The third day of testimony in Elon Musk’s lawsuit against Sam Altman saw intense courtroom drama, and it seemed like Judge Gonzalez Rogers had had enough of Musk’s nightmare that A.I. could eventually destroy humanity. Before Musk returned to the witness stand for a third day, the judge told Musk’s lawyer that she did not want to talk of A.I.’s existential threat to humanity. But when Musk’s lawyer, Steven Molo, argued with OpenAI’s lawyer over the issue, the judge cut in, saying they should stop arguing about unimportant things.
“I suspect that there are a number of people who do not want to put the future of humanity in Mr. Musk’s hands,” the judge said. “But we’re not going to get into that. We just are not going to have this whole thing explode for the world to view it.”
The judge is not alone in expressing an adverse opinion about Musk. During the first day of the trial, jurors appeared to have already formed opinions about Musk, and they were not positive. According to The Verge, some jurors described him as “a greedy, racist, homophobic piece of garbage,” while others called him a “world-class jerk.”
Judge remarks could be a big blow to Musk, as from day one of the testimony, Musk and his lawyer have maintained that humanity faces an existential threat from AI and that they are trying to protect it from what OpenAI could create. While testifying on the second day of the trial, the Tesla and SpaceX chief said the technology is moving quickly and warned the world to be careful about where it leads. “It could kill us all,” Musk told the court while speaking about advanced AI systems.
Later in the day, OpenAI’s lead counsel, William Savitt, cross-examined Musk with a strategy to discredit him. He played a video of Musk’s pre-trial deposition, which contradicted what Musk said in court yesterday. Last year, Musk said he had not read a key OpenAI document. But on Thursday, he acknowledged that he had read at least part of the document.
Savitt spent a lot of time going back and forth between what Musk said on the stand and what he said in the deposition, and Musk’s annoyance rose with each subsequent answer. The courtroom also saw a heated exchange between Musk and Savitt the previous day. On Wednesday, Musk accused the lawyer of asking tricky questions and argued that yes-or-no questions are not always simple. He said, “The classic answer to a yes-or-no question is not so simple. For example, if you ask, ‘Will you stop beating your wife?’”
Savitt also touched upon whether Musk had ever directed the algorithm that controls X, his social media platform, to promote his own account. Musk said he had not. It was part of a strategy to discredit him.
While answering questions from OpenAI counsel, Elon Musk seemed to indicate that his AI lab may have used OpenAI’s models to train xAI’s own.
Savitt asked Musk, “Has xAI done that [distillation] with OpenAI?” Musk replied, “Generally all the AI companies [do that].”
Distillation is when a smaller AI model learns to copy a larger, more powerful one, so it can run faster and cost less while still performing well.
Russell Cohen, the lead lawyer for Microsoft, which was also named in Musk’s suit, asked questions along similar lines, with Microsoft’s counsel trying to demonstrate that Musk sued only after the stakes in the AI race escalated.
Once Musk wrapped up his testimony after roughly two hours of questioning on Thursday, his attorneys called Jared Birchall, who manages Musk’s billions at his family office, as their next witness.
Birchall testified about his knowledge of Musk’s specific donations to OpenAI.
In the trial, which is expected to last a month in federal court in Oakland, California, Musk has accused OpenAI and its co-founders of breaching the lab’s founding contract when it started to take on major investments from Microsoft and build commercial products.
Elon Musk is asking for $150 billion and an order forcing OpenAI to unwind a move it made to become a for-profit company last year. Musk is also asking for Altman’s removal from the company’s board of directors.
Source: India Today