Latest / Black Box Theory Podcast / BBT #16 Snippet | Musk vs. OpenAI
Transcript
- Malcolm: I don't know if you've been following ⁓ the Musk Elon versus OpenAI, that entire kind of like lawsuit, trial situation. ⁓ Thomas: Yeah, a little bit, a little bit. Malcolm: It's somewhat mind you, this guy's already about to be the world's first trillionaire and he still so I just kind of sum some things up for folks that may not be familiar. This is Elon Musk versus ⁓ OpenAI. They're in a trial right now. ⁓ And so they've they've they they they're in federal court in Oakland, California right now. ⁓ And so what Elon is asking for is asking for up to one hundred thirty four billion dollars in damages from OpenAI and Microsoft, which is lawyers called wrongful gains. He wants the removal of Sam Altman and Greg Brockman from their leadership roles at OpenAI, the unwinding of OpenAI's 2025 recapitalization that completed its for-profit conversion, and then reversal of OpenAI's nonprofit to for-profit changes entirely. Elon's argument is that he donated approximately $38 million to OpenAI early on, based on assurances that it would remain a nonprofit dedicated to AI safety for humanity's benefit. We know that's not the case now. ⁓ He claims that Altman and Brockman duped him into funding what became an $850 billion private company, stealing a charity in his words. He argues that OpenAI failed to open source its technology as promised, deprioritized safety, and violated nonprofit customs. And he's basically arguing that everybody at OpenAI that's dumping out these shares, getting millions, they basically enrich themselves at his expense. ⁓ And OpenAI's counter argument. Thomas: So. Malcolm: is that they never made explicit commitments to Elon about keeping the nonprofit structure permanent. They argued that Musk's donations were spent properly and that Musk only filed the lawsuit after he launched his own competing AI company, XAI, implying the lawsuit is competitive sabotage, not principled objection. ⁓ An OpenAI attorney told the jury directly, he never cared about the nonprofit structure. What he cared about was winning. Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, he testified. ⁓ that must get pushed for a majority control of OpenAI, including a proposal to merge it with Tesla and make himself the CEO and the OpenAI board declined. Mind you, this guy is already the wealthiest, the richest guy on the planet by a wide margin once again. And he is going to war about, and mean, will, I'd be sick too if something that I invested in turned into the largest AI company in the world. I mean, And I'm not getting the dime or whatever, however it is working out for him, but I'll be sick too. But it gets to a point, bro. When does your greed stop? Thomas: He got to have some shares too. Like it's got to be profitable for him somehow. That $38 million investment didn't just disappear. Malcolm: I'm gonna say it's no way he didn't get a dime back, bro. Thomas: And I don't know if you saw the messages, but someone showed me the Reddit that had all the texts that were exposed in court because they had to bring in all these documents. It was messages between Sam Altman and some people, like his, I guess, C-suite level people, because the board was trying to kick him off. And he was talking about, he was calling out to other CEOs names, like, hey, did you guys talk to them? Let me talk to this person. He was saying, what does the board think? They text literally. just like an average person. And I think people, it needs to be demystified, like how people think CEOs and all these people are like not human. Like they're literally human just like us. They just operate at a different level. They're literally just like you and me, except they just have more money and more stakes ⁓ at play. So like if we do a bad job, we get fired. Like a part of a company might struggle, but they'll be back on their feet soon. They do a bad job, company might go under. You know what saying? Malcolm: Yeah. Yeah.