The Role Models · Season One · Episode 11 · 36 min
The Vanishing Word
March 2024 to 2026: most of the founders leave, a co-founder sues, the nonprofit nearly gives up control and then doesn't, and one word — "safely" — disappears from a tax form. Episode 11 asks what OpenAI became after the safeguard was tested and overruled.
Disclaimer: a dramatization based on public records, including court filings, published emails and company posts. Some scenes and dialogue are reconstructed or composited. Voices are AI-generated and perform words from the public record; they are not intended to resemble any real person. Not affiliated with or endorsed by OpenAI or any person depicted. Allegations in court filings are unproven claims.
Beat outline
Story beats, not timed audio chapters.
- Line Three
- Sad That It's Come to This
- Shiny Products
- Time and Space
- Not a Normal Company
- A Calendar Technicality
- Safely
- The Role Models
The Role Models, S01E11: "The Vanishing Word"
Runtime: 35:42 · Season One · A Will Sigmon Media production Season / Episode: 1 / 11 · episodeType: full
Cold open
Every year, an American charity has to file a tax return with the IRS. It's called a Form 990. It's public. And near the top, there's a box where the organization has to briefly describe its mission. That box matters. The IRS can use it to judge whether a charity is still doing what it was given tax-exempt status to do. So the words in it aren't marketing. They're a legal description of what the organization says it exists for. In February twenty-twenty-six, a software…
About this episode
March 2024 to 2026: most of the founders leave, a co-founder sues, the nonprofit nearly gives up control and then doesn't, and one word — "safely" — disappears from a tax form. Episode 11 asks what OpenAI became after the safeguard was tested and overruled.
Disclaimer: a dramatization based on public records, including court filings, published emails and company posts. Some scenes and dialogue are reconstructed or composited. Voices are AI-generated and perform words from the public record; they are not intended to resemble any real person. Not affiliated with or endorsed by OpenAI or any person depicted. Allegations in court filings are unproven claims.
Beat outline / chapters
These are narrative beats from the production script, not timed audio chapters.
- Line Three
- Sad That It's Come to This
- Shiny Products
- Time and Space
- Not a Normal Company
- A Calendar Technicality
- Safely
- The Role Models
Key people
- Sam Altman
- Elon Musk
- departing founders (as quoted in record)
How we tell it
- Every line a character speaks in their own voice is verbatim from the public record: texts, emails, tweets, speeches, blog posts, interviews, filings.
- Dramatized staging is reconstructed from documented events; we invent no dialogue for any real person.
- Contested accounts are told as contested and attributed to the side that claims them.
- Allegations in court filings are unproven claims.
- Voices are AI-generated and perform words from the public record; they are not intended to resemble any real person.
Sources
- OpenAI IRS Form 990 mission statements 2016–2024 via ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer, as compiled by Simon Willison, "The evolution of OpenAI's mission statement" (Feb 13, 2026).
- Musk v. Altman complaint (Mar 1, 2024), as quoted in coverage; OpenAI, "OpenAI and Elon Musk" (Mar 5, 2024).
- Sutskever and Altman posts, May 14, 2024 (Ars Technica); Jan Leike thread, May 17, 2024; CNBC/Wired May 17, 2024 (Superalignment dissolved).
- Vox (Kelsey Piper), May 2024; Altman post May 18, 2024 (Business Insider).
- Scarlett Johansson statement and Altman response, May 20, 2024 (CNBC, full statement).
- research/part4 §3b; SSI founding statement (TechCrunch Jun 19, 2024).
- CNBC/AP/Politico, Feb 10, 2025 (Musk bid; Altman reply).
- OpenAI, "Evolving OpenAI's structure" (May 5, 2025).
- OpenAI, "Our structure" (post-Oct 28, 2025).
- Business Insider, Nov 3, 2025 (Musk–Altman exchange on X).
- NBC News (David Ingram) and CNBC (Kopp & Kolodny), May 18, 2026; Reuters, May 18, 2026 (verdict).
Credits
Written and produced by Will Sigmon for Will Sigmon Media. Narrator and character voices: AI-generated voices performing words from the public record.
Listen next
Season One ends here. Full sources: /sources.html
Episode page: https://shows.willsigmon.media/role-models/episodes/s01e11
Disclaimer: a dramatization based on public records, including court filings, published emails and company posts. Some scenes and dialogue are reconstructed or composited. Voices are AI-generated and perform words from the public record; they are not intended to resemble any real person. Not affiliated with or endorsed by OpenAI or any person depicted. Allegations in court filings are unproven claims. The Role Models is produced by Will Sigmon Media with AI-generated voices. Quoted emails, posts and filings are read verbatim and attributed; where the parties disagree, both accounts are given, and a company's post written during a lawsuit is treated as advocacy by one side. Sources for each episode are listed in its show notes.