Open AI’s president does ‘all the things,’ except answer a question | The Verge
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Open AI’s president does ‘all the things,’ except answer a question
No detail was too small to argue over for Greg Brockman.
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Open AI’s president does ‘all the things,’ except answer a question
No detail was too small to argue over for Greg Brockman.
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The strongest witness for Elon Musk’s case against Open AI so far has been Greg Brockman’s journal. Brockman himself is running as a close second.
Brockman was called to the stand in a rather unusual way — he was cross-examined first, followed by a direct examination — and he had some serious high school debate club energy. There was a lot of “I wouldn’t characterize it that way,” “I wouldn’t say it that way,” and “That sounds like something I wrote. Can I see it in context?” When Musk’s attorney, Steven Molo, read some of the evidence aloud, Brockman would pedantically correct him if he skipped a word, even if that word was “a” or “the.” When asked if Microsoft’s
I have previously said that if you can define the word “epistemology,” you should not testify in your own defense. So the lawyer skipped a word — is it really worth taking up the jury’s time to tell us all that? Save being the world’s cleverest boy for your parents.
This would have been bad enough. But the journal entries — a series of text files from his computer — were worse, because they were very clear about Brockman’s greed and opportunism at least circa 2017. Here’s one: “btw another realization from this is that it’d be wrong to steal the non-profit from him. to convert to a b-corp without him. that’d be pretty morally bankrupt and he’s really not an idiot.” Here’s another: “maybe we should just flip to a for-profit. making money for us sounds great and all.” There’s also this: “cannot say we are committed to the non-profit. don’t wanna say we’re committed. if three months later we’re doing a b-corp it is a lie.”
“It’d be wrong to steal the non-profit from him” is very close to Musk’s “steal a charity” line, I notice.
We haven’t finished the direct examination yet, so I’m sure we’ll be hearing something exculpatory about the events that inspired these entries. But between Brockman’s attitude toward the cross and the journal entries, I don’t think I’d trust him to watch my bag while I used the restroom.
Musk’s team is trying to paint Brockman as being greedy, which I buy. The infamous “What will take me to
“Why are we fighting about the fucking purple box?”
Brockman could have said something like, “If I dumped all my holdings all at once, Open AI would receive a lot less than $39 billion, because that’s how supply and demand works.” He might have said something like, “It’s an important signal to other investors for me to have skin in the game.” Or maybe, “That’s just my net worth on paper. It’s not real.”
He didn’t do any of this. Brockman replied with nonsense about how much the non-profit’s stake in the for-profit was worth. Molo said that didn’t answer his question and asked again. We went back and forth on this for quite some time; the jury’s heads snapped to and fro as though they were watching a tennis match. Brockman never did answer the question.
No detail was too small to argue over. Molo asked if purple boxes were something Open AI generally used to call attention to something important, and Brockman said no. Then we all read in the document that Open AI generally used them in employee and investor paperwork to highlight important things. In my notes I have written, “Why are we fighting about the fucking purple box?”
Molo landed another major blow by bringing up the various deals that Open AI had with companies Brockman had a stake in: Cerebras, Core Weave, Stripe, and Helion Energy. Given the sheer number of companies that use Stripe, its Open AI deal seems piddling — but the Open AI commitments seriously matter to both Cerebras and Core Weave.
Brockman also has direct financial ties to Altman because of a compensation package he was offered when they started Open AI. He holds a 1 percent stake in Altman’s family office, which Brockman got in lieu of Y Combinator stock because “we ran out of Y Combinator stock fulfilling other [employees’] offers.” In a 2017 email, Musk’s bodyman, Jared Birchall, writes to Musk that Altman disclosed that to him, and Musk forwards the Birchall email to Brockman with a “??” Apparently Musk didn’t know about the deal, and Brockman had to explain it.
I am dwelling on the various ways that Brockman made himself untrustworthy because it’s fun to watch powerful men squirm. But it also has colored my view of his direct testimony, which started afterwards. Brockman began by telling a story of Open AI’s founding that sounded like it had been polished for a thousand podcasts and keynote speeches. When asked what he did as the president of Open AI, he replied, “I do all the things.” If we had not been in a courtroom, I would have screamed. Millennial vocabulary is a fucking tragedy.
In this telling, Open AI was Brockman and Sam Altman’s idea. Brockman had told Altman about his interest in AI as he was leaving Stripe (“I’m thinking about doing an AI thing,” to which Altman apparently said, “I’m also thinking about doing an AI thing.”). They kept in touch. The original idea was purportedly to have a Y Combinator research arm, which Musk shot down because he didn’t want to be affiliated with Y Combinator.
Musk seemed “very consistent and fixated” on Hassabis
Imagine a montage of cozy dinners, trips to Napa (“our van got stalled for an hour and a half in traffic and no one noticed” because the conversation was so good), AI conferences. Gee whiz! It was so neat-o! Everyone got along so well and had such great creative energy! We were treated to a very long retelling of Ilya Sutskever waffling about leaving Google, and then a photo Brockman took of the first day of Open AI, with everyone working from his apartment. (In the photo: Altman. Missing: Musk.) I think you get my drift; I certainly got Brockman’s. This was Altman’s and Brockman’s baby. It was only after Musk had done closing calls with the team that Altman and Brockman had assembled that Musk told them he wanted to be more involved.
Musk appeared in the testimony as a distant and at times menacing figure. At one dinner, he asked if Google’s Denis Hassabis was evil. In fact, Musk seemed “very consistent and fixated” on Hassabis, and never so much as mentioned Larry Page, who in Musk’s telling was the reason Open AI came to be. In text messages from Sutskever to Brockman, Sutskever wrote, “Elon might spend half a day a week with us. I imagined how it will be and I worry that our work environment can become very stressful.”
Sutskever was correct to worry; Musk is famously difficult. I imagine we will hear more about that tomorrow. But as it stands so far, the jury will have to decide who of two not-especially-trustworthy men it trusts more. I don’t envy them the task.
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