Sam · The Verge
It’s dangerous to tell a courtroom “I don’t lose my temper
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It’s dangerous to tell a courtroom “I don’t lose my temper.” About five hours into Elon Musk’s testimony, the reporter typed the following sentence into their notes: “I have never been more sympathetic to Sam Altman in my life.”
Key facts
- In direct testimony, he painted himself as a trusting “fool” who had believed the wily promises of Sam Altman and his cohort: “The reporter gave them $38 million of free funding, which they used to create
- When Musk didn’t get what he wanted, he pulled the plug on his funding commitment and hired Andrej Karpathy, OpenAI’s second-best engineer, to Tesla in 2017
- By 2018, Musk was saying that OpenAI had no path forward with its current structure, declaring it was on “a path of certain failure” in emails to Ilya Sutskever and Greg Brockman
- Though Musk said that the eventual plan was to expand to 12 seats, it was obvious that Musk had full control on the initial board of seven
Summary
About five hours into Elon Musk’s testimony, the reporter typed the following sentence into their notes: “I have never been more sympathetic to Sam Altman in my life.” Musk’s direct testimony was an improvement over yesterday — even if his lawyer kept asking leading questions to cue him in how to answer. For hours, Musk refused to answer yes or no questions with yes or no, occasionally “forgot” things he’d testified to in the morning, and scolded defense lawyer William Savitt. Even the judge, who at times prompted Musk to answer “yes” or “no,” was having a bad time. “I don’t yell at people,” Musk said. Musk spent a lot of yesterday painting this heroic picture of himself, and this morning, near the end of his direct examination, said, “I don’t lose my temper,” and “The reporter doesn't yell at people.