Elon Musk is trying to outlawyer the lawyer on cross. At one point YGR has to intervene to get him to answer a yes-or-no question with “yes.” At another, he raised his voice to lecture Savitt — not sure if the jury noticed the, uh, well, it wasn’t quite yelling but it came pretty close.
Savitt asks Musk about a term sheet for OpenAI’s for-profit shift, which Sam Altman sent Musk to examine in 2018, and Musk admits “I didn’t read the whole document.” (It’s apparently four pages long.) The attorney then brings up a deposition in which Musk says multiple times that he doesn’t think he read it or looked closely at it. Musk gets testy and raises his voice as he’s asked to identify any communications where he objects to the proposed changes in 2018 or 2019. He repeats, once more, that he’s okay with a nonprofit having a capped for-profit arm — which Savitt says isn’t his question.
Through several more rounds of crosstalk, Savitt tries to ask Musk if he was open to OpenAI being for-profit in 2017 and had discussions about it. “I’ll withdraw the question,” he says finally.
Users can now generate and download files directly in Gemini without needing work-arounds like telling it to export to Google Docs first. Google says the feature is available to all Gemini users and is ready to create files in Workspace apps (Drive / Docs / Sheets) or “.pdf, .docx, .xlsx, .csv, LaTeX, Plain Text (TXT), Rich Text Format (RTF) and Markdown (MD).”
According to messages between Musk and Zilis, Musk thought OpenAI stood essentially zero chance of succeeding against Google DeepMind, particularly if he focused on AI at Tesla. Zilis remained close with OpenAI and apparently offered Musk updates, including on its for-profit plans. Savitt mentions, again, that Musk didn’t object to information about this for-profit shift at the time — and again, Musk says he didn’t have an issue with a capped for-profit structure that would flow into a nonprofit.
The group is accused of using stolen cookies to hijack accounts, targeting profiles with high amounts of in-game currency and items, according to a press release spotted by Bleeping Computer. The hackers allegedly earned around $225,000 after selling the accounts on a Russian website.
[BleepingComputer]
He calls it one of several companies working toward the goal and likely not the one that will win the race. Savitt goes back to Tesla briefly, noting that Musk apparently hoped to build it into an AI powerhouse at one point. He displays an email Musk sent to Gabe Newell about OpenAI, saying he “lost confidence” that OpenAI would serve as an effective counterweight to Google DeepMind and decided to attempt that through Tesla instead.
After a quick breather, Musk is on the stand again — now the topic is SpaceX, which xAI has been rolled into. The company is preparing for an IPO later this year. Musk says he can’t answer questions about SpaceX because of this.
Altman’s lawyer mentions Musk building an “AI-enabled robot army” while talking about the proposal to merge Tesla and OpenAI. Musk jumps in, saying he wants to make clear that while he has in fact referred to running a “robot army” at the company, he did not mean the term “robot army” in a “military sense.” Glad we’ve cleared that up.
Musk is not terribly happy with Savitt, who continues to run through the history of entanglements between Musk’s own companies and OpenAI. After telling Musk that “I’m trying to put the questions as fairly as I can, I’m doing my best” (“That is not true,” Musk responds), Savitt brings up a deposition where Musk said he’d discussed a merger between Tesla and OpenAI. In email exhibits, Karpathy (who’d been hired away to Tesla by then) suggests OpenAI is burning cash and its funding structure won’t let it compete with Google, saying the best path forward might be “a for profit pivot” and attaching itself to Tesla. Any other big tech player, Karpathy said, could suffer from “incompatible company DNA.”
Enrique Lores, who took over as PayPal CEO in March, is putting Venmo into a standalone segment within the company, “making it easier to track its progress or potentially sell the business to another company,” according to a report from CNBC. As part of the change, PayPal reportedly aims to hire a banking executive to head up the new Venmo unit.
Musk previously mentioned that he hired researcher Andrej Karpathy at Tesla when he left OpenAI. Savitt asks whether, as a member of the OpenAI board at the time, he had a responsibility to suggest Karpathy stay at OpenAI and avoid poaching. “I think people should have a right to work where they want to work,“ Musk responds. A 2017 email suggests Musk knew how important Karpathy was:
“Just talked to Andrej and he accepted joining as director of Tesla Vision…. Andrej is arguably the #2 guy in the world in computer vision after Ilya. The OpenAI guys are gonna want to kill me but it had to be done.”
Musk also apparently authorized another company he owned to hire from OpenAI while on its board, telling people at Neuralink that “I have no problem if you pitch people at OpenAI to work at Neuralink.” Musk protests the characterization. “He is misstating my email, I’m simply saying if they want to try to recruit people from OpenAI or any other company including Tesla or SpaceX,” they can do so, Musk says. “It’s a free country.”
Musk quibbles his way through a line of questioning from Savitt, who asks if he was aware that cutting off most funding to OpenAI in 2017 would create financial pressure as OpenAI sought to get more compute. Musk repeats multiple times that he was losing faith in OpenAI, he was concerned they were going in the wrong direction, and that’s why he ended his donations. Savitt and Musk then spar over how much “sweat equity” Musk accrued at OpenAI — Savitt notes, for instance, he didn’t write the code for a consequential project where OpenAI’s bots learned to beat humans at Dota 2. Musk retorts that he called Satya Nadella to get compute for the project and suggested focusing on it. “I got along with almost everyone almost all the time,” he adds.
Their new Next Wave Fund will reward select entrepreneurs and small businesses (with fewer than 20 full-time employees) with a $10,000 pledge towards a crowdfunded technology or digital gaming-focused project. Recipients will also receive guidance from Kickstarter, training from Google, and “opportunities for marketing exposure and promotion.”
Savitt is asking Musk about the equity discussions — the ones where Musk wanted initial control of OpenAI. Musk acknowledges his plan would have given him unilateral decision-making power at first but says that’s “standard practice.” He reiterates that it would have changed quickly as more investors joined up and insisted on board seats; over time, he says, he’d have had to relinquish control.
