Lawyers for Elon Musk and OpenAI will make closing arguments this week, leaving it up to a jury to decide whether OpenAI, which has morphed into a somewhat for-profit organization, did anything wrong.
But as Kirsten Kolosek, Sean O’Kane, and I pointed out on the latest episode of TechCrunch’s Equity Podcast, a big theme in the final days of the trial was whether OpenAI CEO Sam Altman could be trusted—Musk’s lawyer Steve Moro, for example, grilled Altman about whether his statements in Congressional testimony were true.
Kirsten pointed out that Musk himself has made a number of misleading statements, and that trust is not just an issue for Altman.
“This is the fundamental question for many technology journalists, policy makers, and a growing number of consumers about all AI labs,” she said. “It comes down to trust because we don’t necessarily have the insight. These are all private companies and there’s still a lot hidden behind the veil.”
Continue reading for a preview of the conversation, edited for length and clarity.
Anthony Ha: (The conclusion of the trial) led one of the writers, Tim Fernholtz, to a very provocative headline: “Who Trusts Sam Altman?” Anyone want to answer this?
Kirsten Kolosek: Yeah, Anthony, I’ll get right back to you. Do you trust Sam Altman?
Anthony: This is an interesting question. It feels like an outlandish question to discuss in a journalistic context, but it’s actually, in many ways, the heart of the trial.
Sean O’Kane: That’s not a yes.
Anthony: And that actually seems to be at the heart of understanding a lot of what happened at OpenAI, especially this massive executive power struggle that they’re now calling “The Blip.”
Many of the people who worked with Altman don’t seem to trust him. And he kind of acknowledges this. Because he talks about the fact that he hates conflict, and he tells people what they want to hear, and he tries to work on it.
I mean, it sounds plausible, and I can understand that it could be misleading in some situations. (However) I am also a person who strongly dislikes conflict, so I would like to think that even if this case went to court, people would not question, “Can Anthony Ha be trusted?”
Sean: Not yes yet!
Kirsten: I think people would say you’re trustworthy. Although this question is provocative, I will say that it does not simply summarize the content of this trial. I’d like to zoom out further and say that this is a fundamental question for many technology journalists, policy makers, and, increasingly, consumers about all AI labs. We don’t necessarily have the insight, so it comes down to trust. These are all private companies and there is still a lot hidden behind the veil.
Maybe we’ll get a peek when they all IPO. But it’s fundamentally about trust and abuse, and do we believe in the intentions? And my point back is that even though the intentions are worthy and noble, they can sometimes be abused. Still, it could end up being a bit of a crap show. I think more than who should trust Sam Altman, which was very interesting in this trial, is a larger question that applies to the industry as a whole.
Sean: I’m telling you, I don’t trust him. But hey, I don’t trust most people, so I think that’s just the baseline.
Let’s see how this goes. The trial ends today. I was very interested to hear how the jury would decide all of this. I think a big motive in the beginning of this was that Elon Musk wanted to throw mud at someone he thought was a rival or someone he felt was disrespecting him. And I don’t know if there’s enough information yet to say it’s fully accomplished and whether he has a chance of winning. But I think everyone came out of here looking a little bit worse.
Anthony: Specifically, why this story is coming up this week is that (Altman) was on stage and was basically getting slammed about some of the things he’s said in past (congressional) testimony, basically saying he doesn’t have any equity in OpenAI. And that’s not true because he had stock through Y Combinator, which he previously ran. And I tried to counter 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) lawyer said, in some degree of fairness, “Really? Do you think the congressman who was meeting with you knew that?”
Kirsten: Yeah, I mean, he was playing the whole semantics game. What I found very interesting (about this) was the way Sam Altman answered the question on the stand (compared to Elon Musk).
So Elon Musk can point to the fact that in many, many, many scenarios, many instances, he has announced lies or little fabrications on Twitter and then corrected the record on stage. I mean, Elon Musk’s world has a history of untruths, cutting, and lying, overtly and otherwise, but the way he handled it was incredibly combative, very different from Altman, who really took this[attitude]of “I’m working on it” and tried to seem kind of amiable, but I don’t know if that would work for him.
Because it comes down to the core facts, and that’s what I hope the jury will focus on. But I thought that was very interesting. Neither was true, but how they dealt with it was very different.
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