Even AI Can’t Call Musk v Altman Trial

Letter to Ephesians: AI is supposed to enlighten the world but nothing could be more blinding than the “Messy Courtroom Drama Over AI’s Biggest Breakup” twixt Musk & Altman et al. And how ironic the jury’s verdict will likely turn on “flip of the coin” evidence …

As the case was wrapping up & going to a jury for resolution, the WSJ’s coverage focused on how “The legal showdown between Elon Musk & Sam Altman revealed the personal & financial fault lines beneath Silicon Valley’s defining boom.” That summation is about as clear as mud as well as the MOUNTAIN of testimony & evidence presented over a titanic 3-week exercise in howling at the moon. On the last day of testimony, e.g., the paper notes how one of the last key questions to be addressed was: “Should a trophy of a golden donkey’s backside be entered into evidence?” After hearing much of the earlier back and forth between the parties & their witnesses, including from a parade of billionaires, the mouthpieces for both sides could be forgiven for muttering under their breath, “Why not?”

Lost in all this legalistic bantering, however, was a relatively simple fraud case: Did the world’s richest man, Musk, get “snookered” into fronting Altman’s OpenAI millions of dollars as a struggling nonprofit, “only to see it [disingenuously] morph into the world’s most powerful [for profit] AI company.” OpenAI’s defense insisted Musk had been in “favor” of converting what had been a nonprofit experiment for the benefit of mankind … until it was no longer to his advantage too. Yet, Musk may have best hit the nail on the head in suggesting that impossible to prove or disprove defense theory by boiling his accusation down to one sentence on the stand: “It’s not OK to steal a charity.” Jurors? What say ye?

Davd Soul