OpenAI’s president does ‘all the things,’ except answer a question

The strongest witness for Elon Musk’s case against OpenAI 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 $10 billion investment was the biggest financial event at OpenAI, Brockman replied it was the only $10 billion investment. Come on . 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. “that’d be pretty morally bankrupt.” 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. …