Increasingly I feel that the only thing happening here is Musk just trying to remind the world that Altman is untrustworthy. (Ironic!) McCauley’s testimony about the profit incentives is neither here nor there when it comes to the donations and whether any promises were made to Musk.
We are once again going over concerns about Sam Altman’s dishonesty. “Because of this pattern of lying, people in the company were copying that behavior, and there was a culture of lying and a culture of deceit,” she says.
Oh sure, Musk’s team objected and the question was withdrawn, but the OpenAI attorney said what I was thinking. Why is she here? She’s not a board member. She’s not an exec. She didn’t witness any decisions that bear on Musk’s donations. I guess the idea is that she’s testifying that OpenAI abandoned its mission? But we’ve established already that there were no known conditions on Musk’s donation yesterday, with Shivon Zilis.
Look, I’m not bought in on AGI at all, and the “AGI readiness” team getting disbanded in 2024 happened as it became clearer to everyone but the AI cultists that AGI wasn’t possible. (It was clear to some of us from the jump.) I have no idea how this is landing for the jury, but getting safe, beneficial AGI is silly if AI superintelligence isn’t possible.
She initially worked on the “applied” team, but then moved into a research team because it was “more interesting” to work on the “policy” and “AGI readiness” teams, and think about what to do in the case AGI happened. I also prefer daydreaming to actually working.
They also discussed Dario Amodei becoming CEO of OpenAI. “I thought it was an option worth considering among our set of difficult options,” Toner says.
Neither Altman or Brockman had been allowed to tell their side of the story, nor were their HR files pulled by the board. There was no input from Microsoft, or any other investors or customers. Toner smiles when she’s frustrated or annoyed, which she sometimes is by this line of questioning.
I am expecting a relatively sedate day today. We’re going to see more of former OpenAI board member Helen Toner’s deposition. Right now lawyers are discussing when the case will end; we expect closing arguments a week from today.
It was primarily because Altman was not entirely candid with the board about his interests in an OpenAI startup fund. There was also some drama about Toner’s paper, which Altman told Sutskever that another board member suggested Toner resign from the board. That board member said she’d never said it. Further, Mira Murati and Sutskever also mentioned problems. And, of course, the lack of disclosure of ChatGPT...
