At the moment the primary witness was sworn in in Musk v. Altman: Elon Musk. I used to be stunned by how flat he appeared.
This isn’t the primary time I’ve seen Musk in court docket. Throughout his defamation swimsuit, he turned on the appeal and the jury responded by discovering him not responsible. At the moment he regarded adrift and unprepared. The one instances he confirmed actual animation had been when he was bragging about how a lot he’d executed for OpenAI.
The direct examination is a manner of telling a narrative by means of questions; it’s necessary to make the narrative clear. For a swimsuit 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 got here up with the thought, the title, recruited the important thing folks. taught them all the things I do know, offered all of the preliminary funding. Moreover that, nothing.”
As an example, he advised jurors that he labored between “80 to 100 hours every week,” which was how he obtained a lot executed. It’s unclear to me whether or not his prolific posting habits depend as a part of the workweek. I hope the protection asks.
We did finally get round to OpenAI, the place Musk portrayed himself because the driving drive. He’d been anxious about AI since childhood, and who had lastly felt that somebody wanted to stop Google from creating 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 Web page and requested, “What if AI wipes out all of the people?” Web page primarily shrugged — so far as he was involved, so long as the AI didn’t additionally go extinct, issues had been all proper. “I mentioned, ‘That’s insane,’ and he referred to as 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 Web page refused to talk to me ever once more.”
What did Musk do at OpenAI? “I got here up with the thought, the title, recruited the important thing folks. taught them all the things I do know, offered all of the preliminary funding. Moreover that, nothing.” He paused for laughter, and one or two folks obligingly chuckled. However many of the courtroom was silent. I assumed he sounded petulant. “I might have began it as a for-profit and I selected to not,” 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 by means of loads of concepts, together with “synthetic normal intelligence,” an imaginary factor that many AI researchers are nonetheless afraid of. Musk outlined this as being when a pc “turns into as good as any human, arguably smarter than any human.” (Massive language fashions are usually not the identical as intelligence, and AGI has been outlined downward for fairly a while. However no matter! This case shouldn’t be 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 employees and, uh, you realize,” Musk mentioned. One individual within the gallery — presumably acquainted with the truth that Zilis is the mom of some of Musk’s youngsters — burst out in loud laughter. However the jury regarded puzzled.
Throughout discussions of how finest to get OpenAI the huge quantities of funding it might want for compute, there was certainly dialogue of a for-profit arm of OpenAI with Musk. The technique right here, I feel, was to clarify that Musk’s intentions had been very completely different than the for-profit that got here to go. (That’s true! He didn’t get 55 p.c fairness in it, as one doable cap desk prompt he ought to.) This all appeared fairly mushy, and we obtained slowed down in a dialogue of what, in Musk’s opinion, an inexpensive fairness break up between founders and funders can be; it’s onerous to preempt the argument you expect with out making it your self.
That is additionally form 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 extra 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. At the moment he simply didn’t appear dialed in. Possibly he’s grumpy about this trial as a result of he is aware of he’s losing his personal time.
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