The question is whether Brockman disclosed his ownership of Cerebras when OpenAI was discussing merging with it. Brockman told Teller and Zilis, who were in theory Musk’s chiefs of staff, but not Musk himself. Molo is driving this home, which… I am less convinced by. Lots of executives delegate.
Musk’s team is finally landing some serious blows — namely that part of Brockman’s compensation was a grant from Altman’s family office. Musk’s adviser Jared Birchall wrote, “Greg is going to have a greater allegiance toward Sam as a result of this arrangement.” Brockman told Musk that “We ran out of YC stock fulfilling others’ offers” so Altman arranged the deal.
Molo is saying it’s a “side deal” that Musk wasn’t informed about. Except the email chain plainly says Altman informed Birchall directly, who then emailed Musk. I imagine that will come on direct. Still, the financial conflict of interest is the most undermining information I’ve seen from Musk’s team so far.
At a dinner about AI that Brockman and Altman attended, Musk was late. The first thing Brockman remembers Musk asking is, “Is Demis Hassabis evil?” Hassabis, of course, ran DeepMind.
Colin Angle revealed his latest creation this week: a dog-sized robot ‘Familiar’ designed for human connection, not chores.
It was initially supposed to be part of Y Combinator, as a research arm. Looking at a solicitation email from Brockman to then-CEO of Yahoo Marissa Mayer, Brockman writes that donors include Elon Musk, Jessica Livingston, Reid Hoffman, and Peter Thiel. “I’m personally donating $100,000,” he writes. But he didn’t end up donating that. Brockman is speaking very quickly and very softly, and YGR has just scolded him for it.
Brockman is taking the stand next.
I still don’t really understand how this expert helps Musk’s case, if at all.
We are now going through previous statements that Russell has made about Musk — for instance, Russell says that the “age of abundance” Musk talks about with AI robots will be great for Musk because of his pay package with Tesla. Also that Russell would not recommend that Musk be an AI adviser for President Trump.
The expert has testified in front of the US Senate about the dangers of open-sourcing AI systems. “If we open-source AI systems that are unsafe, we dramatically increase the risks,” Russell says. One of Musk’s contentions is that OpenAI is betraying its mission by not open-sourcing its models. Russell is now saying, in response to cross-examination, that open-sourcing can make it easier to remove safety guardrails that have been put in place. “It requires additional and very stringent safety measures.”
And he thinks posts are still called tweets. (The post is about AI creating so much wealth that “everyone can have a penthouse if they want.”) We’re getting some meandering analysis of AI creating prosperity, but even the judge seems frustrated at this point.
I really have no idea what it adds to Musk’s case. It seems to just be a way of running out the clock — but why bother? Is it just a way of giving OpenAI less time to defend themselves?
It’s very boring. Mainly we are establishing that the expert witness provided no specific opinions on OpenAI’s safety.
Because otherwise, this would be the guy to ask about the nonconsensual undressing and MechaHitler. We are getting slowly to the point, I think — which is that Russell suggests safety concerns would slow AI development. “Each company individually feels it needs to be in this race,” he says. “That means they can’t stop and solve the safety problem, which I think some of their employees would like to do, but the overall company police is preventing them.”
Russell is asked next about risk. He starts with individual risk, including algorithmic discrimination, which he says is “much more widespread” than people expect. He also mentions the possibility of AI systems reinforcing “delusional beliefs” — like, in his example, “Vladimir Putin is an alien.” Then there’s systemic risk — like AI systems taking jobs at a large scale. Russell mentions computer science students having trouble getting work already, and he expects it will accelerate.
As Russell keeps going, the opposition lawyer objects that this is speculative, and Judge Gonzalez Rogers asks to move on — which Musk’s lawyer does by promptly asking again about jobs. Another objection is sustained, and Russell starts talking about people using AI to magnify harm, like cyberattacks. He mentions Mythos, and the opposition lawyer gets it stricken from the record as outside the scope. None of this particularly relates to OpenAI so far — it’s basically a generic overview of AI risks, which Musk has been focusing on as central to the trial, despite some limits from YGR. And we’ve already run through 20 minutes of the 30 allotted for direct testimony.
His name is Stuart Russell, and he’s getting $4,000/hr for his first 40 hours of working with the team (and $1,500/hr after that). Seems like an expensive way for Musk’s lawyers to run out the clock… Because while we are getting some testimony about AI risks, I don’t really understand how this is relevant to the dispute at hand.