The strongest witness to Elon Musk’s case against OpenAI so far is Greg Brockman’s journal. Brockman himself is running in second place.
Brockman was called to the stand in a somewhat unusual manner – he was cross-examined first, followed by direct questioning – and he had some serious energy in his high school debate club. There were a lot of “I wouldn’t put it that way,” and “I wouldn’t say it that way,” and “This looks like something I wrote. Can I see it in context?” When Musk’s lawyer, Stephen Mollo, read some of the evidence out loud, Brockman would pedantically correct him if he skipped a single word, even if it was an “a” or “the” word. When asked if Microsoft’s $10 billion investment was OpenAI’s biggest financial milestone, Brockman responded that it was the only $10 billion investment. Come on.
I’ve said before that if you can define the word “epistemology,” you shouldn’t testify in your own defense. So the attorney skipped a word – is it really worth taking the jury’s time to tell us all that? Keep being the smartest boy in the world for your parents.
“That would be morally bankrupt.”
That would be bad enough. But the journal entries – a series of text files from his computer – were worse, because they were so clear about Brockman’s greed and opportunism at least around 2017. Here’s one of them: “BTW another realization from this is that it would be a mistake to steal the nonprofit from him. And to turn into a B Corporation without him. That would be morally bankrupt and he’s really not that stupid.” Here’s another example: “Maybe we should go for profit. Making money sounds great to us.” There’s also this: “I can’t say we’re committed to the nonprofit. I don’t want to say we’re committed. If we’re doing a second one in three months, that’s a lie.”
I noticed that the phrase “it would be a mistake to steal the nonprofit from him” is very close to the phrase “steal a charity” that Musk uses.
We’re not done with the live examination yet, so I’m sure we’ll hear something exculpatory about the events that inspired these entries. But between Brockman’s attitude toward the cross and the diary entries, I don’t think I trust him to watch my purse while I use the bathroom.
Musk’s team is trying to paint Brockman as greedy, which I buy. The famous question “What will get me to a billion dollars?” Appeared from Brockman Magazine. We have established that Brockman’s stake in for-profit company OpenAI is worth approximately $30 billion. Molo asked Brockman why he wouldn’t donate $29 billion to OpenAI’s nonprofit arm if $1 billion was enough for him.
“Why are we fighting over the damned purple box?”
Brockman could have said something like: “If I got rid of all my holdings at once, OpenAI 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 get in the game.” Or maybe, “This is just my net worth on paper. It’s not real.”
He didn’t do any of this. Brockman responded with all the bullshit about the value of the nonprofit’s stake in the for-profit. Molo said that did not answer his question and asked again. We went back and forth on this for a while; The jury’s heads snapped back and forth as if they were watching a tennis match. Brockman never answered the question.
There was no detail too small to argue over. Molo asked if purple boxes were something OpenAI generally uses to draw attention to something important, and Brockman said no. Then we all read in the document that OpenAI generally uses it in employee and investor papers to highlight important things. I wrote in my notes: “Why are we fighting over the damned purple box?”
Molo struck another big blow by bringing up the various deals OpenAI had with companies in which Brockman had a stake: Cerebras, CoreWeave, Stripe, and Helion Energy. Given the sheer number of companies using Stripe, its OpenAI deal seems trivial – but the OpenAI commitments are very important to both Cerebras and CoreWeave.
“I do all the things.”
Brockman also has a direct financial relationship with Altman due to the compensation package he was offered when they started OpenAI. He owns a 1% stake in the Altman Family Office, which Brockman acquired in lieu of Y Combinator stock because he “ran out of Y Combinator stock for other needs.” [employees’] Offers.” In a 2017 email, Musk’s assistant, Jared Birchall, wrote to Musk that Altman had disclosed this to him, and Musk forwarded the email from Musk to Brockman with a “??” Musk clearly wasn’t aware of the deal, and Brockman had to explain it.
I’m talking about the different ways Brockman makes himself untrustworthy because it’s fun to watch powerful men get confused. But it also colored my view of his direct testimony, which began afterward. Brockman began by telling the story of OpenAI’s founding that seemed like it had been polished for thousands of podcasts and keynotes. When asked what he did as head of OpenAI, he replied: “I do all the things.” If we weren’t in the courtroom, I would have screamed. Millennial vocabulary is a fucking tragedy.
In this novel, OpenAI was Brockman and Sam Altman’s idea. Brockman had told Altman about his interest in AI while leaving Stripe (“I’m thinking about doing something with AI,” Altman apparently told him. “I’m thinking about doing something with AI too.”). They kept in touch. The original idea was supposed to have a research arm affiliated with Y Combinator, which Musk dropped because he didn’t want to be affiliated with Y Combinator.
Musk seemed “very consistent and proven” to Hassabis
Imagine a montage of relaxed dinners, trips to Napa (“our truck was stuck in traffic for an hour and a half and no one noticed” because the conversation was so good), and AI conferences. Gee sizzling! It was so elegant! Everyone got on so well and had great creative energy! We enjoyed a very long account of Ilya Sutskever’s talk about leaving Google, and then a photo Brockman took of the first day of OpenAI, with everyone working from his apartment. (Pictured: Altman. Missing: Musk.) I think you get what I mean; I’ve definitely got Brockman. This was Altman and Brockman’s baby. Only after Musk completed his closing calls with the team did Altman and Brockman meet and Musk told them he wanted to get more involved.
Musk appeared in testimony as a distant and at times menacing figure. At one dinner party, he asked if Dennis Hassabis, the head of Google, was evil. In fact, Musk seemed “very consistent and fixated” on Hassabis, never mentioning Larry Page, who, according to Musk, was the reason behind OpenAI. In text messages from Sutskever to Brockman, Sutskever wrote, “Elon might spend half a day a week with us. I imagined what that would be like and feared our work environment would become too stressful.”
Sutskever was right to be concerned. Musk is notoriously difficult. I imagine we’ll hear more about that tomorrow. But as it stands so far, the jury will have to decide which of the two particularly untrustworthy men to trust more. I do not envy them this task.
