Why trust is a big question at the Elon Musk-OpenAI trial

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I mean, it sounds plausible, and I can understand how that can lead to misunderstandings in some situations. I’m also a very conflict-averse person and I’d like to think that if any of this stuff went to trial, that people would not be asking, “Is Anthony Ha trustworthy?”

Sean: Still not a yes! 

Kirsten: I think that people would say that you are trustworthy. I will say that question, while provocative, doesn’t just encapsulate what this trial was about. I would zoom out even more and say this is a fundamental question a lot of tech journalists, policymakers, and more and more consumers, about all the AI labs. It’s really come down to trust, because we don’t have the insight, necessarily — these are all privately held companies, there’s a lot behind the veil still.

Maybe when they all IPO, we can get a peek, but it is fundamentally about trust and misuse, and do we believe the intent? And what I would throw back is, sometimes the intent can be worthy, noble, and still misused. It can still end up as a bit of a shit show. I think it’s more than who trusts Sam Altman — although that was very interesting in this trial — but more of that bigger question that we can apply to the entire industry. 

Sean: I’ll say it: I don’t trust him. But you know, I don’t trust most people, so I guess that’s just the baseline. 

We’ll see where this goes. The trial wraps up today. I’ve been very curious to hear how the jury decides this all. I think at the start of this, a big motivator of this was Elon Musk trying to sling mud, at a perceived rival and someone who he feels slighted him. And I don’t know if we know enough yet to say that that was completely accomplished, and whether or not he has a shot at winning. But I think all these people came out of this looking a little bit worse. 

Anthony: And just to get specific, why this is coming up this week is that was on the stand and he was basically getting grilled about some statements he’s made in the past, in testimony to , basically saying he didn’t have any equity in OpenAI. And that is not true because he had a stake through Y Combinator, which he used to run. And tried to brush that off by saying, “I assume that everybody understands what it means to be a passive investor in a VC fund.” And I think lawyer, somewhat fairly, said “Really? You think the congressman who was interviewing you knew that?”

Kirsten: Yeah, I mean, he was playing the whole semantics game. What I thought was so interesting about is the style of how Sam Altman answered questions Elon Musk on the stand. 

So Elon Musk, in many, many, many scenarios and many instances, we can point to the fact that he put something out on Twitter that was a lie or a bit of a fib, and on the stand corrected the record. So there’s a history of, I would say, non-truthfulness-slash-lying, blatant or otherwise, in Elon Musk’s world, but how he treated it was incredibly combative and very different than Altman who really took this , “I’m working on it,” and tried to seem sort of affable and I don’t know if it’ll work for him.

Because it really comes down to the core facts, and hopefully that’s what the jury pays attention to. But I thought that that was really interesting — both being untruthful, but how they dealt with it was very different.

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