from my Dad withheld from me by millionaire relatives, who knew I was sick. I went back to an old job I worked in the Bay Area, and was selling produce boxes with Farm Fresh to You. I was wearing the walking boot I attempted to avoid my third time needing. I was sweating through my sheets almost nightly, and was doing bloodwork and other exams to search for potential thyroid or other PCOS-related conditions. I began selling furniture and clothes, and the microphones I had been using for podcasts and music, so I could afford rent and food.
In December 2019, after being told “no” for the financial support I asked for the first time ever, I went on SeekingArrangements. Living in LA, I had no idea what I was getting into with that site, which is for sugar dating and escorting. I didn’t meet up with anyone in person in LA, though I did have a couple video chats. I remember the first time a man sent me a Zelle for a video call where I flashed him my boobs — a Zelle that got my account out of the negative. I also remember a man yelling at me through the phone about saying no to coming over for $300 because “WELL HAVEN’T YOU DONE IT FOR FREE A BUNCH!” I was horrified, and felt like the sex work industry was probably “too much” for me. Being scared of what felt like “plan Z” was scary in itself.
In the beginning of 2020 I did two family therapy sessions. I sat in my therapist’s office, in my walking boot and hormonal sweat, with my oldest sibling there in person holding his phone with our mother on FaceTime. The woman who bore me told the therapist that it would be “best for Annie’s mental health if she fully financially supported herself,” and my multi-millionaire sibling agreed.
The therapist was utterly shocked, I was only half-surprised.
Perhaps with her highlighting that I never asked them for financial help until very ill, and it still being so early in grieving our Dad, and with her highlighting their enormous wealth, the therapist somehow persuaded them to give short-term help for my basic needs.
Again I was wrong about a potential worst case scenario. My mom and my brother didn’t honor the therapist’s plan for six months of financial support, and my rent money was late or less-than-agreed or had-to-be-groveled-for. So in May 2020 I moved back to the Big Island of Hawai’i, where I had lived before living in LA. This was my plan Y — find a low-labor work trade.
I found a farm with a potential for a work trade, and despite being only a couple months out of the walking boot felt it was overall more healing than staying in a studio apartment I may or may not have enough rent money for, across from a park that was taped off due to Covid restrictions. When I notified one of my siblings of finding a farm work trade, he notified the rest of the relatives who group messaged me they would not be providing any of the final month of support agreed on with the therapist.
I had planned to use the rent money for food.
While work-trading on a rural farm, my oldest sibling messaged me asking where to send my diamond made from our Father’s ashes. My Father never asked to become a diamond. I never sent my sibling the farm address. The mailbox was open, in a cluster of mailboxes in the middle of nowhere on the island. Plus, the most financially reasonable thing for me to have done with a diamond at that point was to pawn it for food money — and my sibling was aware.
I decided to go full no contact with my relatives. The family therapist we spoke with recommended I consider this more seriously, after telling me she could not professionally recommend doing more group sessions. She was not the first therapist to tell me to go no contact. Withholding the final month of a six month plan for basic life support, while I was very sick, while withholding money left to me from my Dad, while offering a diamond Dad didn’t ask to become to be sent to a rural mailbox, was my final straw to begin grieving all three of my siblings and my mother. A completely different and similar grieving process as grieving my Dad.
The distinctions between “family” and “relatives” became more clear everyday.
After a couple months, I had to stop work trading on the farm because of my ankle again. Even small plantings and weeding was too much. One of the owners of the farm kindly and graciously found computer work for him for me to do seated, which gave me more time while I scrambled with my legs up the wall in constant ankle and knee pain. I had both an Etsy Shop and Patreon for my podcast, though they didn’t make enough to even cover my phone bill.
Still unsure how to rest and heal my body, I found a room rental in town and started OnlyFans. I applied for EBT food stamps and Medicaid, which felt so surreal while sharing DNA with millionaires. I had also applied for unemployment in California in April 2020, as at first I didn’t want to clog up the system for people who weren’t directly related to millionaires who could help them. I was one of the millions who had identity theft on their unemployment, and so had to go through paperwork and hearings for it to finally come through in November 2020.
So back to September 2020, starting OnlyFans. I started very softcore, for all sorts of reasons. I was uncomfortable showing much of my body, both because of a history of eating disorders and body dysmorphia and because my body was physically hurting in so many ways. I enjoyed parts of posting, and being front-facing about it all. Sharing pictures and videos on my own terms felt healing for years of insecurities with my body and sexuality and preferences, like exposure therapy for all my conditioning to hide. It felt like a very specific art therapy project. I was confused about liking parts of something that was a plan Z last resort.
I was still too sick to teach yoga. I had considered and attempted various mindless computer jobs, and found myself completely incapable. After going no contact because of financial and emotional abuse, I was flooded with memories of sexual abuse I had repressed.
I had flashbacks of the sexual and physical abuses my whole life, though it wasn’t until the silence of no contact that I had the space to connect the dots. In college and after, I had projectile vomited multiple times during sex with men I loved and trusted. I remember talking about this and related things with therapists, unable to wrap my mind around how violently my body had responded.
Now, literally on my ass from tendon and nerve and hormonal and digestive and ovarian cyst pain, I had a lot of time to remember the flashbacks’ details.
While deep in my own tendon and hormone and trauma healing, I turned to escorting. Most of my emotional and thought space was on various sexual healings of my own, so extending it to include others felt less intimidating. My days were hazes of PTSD flashbacks with whatever grounding exercises I could do, whatever floor yoga and stretching I could do, and physical therapy. I had to budget basic things like grocery trips based on how much I could walk or carry. I couldn’t carry heavy things or go on long walks, and could manage even shorter beach walks because of the uneven surface. I was constantly stressing about my health and money, and feeling hopeless and powerless. Being sick is very expensive, and also a very challenging state to be in attempting to make money.
My ankle and knee and hips would hurt extra some days, and it wasn’t for another year when I was referred to a pelvic floor physical therapist that I knew I was also managing nerve pain.
I decided to get on SeekingArrangements again, now living on Maui. My disabilities and desperation made me more open to navigate the website, and I figured it would be very different than in LA. It was different, though I was still resistant to actually meet anyone in person.
I had two adulthood sexual assaults while living on Maui that triggered more flashbacks. I’m grateful for those assaults in a fucked up way, for the clarities they gifted me. Half awake feeling unequivocally, “I’ve experienced exactly this before.” Though I was more set back emotionally and financially, managing even more flashbacks of old memories flooding in and incapacitating me. So I took the plunge to meet someone in person.
The first client I ever had was in an open relationship, where his partner gave him permission for “paid play partners” that she approved of. We met on video chat, then I met him for coffee, then a few days later he was at my place. We talked, we fucked, he sent me a Venmo, he left.
I logged on my computer and paid a bill I was behind on, immediately.
My last escorting experience was with a man who was experimenting with his queerness, and wanted me to bring another man in. I invited a filming partner, as I had started making hardcore porn on OnlyFans and PornHub at that point. Before the filming partner came over, the client said “I’m so gay!” — while his dick was in my mouth between words of the dick about to be in his mouth — followed by “omg I’ve never said that before” and a distant stare. I felt that stare, back to a stare I’d experienced decades ago.
In the shower after I prayed that would be my last experience in person, and I could switch to all virtual. I knew an article would be coming out soon quoting me in New York Magazine, and I prayed it would give me the exposure to support myself with OnlyFans.
Then maybe I could give energy to my podcast and writing and singing and teaching yoga again, too.
Who knows how much financial freedom I could have had from online work outside of the sex industry without the various technological blocks I’ve experienced.
I had podcast ratings get deleted, and my personal home wifi repeatedly hacked, and more, before I ever started sex work. I learned even more about shadow-banning and more since starting sex work, as that community is the most targeted demographic. I also learned that sex work triggers tech companies because it is so powerful — sex work proliferates the internet and all technology, and perhaps all companies at their base. “The oldest profession.”
I survived sickness because of survival sex work.
Escorting: I’m not at all glad that it happened; I am grateful.”
[AA24m] https://x.com/anniealtman108/status/1777757262737703369 - posted on
4-9-2024
“One time I found a $500k watch at my oldest siblings’ place, casually in an open kitchen cabinet. Another sibling told me how much the watch was, and then got bullied for disclosing to me. I asked why our 60-something Dad (with heart conditions) was making rent and car payments.”
“Surely retiring the father you claimed closeness with was more valuable than a watch????????”
“If our Dad had his needs taken care of, I would have supported multiple fancy watches”
[AA24c] https://x.com/anniealtman108/status/1787162346047304103 -- posted on
5-5-2024
“#rememberjerryaltman ❤️”
“Jerry Altman died in 2018 of a heart attack, at the age of 67. He was working overtime, with known heart conditions.
The dream he expressed to retire in Costa Rica was never fulfilled by his millionaire son, who could have retired our father that he claimed to love.”
[AA24d]
5-5-2024
“What would have been our last family trip, I chose not to go for various reasons. I asked our Dad to be given a check for whatever would have been spent on my fancy plane ticket and accommodations. Dad didn’t ever tell me about getting money from Sam, and got quiet about his Costa Rica dream”
[AA24k] https://x.com/anniealtman108/status/1792624658841501977 -- posted on
5-20-2024
“*one year after full no contact, year and half after the two sessions with the LMFT”
Note: I believe LMFT stands for Licensed Marriage Family Therapist, a therapist that “offer{s} expert guidance to individuals, couples, and families experiencing complex relationship-based issues” (source)
[BB24a] OpenAI Part 1: The Most Silicon Valley Man Alive—The Foundering Podcast—Bloomberg—published 6-6-2024
Note: in the link I provided, there’s a transcript. The transcript has this feature where it highlights the current word being spoken, with the idea being that you can “follow along” reading the transcript while you’re listening to the podcast. Unfortunately, the feature is broken. I think this is due to the inclusion of some ads/commercials at various points throughout the podcast, which create a mismatch between the transcript and the audio.) Specifically, the word highlighted in the transcript is usually a few minutes later than the actual audio.
Example from OpenAI Part 1: The Most Silicon Valley Man Alive:
Ellen Huet: “For this season, you’ll hear reporting done by me and my colleagues at Bloomberg who have been covering AI during the boom of the last few years. We interviewed some of the leading minds in AI to try to cut through the hype and understand the debate about whether AI will be a tool to improve human existence or to extinguish it. But this is also the story of Sam, the man at the center of it all, and we spoke with Sam’s friends, family, and collaborators to demystify him and how he rose to power. This first episode is all about how Sam got here. He’s a man who has always understood the importance of being in the right room at the right time, with exactly the right few people. The full story of Sam’s rise is important because understanding who he is and what he believes will shed light on an urgent question should we trust this man to oversee this technology? In the summer of twenty twenty three, about five months before he was fired, my colleague Emily Chang asked him this exact question at a Bloomberg conference...”
Note: I’ve tried to fix any typos in the transcript, but there may still be some I’ve missed.
...
Ellen Huet: “To get a better sense of the kind of person Sam is and how he got where he is now. I want to take you back to his adolescence. Sam had a privileged upbringing in Saint Louis. He’s the oldest of four siblings. His mom was a dermatologist and his dad was a real estate developer. He attended a private high school called John Burrows. There’s an anecdote about him from that period that sticks out. When some students wanted to boycott an assembly about sexuality, Sam stood up in front of the whole school and announced he was gay. It’s a pretty gutsy move for a teenager in the early two thousands, and unsurprisingly, Sam was smart.
Andy Abbot: “And generally Sam he was. He was an exceptional student, He was an exceptional writer, he was an exceptional big personality.”
Ellen Huet: “That’s Andy Abbott. He was one of Sam’s English teachers, and he’s now the head of school. And this is a pretty nerdy school where it’s cool to get good grades and be a high achiever. And even in that environment, Sam stood out.”
Andy Abbot: “Sam’s just a really natural leader, incredibly charismatic, curious guy. He’s atypical you know. He was the editor of the yearbook and he represented the school in the Model United Nations. He designed our website, you know, before we hired people to do our website. He could just do that stuff.
Ellen Huet: “Sam even played water polo.”
Andy Abbot: “He was pretty good {laughs.} I’m not a connoisseur, but I’m like, he was pretty good.”
Ellen Huet: “He remembers Sam as being really confident, and apparently for good reason. Sounds like Sam was just this exceptional kid.”
Andy Abbot: “Well, he’s the smartest guy in the room, and he’s charismatic. I remember thinking, and I’m just this is just an embarrassing confession. I hope he doesn’t go into technology. He’s so creative and he’s so, he’s such a good writer, and I hoped he would be an author or something like that. And I mean, nobody could have anticipated the magnitude of open Ai, but everybody knew that this guy’s better at most things than most of us are.”
Ellen Huet: “This speaks to a pattern that’ll become a crucial factor in Sam’s career. He’s very good at impressing people, especially the right people, older people, people with influence, people who are at a position to help him. Someone who knows Sam says his superpower is figuring out who’s in charge and charming them.”
Ellen Huet: “So we have young Sam. Even though he was a teenager, he acted like someone older with more agency and confidence. Adults found this quality of his admirable, and he acted like this toward his three younger siblings too. In a big New Yorker profile on Sam, his younger brother said that as kids, they used to play a board game called Samurai, and Sam always won because he declared himself the leader and said, I have to win and I’m in charge of everything. When Sam’s brother told this story, it was a jocular exchange. But Annie, their youngest sibling and only sister, sees it differently. These days, she’s estranged from Sam and the rest of her immediate family, but when she was a kid, she remembered that same quality of Sam’s wanting to be in charge, and to her it wasn’t funny, it was domineering.”
Annie Altman: “From my perspective, with the 9 year age difference, he very much wanted to be, and acted like, the third parent, and like being the older sibling in charge, in control.”
Ellen Huet: “For instance, even though the family was Jewish, they used to get a Christmas tree until Sam put his foot down.”
Annie Altman: “I don’t have memories of Christmas tree because when Sam got bar mitzvah’d at 13, he decided that we as a family unit were Jews and needed to no longer celebrate Christmas. There were no more Christmas trees.”
Ellen Huet: “When their dad passed away in 2018, Annie remembers that Sam dictated to each of his younger siblings how many minutes they could talk at the funeral.
Annie Altman: “To be at your dad’s funeral, to be like, oh, I’m the oldest sibling, so I get to choose how long all the sibling—which, it is bizarre, and there’s a level of it that’s so hilarious and so benign, surface-level, classic older sibling bullshit where it’s like, ‘all right, older sibling wanting to make up the rules to the game.’” Like there’s a level of it that’s very light and funny—and there’s also a level of it that’s very dark and deeply unsettling, of how does that behavior come up in other places if you believe that you get to be the authority on something that you are not the authority on.”
Ellen Huet: “A spokeswoman for OpenAI told us that Sam recalls these incidents differently, but she declined to elaborate.”
...
Ellen Huet: “Sam started building the startup {Loopt} in 2005. The iPhone didn’t exist yet, so Looped was trying to do this for flip phones and it was kind of hard to get traction. At one point early on, Sam’s company was in a desperate situation. They really needed to get a deal with a mobile carrier. They learned that Boost Mobile, which was part of Sprint, was looking to add a location feature and needed a partner, but they were about to sign with someone else, so Sam flew down to Boost’s headquarters in Irvine in southern California. When he tells the story, he says that he just showed up, waited outside the right executive’s office, and asked for just ten minutes. Here’s how that executive remembers it.”
Lowell Winer: “It’s ever recall I got a phone call from Sam and he was in Irvine, and he said that he explained who he was and what Looped was somebody at Sprint had told him to get in touch with us.”
Ellen Huet: “That’s Lowell Winer. He was at the time the head of business development for Boost. And he’s going to tell a story that has a few asides, but that I think captures a lot about what Sam was like.”
Lowell Winer: “Early on, we were a day or two away from signing a contract with another startup that was further along than Looped. He asked to come by that day, you know, which is incredibly unusual, but given the timing that, you know, we were at the eleventh hour we were at to sign this contract. He had come, you know, referred to us by our parent company, it was worth at least a meeting. So Sam shows up at the office with one of one or two other guys from Loopt. We go sit in the conference room, you know, we share what we were looking to do. Sam started to share about Loopt. He was I think nineteen at the time, you know, I think maybe in cargo short sitting cross legged in a in a chair in the conference room and just kind of holding court.”
Ellen Huet: “I want to pause here for a second on this cargo shorts detail. For a lot of Sam’s young life, he was a cargo shorts. Devotee wore them all the time. People kind of poked fun at him for it, to the point where he felt the need to address it on a podcast called Masters of Scale.”
Sam Altman: “Honestly, I don’t think they’re that ugly, and I find them incredibly convenient. Like I I, you can like put a lot of stuff like I like to. I’d still read paperback books. I like paperback books. I like to carry on around with me. I have like an iPhone seven plus, which is kind of like works really well in cargo pockets. I carry like computer chargers, cables. They’re just like, you know, efficient. Why people care about that so much that I can’t tell you.”
Ellen Huet: “That last comment? That’s very Sam to remark that the things normal people might talk about don’t make sense or aren’t rational. It’s like he has no patience for the things most of us might think are funny. He has more important things to think about anyway. Here he is a nineteen year old in a meeting with mobile network executives wearing cargo shorts, sitting cross legged in a conference room chair. Even though this encounter was almost twenty years ago, Lowell remembers vividly what Sam looked like in that moment, because it was such an odd picture.
[BB24b] OpenAI Part 2: Ilya Dreams of AGI—The Foundering Podcast—Bloomberg—published 6-6-2024
[BB24c] OpenAI Part 3: Heaven and Hell, Part 1 -- The Foundering Podcast—Bloomberg—published 6-13-2024
Ellen Huet (host of the podcast): “Today, we’re going to start on a drive in Hawaii.”
Annie Altman: “We’re on north Shore, going deeper into the jungle on the north shore, so we’re passing twin falls right now.
Ellen Huet: “I’m driving through the lush green forests of Maui. Annie Altman, Sam Altman’s little sister is sitting in the passenger seat. You heard from her briefly in the first episode.”
...
Ellen Huet: “We’re taking a tour of the different places Annie has moved around in the last couple of years, driving down dirt roads to look at cabins and houses hidden behind enormous tropical plants.”
..,
Ellen Huet: “For much of the past two years, Annie hasn’t been able to afford a stable place to live.”
Annie Altman: “The place you just passed is one of the places I stayed at longer-term in all of the houselessness...{I spent} two months on a newly-built, {with} no running water or no electricity, house, at the far end, back, of the property.”
Ellen Huet: “And I think she’s an important part of Sam’s story.”
Annie Altman: “And at the time I had nowhere to stay and no rent money, certainly no deposit money, and barely enough room, barely enough money for rent.”
Ellen Huet: “Recently, over the course of just a year, she moved twenty two times, and that’s on average about twice a month. Sometimes she has stayed places for a week at a time, or even just a night or two. Some of them have been illegal rentals without running water. She says she’s slept on floors and friends’ houses. She stayed with strangers when she didn’t have another option.”
...
Annie Altman: “The man who lived in the front house messaged me on Instagram, and I stayed in his kids’ room the week that they weren’t there, and then slept on the floor in the common room the week that the kids were there.
Annie Altman: “I was houseless. I didn’t have somewhere to go.”
Annie Altman: “I stayed in this cabin with the slanty roof right there for three months.”
{A podcast host}: “How many different places have you lived in that didn’t have running water?”
Annie: “Maybe five-ish? Five or six? I don’t know.”
Ellen Huet: “Meanwhile, thousands of miles away in San Francisco, her brother Sam was having a spectacular year in 2023. The success of ChatGPT had launched OpenAI into the stratosphere. Sam was named CEO of the Year by Time magazine. He spent months flying around the globe talking to world leaders about AI.”
...
Ellen Huet: “On stage, on podcasts and interviews, people kept turning to Sam for answers. They were asking him what our AI future would hold. In May of that year, he confidently suggested a future where no one is poor. It’s an idea he’s talked about for years, and the remarks show that his tune hasn’t changed despite growing renown and wealth.
Sam Altman: “One thing I think we all could agree on is that we just shouldn’t have poverty in the world.”
...
Ellen Huet: “It sounds wonderful, almost utopian. But Sam was saying on stage that everyone should have enough money, enough food, everyone should have a place to live, while his own sister was struggling with homelessness. I want to believe Sam’s promises about abundance, but Annie’s story complicates a lot of the things Sam has projected about the future.”
...
Ellen Huet: “Sam is a savvy guy. As his profile has gotten bigger after he helped build the world’s leading AI company, he has stopped saying things like AI will kill us all. Instead, he talks about how society will be profoundly changed, but overall it will be for the better. Since his newfound chat GPT fame, he has shifted toward presenting himself and by extension, open AI, as more middle of the road. Sam is allowed to change his views, but people have also so complain to me in private that Sam has a tendency to talk out of both sides of his mouth. He’s good at telling people what they want to hear in that moment, so it’s not surprising that if it’s advantageous for him to seem more moderate, that he would start to sound that way.”
[BB24d] OpenAI Part 4: Heaven and Hell, Part 2 -- The Foundering Podcast—Bloomberg—published 6-20-2024
Ellen Huet: “What really strikes me is that Sam positions himself as the visionary behind this AI that might put us all out of work, and the visionary behind systems that will save us from that chaos. He’s offering fixes to the problems that his own technology will create. Imagine a future where Sam Altman’s company has invented AI so powerful that it upends the entire labor economy. We no longer work for money. Instead, we get monthly checks from Sam Altman’s income distribution system. I can imagine that his intentions might be good, and that he wants to make a difference here. But what Sam’s proposing is ending poverty through systems overseen by him, basically, and that’s asking us to put a huge amount of trust in him. Remember, Sam is really good at gaining power. He has a deep drive to be in charge. His company has made promises about adhering to certain principles and then moved away from them. It brings me back to this question we asked in episode one, what I think is the key question of this series. Should we trust this person?”
Ellen Huet: “Like we said earlier, there’s a part of Sam’s life that really complicates this image of him. It’s the story of his little sister Annie. She says she lives in poverty. Sometimes she struggles with homelessness. She says she survives by doing sex work. Sam is pitching this dream future in which universal basic income will protect everyone who needs it. That sounds lovely in theory, but when it’s held up next to Annie’s messy, everyday reality, that promise starts to sound a bit hollow. Housing insecurity has defined Annie’s life for the past few years. This is a complex and sensitive situation, so I wanted to hear from her myself.”
Annie Altman: “In my experience, it’s not only hard to do anything when you are housing insecure, it is impossible. I haven’t had a typical day in four years because of how much energy both physically like looking for places or doing things, or looking for jobs and emotionally goes into housing insecurity. It has been the single biggest energy output of my past year.”
Ellen Huet: “In person, Annie is upbeat and smiley. She has good suggestions for health food stores on Maui. She has the word love tattooed across her knuckles. She makes a podcast, Hello and Welcome to the Annie Altman Show All Humans or Human Podcast, and posts videos of her singing on YouTube.”
...
Ellen Huet: “Sometimes, I and to better understand her story, I want to rewind to her childhood. When we heard from Annie briefly in the first episode, she talked about Sam’s domineering attitude within their family, how he dictated they wouldn’t have Christmas trees and put himself in charge of how long each sibling could speak at their dad’s funeral. Their family has three boys. Sam’s the oldest, then Max, then Jack. Annie is the youngest, nine years younger than Sam and the only girl. Her brothers loved science, math, games, nerdy stuff. She was always the artistic, sensitive one. Even when they were children, she sometimes felt like the odd one out, and as they became adults, the bonds between the brothers tightened both personally and professionally. While Sam was running YC, Jack founded a software company that was funded by YC. Jack and Max also both worked with Sam, helping run his investment fund with money from Peter Teel. Then all three started another investment fund together in which they used Sam’s personal wealth. The three brothers lived together in San Francisco, brothers, coworkers, roommates, a tight, messy knot of family, business and money. Annie, on the other hand, was not part of the Altman family brand. With each new step in her life, she seemed to veer farther away from the path she felt was expected of her. She completed pre med requirements, but decided not to pursue that further. She did improv classes, stand up comedy, yoga, teacher training. She said her dad was supportive of this turn away from a more traditional path. Her mom, who was a physician, was less excited.”
Annie Altman: “My siblings and mother were very judgmental about the shift and also very “This is just a phase.” I was an am at total daddy’s girl. With my mother, there was closeness only when I was doing what she wanted me to do, which is a story {that} sadly, I feel like a lot of people can relate to.”
Ellen Huet: “Just a note. We reached out to Sam, his siblings, and his mom for comment in this episode. His mom, Connie Gibstine, responded with this statement:”
Connie Gibstine: “We love Annie and are very concerned about her well being. Over the years, we have offered her financial support and help and continue to offer it today. Navigating the balance between providing support without enabling self-destructive behavior for a family member with mental health struggles is extraordinarily difficult. We only want the best for Annie and hope everyone will treat her with compassion.”
Ellen Huet: “In 2018, Annie’s father died suddenly of a heart attack, and the grief hit her {Annie} hard. Meanwhile, she also started dealing with some chronic health issues, including tendonitis in her ankle that made it difficult to do work that required standing. She quit her job. She was still mourning her dad. She had gotten some life insurance money after he died, but when that ran out a year later, she still found herself in a desperate financial situation. In order to pay rent, she started selling her furniture. She says she asked her family directly for money to pay rent and cover groceries.”
Annie Altman: “I asked my mother for help and she said no, And then {I} asked Sam and he was told to say no because of her {Connie} wanting him to say no, and he’s a grown man in his thirties, {worth} millions of dollars.”
Ellen Huet: “Now, Sam and his family have given Annie money at times, but she says it always came with heavy conditions that made her nervous. At one point, Sam wanted her to get back on Zoloft, an antidepressant, which she had started as a teen but had stopped later on. She {Annie} forwarded me an email from Sam where he asked her to share her bank statements and to allow him and his mom to sit in on some of her therapy sessions in exchange for her rent and medical expenses being covered. She felt like it was his way of exerting leverage or power over her. Of course, Sam can spend his money as he pleases, but again, he’s on stage espousing the virtues of universal basic income—giving money away for free, unconditionally, -- and Annie says he didn’t do the same here for her. There were times when I’d gone back and forth about what to include from Annie’s story. It’s a very personal, messy family situation, and I’ll confess that on occasion I’ve doubted some unrelated things she’s told me. But also, I’ve looked through corroborating emails and documents. We drove to a lot of places Annie lived, and I met people she lived with. So in late 2019, when she asked for help and says she was told no, she turned to something she considered a last resort. To make money, she started sex work. She made an account on a sugar daddy dating website where people trade money for companionship and often sex.”
Annie: “I was just...I was in a desperate place. I mean...people who have been in a position like this ever know that when you’re in a place of selling furniture, you’re in a desperate position of “I’m out options.” This is a ‘plan Z’ I would not be doing this if plans ‘A’ through ‘I’ had worked out in any capacity.”
Ellen Huet: “The first thing she tried was video chatting with a middle-aged man. She flashed him on camera and he sent her money over Zelle. She posted videos on OnlyFans and PornHub. She also did in-person sex work for two years. She says she didn’t want to, but it was the work that she was able to fit into her unpredictable schedule of dealing with her health issues. Her lack of stable income, led to a long period of housing insecurity. At times, she lived with sex work clients, or even with strangers from the internet. Her sex work contributed to her precarious housing. She didn’t have pay stubs or regular income, which limited the kind of leases she could get. It felt like this interconnected web, exactly the kind of vicious cycle that something like universal basic income tries to break.”
Annie Altman: “If I had a security deposit in my bank account - {I} never would have lived with this man, not, not even a little bit of a chance, would I have lived with this man. There’s some unhealthy sex work experiences, and I’ve also had very traumatizing experiences from in-person work that would not have happened if I had secure housing. I’m still in and, have been so long in, survival mode that it really shifts everything. It really shifts everything. Times when it’s been really like...places...like staying just for a week and a half {somewhere} and then the floor for a week, and then someone’s place for a night, and then a floor for a week—in those places of really moving that much in a short period of time, there’s no—I had no energy for anything else. Really feeling a sense of helplessness and powerlessness that I have never experienced, ever.”
Ellen Huet: “It’s not a clean cut situation. In twenty twenty two, Sam offered to buy Annie a house, but she says it wasn’t going to be in her name, and the conditions made her uncomfortable.”
Annie Altman: “It became clear to me that it was not an offer for my house. It was an offer for a house of Sam’s—or a lawyer of his—that I would be allowed to live in.”
Ellen Huet: “She felt like it was a throwback to Sam’s attempts to get her on Zoloft and to peer into her bank statements, so she said no. I do want to pause on this because I know it may sound illogical. After all, it would have been a place to live. But from her point of view, Sam had exerted control over her throughout their lives, and this seemed like one more attempt to control her. During those conversations, she was clear with Sam about the hardships she had endured in the past couple of years.”
Annie Altman: “I told him over the series of those phone calls too, that I had started sex work, and distinctly remember when I first told him about doing sex work and he said, quote, ‘Good.’”
Ellen Huet: “Annie was stung, because she remembers that he didn’t ask anything more about it. Like she was sharing something that was painful for her and he was blowing past it.”
Annie Altman: “To hear your little sister tell you she’s doing something she doesn’t want to do related to sex, and for the response to be ‘Good.’ So I was like, ‘Oh, you’re glad that I’m starting to post on OnlyFans. It sounds ‘good’ to you because I’m supporting myself, even if I’m telling you I’m doing this as a plan Z because I don’t know what else to do.’”
Ellen Huet: “A person close to Sam says that Sam remembers the conversation differently. Annie and Sam are mostly estranged. After that conversation, she kept living in Hawaii, struggling in obscurity. Meanwhile, Sam was ascendant. He was doing world tours. {He was} CEO of the year {in Time Magazine.} He officially became a billionaire. Most of the world had no idea Annie Altman existed, let alone that she was depending on OnlyFans for survival. But last fall, New York Magazine published a profile of Sam, and the journalist, Elizabeth Weil, interviewed Annie. The article was the first time a lot of people found out Sam even had a sister, myself included.”
Annie Altman: “Some of the trippiest messages I got from reporters, when that article first came out, were reporters who have watched every interview Sam has ever done, saying ‘He’s never mentioned a sister.’”
Ellen Huet: “Annie worries that because she’s basically invisible in Sam’s public life life, especially compared to his tight relationship with his brothers, reporters won’t take her story seriously.”
Annie Altman: “That they will then question my validity, or {be like} ‘Oh, well, she’s crazy. Maybe...he’s just not talking about her because she’s so mentally unstable, and so now let’s recycle the ‘Annie’s crazy’ narrative and ‘This is why she can’t be trusted’, or ‘We should just ignore her.’”
Ellen Huet: “In the days leading up to the article coming out, New York Magazine reached out to Sam and his family and OpenAI for fact-checking and to confirm details. So Sam knew the story was going to mention Annie. And then the day before the article ran, something spurred Sam to make an unexpected move. He emailed Annie.”
Annie Altman: “And the night before it {the Elizabeth Weil article} came out was Yom Kippur --
Ellen Huet: “—the Jewish day of forgiveness—”
Annie Altman: “Sam emailed me, ‘no subject’ and in all lowercase, and said, ‘hi annie. in the spirit of it almost being yom kippur, i wanted to apologize and ask for forgiveness for something. i should have kept sending you money without conditions even though our family had concerns; i was in a tough position of wanting to let mom drive decisions as the parent and seeing how much stress you were causing her (and also agreeing it would be better for everyone if you were able to support yourself, and thinking that you needed medical help) and it being clear you just weren’t really able to function very well. still, i made the wrong call and should just have just kept supporting you; i sincerely apologize. i hope you find peace.’ There’s no mention of this article that’s coming out tomorrow, and there’s no mention of the fact checking that he just went through.”
Ellen Huet: “Annie felt that the timing of this email was really telling. That for all this time, while Annie was staying in the background, Sam didn’t feel any need to apologize. Then, just as she’s about to exert a little bit of power over him, by complicating his image, he reaches out, and invokes their shared Jewish heritage to ask for forgiveness. I asked Annie how she felt about Sam speaking publicly about universal basic income and ending poverty when he hasn’t done the same for her.”
Annie Altman: “It was a very big slap in the face. It feels embarrassing to be related to him. It’s beyond depressing and heartbreaking and disappointing that someone who I thought had a different moral compass, or who I thought would be there for me when I needed someone and was really sick, wasn’t...in the same way I’m gonna be grieving my dad for the rest of my life, I’m gonna be grieving Sam for the rest of my life. And the sadness of...of someone who saw me in a walking boot and didn’t say, ‘How can I help you.’ It’s why I use the term ‘sibling’ and not ‘brother.’”
Ellen Huet: “Even though Annie’s story is really complicated, I think it’s relevant to all of us. Because when Sam is going around talking about our AI future, he acknowledges that AI could take our jobs and upend society and money as we know it. And he says he’ll come up with a solution for us: universal basic income. But, when he’s faced with the messy reality of his own sister, suddenly it’s not so simple. In public, he is literally saying that there shouldn’t be poverty. {That} money will be given away to everyone. In private, when Annie asked for help, he didn’t come through for her in the way she needed.”
[BB24e] OpenAI Part 5: Beware the Ides of November—The Foundering Podcast—Bloomberg—published 6-27-2024
[AA24i] https://x.com/anniealtman108/status/1804249479945818324 -- posted on
6-21-2024
“Hi @JBSchool!
Why so much attention for my sibling who went there, and not for me? Wouldn’t be about donations, would it?
Would love to see how much money you were given while I was navigating my Dad’s Trust being withheld, tendon/nerve/ovarian cyst pain, and homelessness—want to share?”
[BB24e] OpenAI Part 5: Beware the Ides of November—The Foundering Podcast—Bloomberg—published 6-27-2024
[AA24o] https://x.com/anniealtman108/status/1808260107861741905 -- posted on 7-2-2024
“My siblings’ nickname for me was “Trash Can”
Can
Cannie
The Can
Miss Can
Bad Baby Trash Can
Didn’t fully grasp the meanness until I was working as a personal care attendant, and the nonverbal wheelchair bound client cut me out a magazine quote that said “YOU CAN!” and gave it me with genuine love ❤️”
[AA24e] https://x.com/anniealtman108/status/1822099256154689807 -- posted on
8-9-2024
“My long term home was broken into one month after these tweets.”
[AA24l] https://x.com/anniealtman108/status/1822099397561450665 -- posted on
8-9-2024
Note: this is a Tweet reply to [AA24e].
“My two most valuable items were left untouched.”
[AA24g] https://x.com/anniealtman108/status/1822028939432448092 -- posted on
8-9-2024
“To Jack {Altman} in 2020.
I’m still curious how grown men allowed their mother to make their financial decisions, and not help their sister (when allowed to call me that) with groceries when I was very physically ill”
“Okay, I’ll text her. I’d like to change the arrangement somehow to involve less checking in, as I’m in agreement with your and (especially) Sam’s request for us to take more space. I’d like us to please talk in the future, Sam more too, about why she is able to make any of your financial decisions”
[AA24h] https://x.com/anniealtman108/status/1822029242584199315 -- posted on
8-9-2024
“For context: Connie (biological mother) kicked me off her health insurance less than three months after Dad died, when I was 24 and could have stayed on her work one for two more years”
[AA24p] https://x.com/anniealtman108/status/1822042911648968746 -- posted on 8-9-2024
My note: I’m pretty sure this Tweet from Annie is directed at her mother, Connie.
“You birthed me and raised me, abused me and let others abuse me. Sure you know me well, and I know your bullshit just as well, thanks.
Haven’t talked with you in over four years, and my PTSD is the best it’s ever been. Please thank your mom for me, for reprimanding you for neglecting me.”
My note: I think Connie’s mom was Marjori Mae “Peggy” Francis Gibstine, based on her obiturary.
[AA24j] https://x.com/anniealtman108/status/1824297776810954923 - posted on
8-15-2024
“Can you imagine how much more I’ll scare them now that I’m getting my tendon/nerve/ovaries cared for, not sucking dick for rent money while my Dad’s Trust was completely withheld, and learning it’s safe and allowed for me to share my story on my terms 🥰”
[AA24f] https://x.com/anniealtman108/status/1826101121334784426 -- posted on
8-20-2024
“If the multiverse is real, I’d love to meet the version of me who did run away to the circus at 5 years old after telling her birth mother about wanting to end this life thing and being touched by older siblings, and said “mother” decided to instead protect her sons and demand to receive therapy and chores only from her female child.”
[AA24q] https://x.com/anniealtman108/status/1829678329802473781 -- posted on 8-31-2024
“My last in-person client came out to me as gay followed with “omg I haven’t ever said that out loud before,” as I flashbacked and did my best to stay in “work mode.” Will be more/less something when less ptsd-y”
[AA24r] https://x.com/anniealtman108/status/1830773664784228502 -- posted on 9-2-2024
My note: Annie posted this as a Repost of a Tweet that I made.
[AA24n] https://x.com/anniealtman108/status/1836302674024894927 - posted on
9-18-2024
“Things Grandma was right about...”dwarf tossing” with my baby body was wrong...{and} hot baths cure most things”
[AA—a] https://www.instagram.com/p/CtetAsfpmhb/
same as [AA24f] above
[AA—b] https://www.instagram.com/p/CuXd3H0u0e3/
“Yeah I was super sick...and houseless...and sucking “parts” for...{money?}...and so now—well, first of all, ’cause that was some outrageously good fuckery (abuse), and—now I’m un-fuck-with-able!”
[AA—c] https://www.instagram.com/p/CtIzt-uudhr/
[AA—d] https://www.instagram.com/p/Cpx3evHv1F0/
“Reposting for you to read before you reach out about OpenAI and ChatGPT.
I’m just at the light at the end of tunnel of four years of being sick and broke and shadowbanned. I’d do it again to go no contact and feel physically and emotionally safe for the first time in my life.
Yes business life and personal life and different, and also “how you do anything is how you do everything.” Please vote with your dollars, your attention, and your truth.
#truthcomesouteventually #trueshit #allhumansarehuman”
[AA—e] https://www.instagram.com/stories/highlights/17865620213032124/
Here, Annie provides a set of screen captures (in the form of an Instagram story called “Hi censorship”) showing instances she’s identified as shadowbanning / unusual activity surrounding various posts she’s made on social media.
[AA—f] https://www.instagram.com/p/CxliM2oyXBY/
“Victim mentality or survivor mentality? Did that happen “to you” or “for you”? (Note to watch out for spiritual bypassing and erasure of real experiences in your ~reflecting~)
I survived Achilles and posterior tibial tendinopathy. I survived posterior tibial nerve pain that radiated to my ankle, knee, and pelvis. I survived PCOS and those particular ovarian cysts that got intense enough to warrant scans. I survived IBS and every single disordered eating game.
I survived listening to my body fall apart as it told me the stories I had not yet been ready to hear the full depths of. I survived 18 months of nearly all-day PTSD flashbacks of childhood assaults.
I survived my Dad’s will being withheld for over a year, and money he left me being withheld by millionaires relatives. I survived the grief of my decision to go no-contact with said relatives.
I survived being shadowbanned across multiple accounts, while attempting to make a livable income online. I survived an in-person profession that was a plan Z last resort, and learned and was therapized by it.
I survived every form of ab*sive behavior. I survived relatives telling and showing me I was “crazy” for pointing out said ab*se.
I survived grieving my Dad and somehow got even closer with him, and yes forever grieving.
I survived myself.
#everyoneisgoingthroughsomething #allhumansarehuman #thehumannie #trueshit #truthcomesouteventually”
[AA—g] https://www.instagram.com/p/CxgtpcwvP4w/
The image:
“Dec 19, 2019
Hello Internet. I’ve gotten myself into a very difficult position, as I’ve been unable to work as much as I’ve needed due to my mental health and physical health. I put myself in a financially risky position to pursue my one woman show and podcast, and then had unexpected costs with health and technical difficulties. I’m dealing with the consequences of my own decisions and I need help. My Venmo is @Annie-Altman if you’re able.
In this calendar year I observed the one year anniversary of my dad’s death, discussed another mental health label to add to my collection, got diagnosed with PCOS (scans to rule out adrenal tumors, pelvic ultrasounds, blood tests), had IBS flare up again, had a long-term achilles injury flare up the longest I’ve experienced it, had almost all of my personal accounts have attempted or successful logins, had people logging on my wifi and other wifi issues (4 new modems, had excessive cell phone service issues, the pity-party list continues. I’m beyond my capacity of what I can handle alone. I—”
Annie’s post:
“#fbf to a silly and sad Annie, “putting herself in a position” to save other people who were harming her.
I’ve since learned part of personal accountability can be noticing my own savior complex, and allowing someone else to experience the consequences of their decisions.
Third sentence there ought to have read ‘My millionaire relatives are refusing to give me help, and are withholding money from my dead Dad that I quit a job because of, while sick and in paperwork process to receive what he left in my name.’”
[AA—h] https://www.instagram.com/p/CxOgnm4yWHY/
“Almost all of my social media accounts have been/are shadowbanned, and this is an unfortunate truth for many. OpenAI would be tagged here also if they had a account.
It started for me before any swork {sex work} started. I don’t mean that this account would be at 100K or some set number. I do mean it makes no sense to be unable to pass 1K, with over 100 podcasts and other creations, and consistent posting.
Old videos wil {sic} get reduced to something like 2 views on @instagram and @youtube , podcast rating get frequently deleted on @apple @applepodcasts , people will get automatically unfollowed, posts will be restricted in who sees them, and more.
It’s been really demoralizing on a lot of levels, which is part of the purpose of shadowbanning. The other purpose of shadowbanning is direct repression of ways I can support myself with my art, like my @etsy and @patreon , or podcast ads for @anchor.fm .”
Wristwatch-Related References
[SW22a] Patek Philippe Perpetual Calendar reference 1526 in yellow gold, Superwatchman.com, published May 9, 2022
“Patek Philippe’s first commercial manufacturing perpetual calendar was the reference 1526. This is the ultimate permanent calendar for most enthusiasts, including the collectors. Over the years, numerous designers have produced alternate calendar displays. However, nothing has come anywhere close to the 1526’s clear, readable, and visually beautiful dial.”
“The Patek Philippe Perpetual Calendar case is made of pure 18k yellow gold and is 34mm in diameter by 11.5mm in thickness. The acrylic crystal is spherical while the back of the casing snaps shut...The casing body is brush polished, while the snapback is finished. The lugs have a modest downward arch—besides, the brown leather strap with Patek Philippe clasp in 18k gold. The calendar info is also displayed on the dial in an ideal manner.”
“The dial has a lovely, homogeneous eggshell-colored patina that complements the rose gold color of the casing wonderfully. The logo and scales are solid enamel and are as polished as a refined connoisseur could anticipate. The gold mark beneath the top left lug is clear, and the signature on the right ring is profound and prominent, indicating that the case is strong and resistant to scratch.”
“In addition, the Patek Philippe Perpetual Calendar dial is 100 percent genuine and untouched. It is matte silver in color with attached golden Arabic numerals and hour indicator dots and a written minutes scale around the outside. The golden hands are also distinctive and are leaf style, commonly known as Feuille hands in Patek jargon. The supplemental second’s hand is a tiny version of the golden leaf style. The blued hand along the outside chapter enclosing the moonphase window, whereas the day and month are presented under the 12 o’clock position, indicates the date. The original moonphase disc is blue with gold stars as well as a moon.”
“During the model’s history, just 165 pieces with references to 1526 perpetual calendars were produced...Patek Philippe 1526s are incredibly uncommon.”
[KTT23a] Watch Identifier: Sam Altman’s Greubel Forsey Watch—KeepTheTime.com, published December 1, 2023, last modified August 28, 2024
“If you’re wondering what watch Sam Altman wears, at least one of his choices appears to be a Greubel Forsey Invention Piece 1.”
“In the comparison below, the watch was flipped to put the crown on the right side. From there, you can see the long tourbillon bridge and main dial location seem to match the layout of the Greubel Forsey.
“Let’s look at the overall layout side-by-side. The image below includes a Greubel Forsey image with a similar red gold/silver dial configuration.”
The watch may stick out prominently from Mr. Altman’s sleeve, but that doesn’t make it any easier to identify from the video. However, the thickness, short lugs, and bar across the lower left are definitely leaning towards the Invention Piece 1.”
“Not to mention, pieces like this carry retail prices so far from obtainability that the average watch collector finds them to be fun to gawk at and read about, but that’s about it – the way car people might drool over images of the Ferrari Daytona SP3 or Lamborghini Sian (although Greubel Forsey is more along the lines of a Pininfarina Battista or Pagani Utopia).”
“The price is not the only limitation in acquiring an Invention Piece 1… there were only 33 total watches available in the entire world.”
“If you’re going to spend that much on a timepiece, you probably want people to see it. The Invention Piece 1 is the perfect wingman in that regard. Boasting a diameter of 43.5mm and standing tall at almost 17mm in thickness...At about 13 seconds into the video… wait a minute, is that Sam Altman doing a classic watch geek move of looking down at his wrist to make sure his watch is exposed?”
“The Invention Piece 1 is available in 18K white gold, 5N red gold, or platinum. 11 pieces were produced in each metal type.”
I found the date of publication and the last modified date using (once again) Inspect Element:
[BI23b] Sam Altman’s $480,000 watch, the Greubel Forsey Invention Piece 1, is so rare only 33 were ever made (also on the Internet Archive) -- published Dec 23, 2023
“To Sam Altman’s many titles — ousted-then-returned OpenAI CEO, former Y Combinator president, universal basic income enthusiast, part-time Hawaii resident — we must add one more: Watch guy.”
“Altman owns a watch so rare that only 33 were ever made, according to luxury watch website KeepTheTime. After spotting Altman wearing a chunky gold watch at a Wired event in 2018, BI asked the site for assistance identifying the distinctive timepiece. (BI, which went way too hard, also asked for help from a subreddit for watch enthusiasts, a longtime watch salesperson at Tiffany’s San Francisco location, watch experts at several high-end auction houses, and people lurking in the Discord of the open-source intelligence site Bellingcat.)”
“The watch, the Greubel Forsey Invention Piece 1 in red gold, was priced at 520,000 Swiss Francs when it was released in 2008, a spokesperson for Greubel Forsey confirmed. At the exchange rate of the time, that works out to roughly $480,000.”
“Altman has also flaunted his more modest Patek Philippe Perpetual Calendar 1526, one of which sold at Christie’s for $106,250 in 2017.”
“Altman posted a photo of the timepiece on the r/watches subreddit in May 2018, with a ❤️ emoji, and was spotted wearing the watch at a congressional hearing this year where he testified to the need for AI regulation.”
“Altman’s pricey watch collection is just one part of his ultra-luxurious lifestyle. Business Insider previously reported that he went on an 18-month, $85 million real estate shopping spree in recent years. He was spotted driving a red McLaren F1 around northern California this month. A similar car was expected to sell for up to $15 million at auction in 2015. Altman also reportedly owns a Lexus LFA racing car, one of which recently sold for $1.1 million at auction.”