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Elon Musk finally shared an opinion that a lot of people can agree on: Microsoft should not control the future of AI.
Trouble is, Musk doesn’t seem to understand who should.
For context: Musk sued OpenAI and its executives over what may seem like a minor distinction — OpenAI’s shift from primarily being a nonprofit “lab” to a for-profit private company overseen by a nonprofit foundation. Musk is trying to prove that OpenAI’s leaders lied to him and betrayed the charitable mission of developing AI in a safe, transparent manner in order to make money. But OpenAI’s leaders are essentially making a sour-grapes argument; they claim that Musk, a co-founder who left in 2018, is only saying he’s bothered by OpenAI’s commercial shift now because of its blockbuster success in the same market that Musk’s newer AI company is competing in.
But all of that is beside the bigger point.
In testimony this week, Musk repeatedly emphasized his belief that in the early days of OpenAI he needed to be in charge to ensure the tech was used safely. When Microsoft came along to invest $20 billion in the startup, Musk bristled at the idea because “Microsoft has their own motivations” that would diverge from what he believed were OpenAI’s more philanthropic aims.
Musk posed a seemingly rhetorical question, as my colleagues Samantha Delouya and Hadas Gold reported from the trial in Oakland, turning to the jury at one point to ask: “I don’t know, do you really want Microsoft controlling digital superintelligence?”
Musk seems to be making the point that Microsoft, maker of some of the most ubiquitous and despised workplace products in history (Outlook, Teams), is not the cool, benevolent technoking/memelord that should get the keys to sophisticated AI that, to borrow from Musk’s testimony, could “kill us all.”
But Musk’s alternative to Microsoft, at least in OpenAI’s early days, was himself. Or rather, Musk plus four board members appointed by — you guessed it — Musk. He testified that he needed “control” of OpenAI early on, expecting his stake would eventually be diluted by new investors.
Again, this all may be beside the point.
Let’s take Musk and all the other AI executives at face value and believe them when they say they want to reach “artificial general intelligence (AGI),” aka “superintelligence,” aka some hypothetical level at which the machine’s intellect surpasses that of humans. (We will, for the purposes of this newsletter, just gloss over the fact that AGI is little more than science fiction masquerading as a real possibility in order to wring capital out of investors and scaring the bejesus out of the public with references to the “Terminator” movies. And we will not, for now, dwell on the fact that no two AI evangelists share a common definition of AGI or a protocol for measuring it. We shall not, in this setting, scream that AGI is nothing but a bogeyman born of dull minds trapped in bodies that have failed to touch grass.)
And let’s also take them at face value when they say it will someday have the power to kill everybody. Sure, why not.
If that’s the case, then surely we should have some way to control it.
But while Musk and OpenAI’s lawyers are arguing back and forth about all of this, they appear to only be considering a limited set of options. Our list of choices when it comes to benevolent leaders with a vast amount of control over humanity’s future, at least as mentioned in this trial, appears to be confined to Musk, OpenAI (led by CEO Sam Altman), Microsoft, and possibly Google or Meta or Anthropic.
That’s it. That’s the only model, and those are the choices.
Some folks might be OK with that arrangement, but based on comments from the random group of citizens available for jury selection, it doesn’t seem like it’s a popular list of overlords.
“Elon Musk is a greedy, racist, homophobic piece of garbage,” one juror wrote in their voir dire questionnaire. Another called him a “world-class jerk.” Even federal Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers had to admit: “The reality is that people don’t like him… Many people don’t like him, but that doesn’t mean that Americans nevertheless can’t have integrity for the judicial process.”
Gonzalez Rogers, for one, has no time for doomsday prophesies of the billionaire class.
On Thursday, as Musk’s lawyer repeated the industry hype in court — “we could all die!” — Gonzalez Rogers shut it down, pointing out Musk’s obvious philosophical contradictions.
“It is… ironic that your client, despite these risks, is creating a company that is in the exact space. I suspect there are plenty of people who don’t want to put the future of humanity in Mr. Musk’s hands.”
But that’s beyond the scope of this case, she continued.
“This is not a trial on whether or not AI has risks. This is not a trial about whether or not AI has damaged humanity. That may be a trial in the future.”
