We are now looking at assorted legal documents with him. We have determined the board has approved the agreement of 2018, which is the initial formation of the for-profit OpenAI LP. OpenAI Inc. contributed assets and in result got the limited partner interest and “residual interest.” This seems to be mostly about reading stuff into the record.
Molo asked a very narrow question about texts or emails about removing Musk from the board. Then he accused Brockman of making up the explanation after the fact because of the trial. OpenAI’s lawyer pulled out two sentences from the same entry: “real decision is fire Elon” and “We seem converged on the ‘fire Elon’ route.” Pretty good from OpenAI’s lawyers, and very annoying / misleading from Molo.
For instance, yesterday, Brockman gave a long spiel about the setup of OpenAI that only tangentially involved Musk. Altman and Sutskever were portrayed as being in the middle of things. Molo effectively said that and then pointed out that Musk’s money was key. Brockman objected both to the summary, and to the idea that Musk’s money was key. Come on, dude. We aren’t idiots.
It’s not clear to me why Musk’s ultimatum matters? Musk says he won’t continue funding until he gets a firm commitment. Brockman testified he never made that firm commitment, and Musk didn’t resume his quarterly payments. There were clear continuing negotiations about how to raise money, including whether Tesla should get control of OpenAI and whether there should be an ICO after this email. What are we doing? I am at this point genuinely lost.
We have been talking about whether or not Greg Brockman made an initial investment into the for-profit. If we all agree that the for-profit has a different investment base than the nonprofit, I don’t get what the conflict here is? The nonprofit is effectively an investor in the for-profit, though the investment was in kind. The nonprofit still exists. Right now I am trying to figure out whether I find Brockman or Musk more reliable, and I think the answer is, it’s going to depend on who is most supported by other witnesses and documents.
The problem is that the chronology of Brockman’s negotiations with Musk is now working against him. We have multiple emails and texts with Musk proposing that he be in charge, followed by Musk withholding funding unless Brockman and Ilya Sutskever did what he wanted. Brockman might be motivated by profit — I certainly think so! — but Musk’s actions are what they are: high-pressure negotiating tactics that failed. It seems to me that Musk’s lack of involvement with OpenAI’s for-profit is self-inflicted.
“Did you practice them?” Molo is really not into the various ways that Brockman is objecting to the wording of his questions. I’m not sure how sympathetic the jury is to either of them. They seem pretty stone-faced.
Brockman is being really squishy about this — I mean, he did say that he thought Musk was going to hit him at one point. Molo is I think trying to make the point that Musk was being “hardheaded” in negotiations. He’s also saying that Brockman wasn’t familiar with corporate governance. And he is, notably, raising his voice at Brockman.
Greg the Bard, who told long-winded stories about how wonderful OpenAI is, is gone. “False assumption baked into the question” is the go-to currently.
Musk’s lawyer, Molo, is saying that first of all, Brockman actually did the layoffs, and second of all, a memo prepared by Ilya Sutskever contained criticism of Brockman as a manager. Shortly after the memo was prepared, Brockman was removed from the board.