Today the primary witness was sworn in in Musk v. Altman: Elon Musk. I used to be shocked by how flat he appeared.
This isn’t the primary time I’ve seen Musk in courtroom. During his defamation go well with, he turned on the attraction and the jury responded by discovering him not responsible. Today he appeared adrift and unprepared. The solely instances he confirmed actual animation have been when he was bragging about how a lot he’d performed for OpenAI.
The direct examination is a approach of telling a narrative via questions; it’s essential to make the narrative clear. For a go well with that accuses Sam Altman of straying from OpenAI’s mission, Musk spent a bizarre period of time speaking about himself, recounting his biography, and hyping up the assorted ventures he’s undertaken that don’t have anything to do with OpenAI.
“I came up with the idea, the name, recruited the key people. taught them everything I know, provided all the initial funding. Besides that, nothing.”
For occasion, he informed jurors that he labored between “80 to 100 hours a week,” which was how he received a lot performed. It is unclear to me whether or not his prolific posting habits depend as a part of the workweek. I hope the protection asks.
We did ultimately get round to OpenAI, the place Musk portrayed himself because the driving drive. He’d been nervous about AI since childhood, and who had lastly felt that somebody wanted to stop Google from growing it. He testified that he grew to become concerned in AI security as a result of he had a dialog with Google’s personal Larry Page and requested, “What if AI wipes out all the humans?” Page primarily shrugged — so far as he was involved, so long as the AI didn’t additionally go extinct, issues have been all proper. “I said, ‘That’s insane,’ and he called me a species-ist for being pro-human.” So OpenAI, for Musk, was born particularly to maintain Google from having an excessive amount of energy in AI. Petty! Musk additionally mentioned that after he recruited Ilya Sutskever, then a analysis scientist at Google, to OpenAI that “Larry Page refused to speak to me ever again.”
What did Musk do at OpenAI? “I came up with the idea, the name, recruited the key people. taught them everything I know, provided all the initial funding. Besides that, nothing.” He paused for laughter, and one or two folks obligingly chuckled. But a lot of the courtroom was silent. I assumed he sounded petulant. “I could have started it as a for-profit and I chose not to,” Musk mentioned.
It’s onerous to preempt the argument you expect with out making it your self
I do surprise how a lot of this the jury is following. We went in a short time via loads of concepts, together with “artificial general intelligence,” an imaginary factor that many AI researchers are nonetheless afraid of. Musk outlined this as being when a pc “becomes as smart as any human, arguably smarter than any human.” (Large language fashions should not the identical as intelligence, and AGI has been outlined downward for fairly a while. But no matter! This case isn’t about that!)
At one other level, Musk was requested to clarify who former OpenAI board member Shivon Zilis was. “Shivon was the, um, my chief of staff and, uh, you know,” Musk mentioned. One individual within the gallery — presumably conversant in the truth that Zilis is the mom of some of Musk’s children — burst out in loud laughter. But the jury appeared puzzled.
During discussions of how greatest to get OpenAI the huge quantities of funding it could want for compute, there was certainly dialogue of a for-profit arm of OpenAI with Musk. The technique right here, I believe, was to clarify that Musk’s intentions have been very completely different than the for-profit that got here to move. (That’s true! He didn’t get 55 % fairness in it, as one attainable cap desk prompt he ought to.) This all appeared fairly mushy, and we received slowed down in a dialogue of what, in Musk’s opinion, an affordable fairness cut up between founders and funders could be; it’s onerous to preempt the argument you expect with out making it your self.
This can also be sort of a distraction from the core level of the trial: Did OpenAI betray its mission assertion and idiot Musk into making a charitable donation? I agreed to a for-profit mannequin however not THAT for-profit mannequin isn’t a powerful argument.
We’ll be again with more Musk testimony and presumably his cross-examination. If there’s a clearer story from the protection, this trial is successfully throughout however the shouting. I’ve seen a powerful efficiency from Musk on the stand earlier than. Today he simply didn’t appear dialed in. Maybe he’s grumpy about this trial as a result of he is aware of he’s losing his personal time.