Elon Musk appeared more petty than prepared

Today the first witness was sworn in in Musk v. Altman: Elon Musk. I was surprised by how flat he seemed. This is not the first time I’ve seen Musk in court. During his defamation suit, he turned on the charm and the jury responded by finding him not guilty. Today he looked adrift and unprepared. The only times he showed real animation were when he was bragging about how much he’d done for OpenAI . The direct examination is a way of telling a story through questions; it’s important to make the narrative clear. For a suit that accuses Sam Altman of straying from OpenAI’s mission, Musk spent a weird amount of time talking about himself, recounting his biography, and hyping up the various ventures he’s undertaken that have nothing to do with OpenAI. “I came up with the idea, the name, recruited the key people. taught them everything I know, provided all the initial funding. Besides that, nothing.” For instance, he told jurors that he worked between “80 to 100 hours a week,” which was how he got so much done. It is unclear to me whether his prolific posting habits count as part of the workweek. I hope the defense asks. We did eventually get around to OpenAI, where Musk portrayed himself as the driving force. He’d been worried about AI since childhood, and who had finally felt that someone needed to prevent Google from developing it. …