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

Source: TechCrunch

Closing Arguments and Trust in OpenAI

Lawyers for Elon Musk and OpenAI made their closing arguments this week, and now it’s up to jurors to decide whether OpenAI did anything wrong as it’s transformed into a slightly‑more‑for‑profit organization.

As Kirsten Korosec, Sean O’Kane, and I noted on the latest episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, a big theme in the trial’s final days was whether OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is trustworthy — for example, Musk’s attorney Steve Molo grilled Altman about whether statements he’d made during congressional testimony were truthful.

Kirsten pointed out that Musk has made plenty of misleading statements of his own, and that trust isn’t just an issue for Altman.

“This is a fundamental question [for] a lot of tech journalists, policymakers, and more and more consumers, about all the AI labs,” she said. “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.”

Below is a preview of our conversation, edited for length and clarity.

Anthony Ha

Anthony: The end of the trial led to this provocative headline from one of our writers, Tim Fernholz, that just says, “Who trusts Sam Altman?” Does anyone want to take a stab at answering this?

Kirsten Korosec

Kirsten: Yeah, Anthony, I’m going to throw it right back to you. Do you trust Sam Altman?

Anthony Ha

Anthony: It’s an interesting question because it feels like something that’s kind of a wild question to discuss in a journalistic context, but actually that’s the core of the trial, in a lot of ways.

Sean O’Kane

Sean: That’s not a yes.

Anthony Ha

Anthony: And it actually seems to be [at the] core of understanding so much of what’s happened at OpenAI, especially this big executive power struggle that they now call The Blip.

It just seems like a lot of people who’ve worked with Altman don’t trust him. He’s acknowledged this a little bit, because he’ll talk about the fact that he recognizes he’s been conflict‑averse, telling people what they want to hear, and he’s trying to work on that.

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

Sean O’Kane

Sean: Still not a yes!

Kirsten Korosec

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 [for] 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? Sometimes the intent can be worthy, noble, and still misused. It can still end up as a bit of a shit show. It’s more than who trusts Sam Altman — although that was very interesting in this trial — but a bigger question we can apply to the entire industry.

Sean O’Kane

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 was Elon Musk trying to sling mud at a perceived rival who he feels slighted him. I don’t know if we know enough yet to say that was completely accomplished, or whether he has a shot at winning. But I think all these people came out of this looking a little bit worse.

Anthony Ha

Anthony: And just to get specific, why this is coming up this week is that Altman was on the stand and he was basically getting grilled about some statements he’s made in the past, in testimony to Congress, basically saying he didn’t have any equity in OpenAI. That is not true because he had a stake through Y Combinator, which he used to run. He 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 Elon Musk’s lawyer, somewhat fairly, said, “Really? You think the congressman who was interviewing you knew that?”

Kirsten Korousec

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

Elon Musk, in many scenarios, has put something out on Twitter that was a lie or a fib, and on the stand corrected the record. There’s a history of non‑truthfulness‑slash‑lying, blatant or otherwise, in Elon Musk’s world, but his treatment was incredibly combative and very different than Altman, who really took an attitude of “I’m working on it,” trying to seem affable. 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. I thought that was really interesting — both being untruthful, but how they dealt with it was very different.

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