Lawyers for Elon Musk and OpenAI made their closing arguments this week, and now it’s up to jurors to decide whether OpenAI did anything wrong as it was turned into a less profitable organization.
But as Kirsten Korosec, Sean O’Kane, and I noted in a recent episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, a big theme in the final days of the trial is whether OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is honest – for example, Musk’s lawyer Steve Molo told Altman whether the statements he made during the conference were true evidence.
Kirsten noted that Musk has made a number of misleading statements, and that trust isn’t just Altman’s problem.
“This is an important question [for] more technical journalists, policy makers, and more and more consumers, about all AI labs,” he said.
Read on for a preview of our interview, edited for length and clarity.
Anthony Ha: [The end of the trial] led to this truly provocative article from one of our writers, Tim Fernholz, [that] just say, “Who trusts Sam Altman?” Does anyone want to take a stab at answering this?
Kirsten Korosec: Yes, Anthony, I’ll take it right back to you. Do you trust Sam Altman?
Anthony: It’s an interesting question because it sounds like something of a wild question to discuss in journalism, but that’s really the point of the trial, in many ways.
Sean O’Kane: That’s not a yes.
Anthony: And it actually seems like it [at the] the core of much of the understanding that has taken place at OpenAI, especially this great power struggle they now call the Blip.
It seems that many people who have worked with Altman do not trust him. And he admitted this a little bit, because he’s going to talk about the fact that he realizes that he’s been inconsistent, he’s telling people what they want to hear, and he’s trying to work on that.
I mean it makes sense, and I understand how that can lead to misunderstandings in some cases. [But] And I’m a non-confrontational person and I’d like to think that if any of these things were brought to trial, people wouldn’t be asking, “Is Anthony Ha honest?”
Sean: Anyway not yes!
Kirsten: I think people can say that you are honest. I will say that question, while provocative, doesn’t quite sum up what this study was about. I would push back further and say this is an important question [for] many technical journalists, policy makers, and more and more consumers, about all AI labs. It’s really lost trust, because we don’t have an understanding, really – these are private companies, there’s a lot behind the scenes.
Maybe if they all IPO, we can get a look, but it’s about trust and abuse, and do we believe the intention? And what I can throw back is that, sometimes the intention can be right, good, and still misused. It can still end up being a bit of a show. I think it’s more than who trusts Sam Altman – although that was very interesting in this study – but more than that big question that we can apply to the whole field.
Sean: I will say: I don’t trust him. But you know, I don’t trust a lot of people, so I think that’s just the basics.
We’ll see where this goes. The case is wrapping up today. I was curious to hear how the judge decided all of this. I think that at the beginning of this, the main instigator of this was Elon Musk trying to throw mud, at a perceived rival and someone he felt he despised. And I don’t know if we know enough to say that that’s completely accomplished, and whether you have a chance to win. But I think all these people came out of this looking really bad.
Anthony: And just to clarify, why this is coming this week is that [Altman] he was on the stand and was entertained by some statements he had made in the past, as evidence [Congress]essentially saying he had no equity in OpenAI. And that’s not true because he had a stake in Y Combinator, which he ran. And I tried to ignore that by saying, “I think everyone understands what it means to be a passive investor in a VC fund.” And I think [Elon Musk’s] the lawyer, somehow, said “Really? You think the congressman you were talking to knew that?”
Kirsten: Yes, I mean, he was playing the whole game of semantics. What I thought was very interesting about it [this] the style of how Sam Altman answered the questions [compared to] Elon Musk on the stand.
So Elon Musk, in many, many, many and many cases, we can point out that he put something on Twitter that was a lie or a little fib, and on the stand he set the record straight. So there is a history of, I would say, dishonesty-lying, openly or otherwise, in Elon Musk’s world, but the way he handled it was incredibly controversial and very different from Altman who really took this on. [attitude of]”I’m working on it,” and he tried to come off as a liberal and I don’t know if it’s going to work for him.
Because it comes down to basic facts, and hopefully that’s what the judge is paying attention to. But I thought that was really interesting – both the inauthenticity, but the way they dealt with it was very different.
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