I've seen Sam Altman in action plenty of times. Here's why I was surprised when I watched him on the stand.

It's tricky business to define Sam Altman's "day job."

He's got the basic task of overseeing OpenAI's executives and staff, as any CEO does. Work doesn't stay at the office, though. Altman has become the public face of the AI boom, responsible for selling a technology that's upending workforces, capturing markets, and costing billions of dollars to build. That's often a high-wire act, and especially so this week — he also had to sell himself.

I watched Altman's testimony on Tuesday in the Oakland courtroom where, for weeks, jurors have weighed Elon Musk's arguments against those of OpenAI and Microsoft. Musk says Altman and OpenAI president Greg Brockman "stole" the OpenAI charity. They responded that the charity actually thrives because of the commercial moves they made.

It's a high-profile, high-stakes trial, and I was keen to see how Altman would perform. Reporting on OpenAI over the last few years, I've watched him schmooze with San Franciscans, chop it up with AI boosters, and hit softball questions from Jimmy Fallon. He posts to X, joins podcasts, writes blogs — it's all part of his gig. Altman is a content creator, a CEO working to spread hype.

So it was no surprise to me that Altman gave the jury an optimistic vision for both his company and for AI itself. The shocking part was how little he did to protect his own reputation.