All right, welcome back to Kill the Computer. My name is Caleb. As every week, I am joined by my co-host June. How are you this week?
I'm fresh back from New York, fresh off the deathbed. I'm feeling a lot better, back 100% ready to talk about maybe two of the most pathetic people known to mankind. So, this is like a great — I feel great today. This is wonderful.
Yeah, all apologies to everybody for the kind of slight delay this week. It happens this time of year every time where there's travel, sickness. This time, I'm not the one — it's usually me. In fact, somebody made fun of me on Patreon earlier today. They were like, "Don't worry about the delay. I know Caleb is America's sickest boy." I was like, "Well, historically true. However, this time I am good." So,
It was not you this time.
Yeah, June was in New York and then I also had some birthday stuff going on. So, that kind of just threw a wrench into our last week. Thank you so much for bearing with us for just a little bit while we get back on track, guys. I do apologize for that. But, we're in for a really good episode and with us for that episode is Mike Isaac of The New York Times. How are you, Mike?
Hey, how are you? Thanks for having me.
Yeah. So, to introduce this episode a little bit, we had initially planned on doing this a little bit closer — we're talking about the Elon Musk trial. We had initially wanted to do this a little bit closer to the trial, but I think it gives us an advantage with some space and time for hindsight now. It's been what, like a week and a half or something since the verdict and everything. So, I guess we'll just hop right into this, Mike. Why don't you, for our audience, if they don't know, if they missed this trial, what was it about and what led up to all this?
Yeah, I mean, and you wouldn't be — you would be forgiven to like not know exactly what this is about because I had to do a shitload of reading just to like understand what was going on when we were at it. But like, so basically Elon Musk was one of the co-founders of OpenAI. For those who are not steeped in the criminology, and this is 10 years ago, he was a co-founder. They split up because Elon, being Elon, gets mad and then like takes his ball and leaves.
And years later he decides to sue the company, which was a non-profit when they began it and then has morphed slowly into a for-profit or run by a non-profit. It's very weird how they've organized it. But his point in this lawsuit is, you know, I was duped that we started as a non-profit but Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, his co-founder, turned it into a for-profit and that's not — I was defrauded out of the 38 million or whatever dollars that he used to fund it. That was like
Because he sued for what, like 130 billion?
Yeah, I don't know, yeah.
Are you — Okay, I knew like this case, I was following it here and there. I didn't know he was that much of a dumbass dude.
What did he think was going to happen? Yeah, okay, we'll pay 100 — I mean that has to be sort of like a destroying the company type thing. Like he's not trying to actually get that money. He's trying to destroy the company.
And he even tried to position it as like, oh, it's not for me, like I only want you to give it back to the charity so it kills the company, so like I'm being benevolent, but you 100% — it's like trying to
Go for the jugular. He didn't want the money. He just wanted to kill the — which you know, it seemed to me like, and I would like to hear your take on this right off the bat, this whole framing from Elon's camp of, well, you can't steal a charity. He used that line multiple times. How much money do you think he spent focus grouping that?
Oh my god. No, no, no. That was like — it was so funny because so I went every day for —
Yeah, you were there, which is why we wanted you on this show. We're going to talk about that for sure.
Totally, yeah, totally. But you're totally right. Like there were specific lines. You can't steal a charity, and like he — this is going to create a Terminator future that they 100% wanted. It was a jury trial, so like he was basically trying to convince a jury with the simplest version possible of —
Yeah. Hey, what stupid — he's stealing a charity and doing Terminator to you.
Totally. He's like, I think you're stupid. This is what you can understand, basically.
Yeah.
He really seemed to lean a lot into that though. Like he would try to — I read a lot of your summaries of what was happening in the court cases and the way that you described him talking like to the jury, describing all of this. He was like really leaning into the movies. Like more than just Terminator. He kept being like — trying like he was going so deep in this like entertainment way of talking about AI and it sounds like the jury and the judge were just like over it. They were annoyed by him and the way he would talk about this and would like shut him down several times, right? Like they were just like stop. Like Elon, stop. We're not here for this.
I think — I know you're totally right and like there's a version of this where maybe it worked if there was a jury of people who didn't know what was going on or even like did know, but like he just thought we're stupid. But like it really was like kind of a disdain for how people can grasp what the actual lawsuit was about, if that makes sense. The other one was like Star Trek. It was like we needed to make a Gene — I'm not a Star Trek person, but it was like a Gene Roddenberry future, which apparently is a good version of tech, I guess.
It was very — it was just — yeah, but you're exactly right. The judge was like, "Please shut the up. Okay, can we just move beyond that analogy?"
No, it was a — From what I saw of this case though, it's one of those rare cases that I will follow where it's like I don't really like either of them. They're really both the worst people ever and I don't really know who I want to win, but I like who — Basically, it's a win-win whoever loses for me, like whoever loses or wins. It's like, I don't really care that much because it's — It felt like to me though that it was fairly obvious that Elon was sort of going to blow this, is my read of the situation.
So, some selected wounds throughout the trial. Let's back up a little bit within the trial. So, Sam Altman's defense was essentially that, well, this was always the plan. We were always going to, you know, raise capital or something like that. We had to become like a private company and Elon knew about this. So, I just have to ask you this — as much as I think 90 — if you — I don't know why you wouldn't be listening to this if you didn't hate Elon, but 99% of our audience hates him, but it seemed to me that there actually might have been some substance to his claim. Granted, it was leveled in bad faith because it's obviously outside of whatever the time frame to file this and everything, but is there any merit to that? Did he actually know? What do we learn in discovery?
No, so — Discovery was awesome because it's just like a bunch of emails that people like me love to read and like you all get to see how these people talk internally.
We are discovery — we are discovery perverts on this show.
Okay, good. I'm with my people. Thank god. But it really was a version of like — I'm tired because it's over and over, but the Onion headline of like the worst person you know made a great point.
That's how this feels. Yeah.
And like I think the — look, I think Elon's underlying point is probably correct. Whether it's legally defensible is one question, but like they did start out to make this thing a non-profit charitable endeavor, right? Like they never initially — let's say 2015 and earlier years, they were like, this is the whole point of this, is that it's a non-capitalistic endeavor. We don't want any one person to control it because in their mind, the way they were talking about it, AI is too dangerous. And again, they talked about this like they seemed to really believe it in these emails.
Interesting. An internal — like now we know they say, you know, we have to control this or China will do Terminator to us or somebody worse than me will do — somebody is going to do Terminator to somebody. But in private, they do talk like this to each other, which I found fascinating in discovery.
Totally. That was my — No, I'm right there with you. And like for years now, I've been super like, yeah, yeah, yeah, you say this and like it's to — I don't know. Like it's a marketing trick.
Give me money or I'll do Terminator to you or someone else will do —
But like this was like 10, 11 years ago when it was like three dudes on an email chain and like I'm sure there's some posturing, but it's still like I don't know. They seemed to really buy into that then. So, anyway, long story short, like there was — that's one of those things where the initial version of this was never supposed to be a for-profit endeavor. And then cut to a few years later and then they see like big dollar signs in their eyes when this becomes an actual thing that people care about, if that makes sense.
Yeah. I mean, that's sort of been the weird thing about this case is that his underlying point here is like — I kind of — I mean, I don't think it's controversial to say that Elon is kind of right about that. But again, I think for him it's nefarious purposes because he put, I think it was $38 million into it. And then of course like he makes it about himself. He's like, I feel cheated. I like — I don't think he really cares too much. But I do agree that like this cycling of money between like OpenAI and Microsoft and like all these different AI companies between each other, it's like this is ridiculous. This is like stupid. Like it shouldn't be like this.
To your point, June. And Mike, I'd like your insight on this as well. When they split initially, the split didn't seem too acrimonious. It seemed like not that, you know what I mean? As I recall, Elon even continued to pay their rent for a time. It wasn't like, you know, it wasn't good obviously when he backed out, but it wasn't like they were the enemies that they are now. Is that a good take on that?
No, I think you're right. Like the way that I've not been like a super close Elon reporter forever like some people out there, but I've known him long enough or known and reported around him long enough — we are not homies — to like know that he can get frustrated and when he doesn't get his way, he just sort of like what I said before, takes his ball and goes home. And so like when he did that in 2017 or 18, I want to say, he was like, "Hey, okay, look, I want to run this and I want to control it and clearly you guys aren't okay with that. So like I'm out." But yeah, he was like, "You do it, but I'm still paying, you know, the not cheap version of your rent in San Francisco for the company for the next few months at least." And I think he — But the point I think also was like he didn't think of it as like an existential threat at that point. He's just like, "Ah, whatever, you know, like this is too much of a headache for me to deal with. I'm going to do this on my own anyway," sort of thing, you know?
Yeah, like it only took — And even I just vaguely remember also, Sam was like not famous then. I'm not — He's arguably not that famous now. Like most normal people still probably don't know the name Sam Altman, but he's like, you know, more famous and important now. But like Elon was like the big guy at the company at the time. So him leaving kind of was like, "Oh, well, this is going to of course die because I'm not there anymore," if that makes sense.
It sort of took Elon a while to get back into the AI game. Is there any insights or anything we know why it took him like 8 years after leaving to like finally be like, "Okay, time to put my foot somewhere again?"
So — Well, this is — And this is also the weird thing about having traveled through that is like that — If you look back around this time, a lot of his was like blowing up at that time. This was like 2018, 2019 was when the 420 funding secured stuff was — Do you remember that? Yes, you — I remember. He was coming back after coming after — and like his car company, like he had all these short sellers in Tesla that were with him and like these like money, you know, funding issues and then like what was SpaceX? SpaceX is like the only thing he — that kind of has actually worked for him. But like he was going through so much at the time and like kind of having a mental breakdown. I think like it was another — It was like AI was like, "Okay, I don't need to worry about it to a huge degree." Except in the case of like — It was — I would say that like way it was mainly stuck in his mind of how can I do this in an implied way was like Tesla self-driving.
Self-driving was like his foray into it. Yeah, that's — Yeah.
Shifting gears here, I wonder if what we're seeing with this is kind of tied to — I don't know if either of you guys have been paying attention to this, but like attorney generals from a bunch of red states — like I don't remember all of them off the top of my head, like Florida, Montana, Nebraska, West Virginia, whatever. A bunch of these AGs like wrote to the SEC chair to like investigate OpenAI ahead of the IPO.
How much of this do you think is Elon maybe calling in favors behind the scenes? I mean it seems pretty obvious that he views OpenAI as an existential threat and you know his ties to the Trump administration and then the GOP. That's not — I just — it cannot be a coincidence that this is happening at the same time, right? Prior to their IPO which is coming next month, isn't it?
They're going to file pretty soon if they haven't already. We're trying to figure that out.
Yeah.
No, but like that's the other — So it's funny. I've been like a Meta Facebook beat reporter for a long time and then I got thrown onto AI stuff in the past few months really, but like over the past couple of years I've been digging into it and like learning about how insane all these people are and how they go after each other like with all this like dark money, like behind the scenes stuff, and like astroturfing this like funding — like it's really wild and in a super — I mean it's sort of like American politics in a way. I mean all politics in a way, you know, like just like weird shady groups going around. I think you're probably right like that Elon does have a bunch of money going into it. It's actually made OpenAI incredibly paranoid and kind of freaking out and lashing out at people a lot because of this. But there are these grassroots — See, it's hard to disentangle where the Elon money is versus where the like grassroots like actual OpenAI haters are, you know? And then they're all kind of — Some of them are like within the Venn diagram in the middle, you know? It's so crazy.
For people who don't know this, I think that there's like the, you know, you don't got to give it to ISIS or whatever, but like some of the stuff that they're asking about is substantive because Sam Altman doesn't make his money necessarily from OpenAI. His investments are in, you know, infrastructure AI companies, third party. And they're saying, "Well, wait a second. OpenAI is investing into some of these companies that he has financial ties to." And that would be true if it was anybody else but Elon Musk making the same accusation, right? So it's just one of those things where like everybody's wrong, everybody's throwing at each other, and everybody else is already covered in and everybody wants to do Terminator to each other.
I just don't — I don't know. It's really tough because there's a lot of actual — When I'm reading through this, it's like, "Yeah, that makes sense. This is up that Sam Altman is doing this or whatever." But why are we choosing this as the thing that we care about now?
I really want — I'm going to do Terminator to you to start taking out — Like a little kid on the playground. I'm going to terminate you.
It's my dad is actually a Terminator. I'm going to send him after you.
But you're totally right, man. Like the folks — it's a — There actually are actual groups that are team no one, basically, including people outside of the court that were just like everyone sucks here. Like that was like a political position that folks take, basically. It's very —
Speaking of court, can we talk about it? This is like the thing that I wanted to talk to you about. What was it like in there? Oh my — because there's so many things that I read I was like, you have to be kidding me.
Your threads were great for this reason because I was losing my mind at some of the things that you wrote about.
Was it Mike — was it you that wrote about the girl who fell asleep?
Oh, no, that was not me but they were behind me but I did hear about that person.
Who's so crazy. Like that was the people who were like kind of the circus or the folks there — a lot of people learned about the trial like a couple days into it because like look, it was not exactly easy for the average person to find out about. People that were following it closely were there but the two or three days into it — really the second or third day when people started hearing that Musk was there. Also, who he only came for like the first three days basically. But that's when everyone started showing up that was like real weird or real interesting. And so you would get — Oh man, the lady that was — I don't even know how to describe it — that got like screamed at by the judge for like taking a photo of Musk. It was so wild and like I —
I was like dying of second hand — for that, can't you? Like —
Yeah, they were like huge deputies like pushing her around in front. It was so crazy. And then the lady was like, "I'm dyslexic. I couldn't read the signs around the courthouse." Like I was like, come on, dude. It was really brutal. And then —
Then like another guy did it on the last day and he like tried to fight back. Like all of these real characters showed up. And then like kids who just like I don't know. They would just like fist pump when Elon would make a joke or something.
His one of his jokes that I heard people like fist-pump. You, dude, you're a dog person if you fist-pump that in court if Elon makes a point.
I thought it was just for context, the woman who fell asleep. The thing was is that she showed up and all she did was take — from what I read is that she showed up to take notes of just Elon's the emails that came up like in, you know what I mean, whichever ones. So she took notes on whatever emails popped up for Elon Musk. Then when that was done, she didn't care and fell asleep. That's all she was there to do.
She just wanted the email.
I didn't even see that lady. That's so funny.
My other favorite was this lady who refused — I actually really wanted to know more about her. She was always in like — she had these insane braids that I don't know how to describe it. She looked like Princess Leia in the bikini in Star Wars. But then like people would ask her — we had this like makeshift line sort of system. When you're like a court reporting, like there comes a sort of like foxhole camaraderie thing and so you have to organize like who gets in. The line only 30 people can get into the court per day. So, you know, playing by the rules and getting stickers was fine. And this lady — we would make the line list and then give our names and this lady would never give her name. Like she was like, "I'm uncomfortable giving my name." And then like people would take photos and she'd like duck and turn her head away. And I was like, who is — is this like a CIA asset? Like why are you being — but it was all people like that that were just very —
Everyone's an alien. Why is everyone an alien here?
I just feel like if you don't want to be noticed, don't do the Princess Leia like braids. You know what I mean?
Like blend in a little bit better than that.
No, how does that work? As a court reporter do you get priority over the general public to get in or how does that — how is the system like?
So, yeah, so actually we — for months leading up to it, a colleague of mine, Cade Metz, and I, we were the ones sort of not in charge — what is it? On the hook for reporting, but they, because there was such demand to get into this to get media passes for it, they limited it fairly to one pass per outlet, right? So, if you had the pass, you could go in and there was like 20 seats for media, so you could go in, bypass this line, and get in pretty quick, and wouldn't have to get there super early.
So, you got to walk past all the libertarian freaks that were sitting there barking.
That's right. And so, because we both were going every day, we sort of traded off. So, some days I had to get up at 5:00 a.m. to make sure I got one of the 30 unreserved seats, which anyone could go for, and then some days I got to sleep till 7:00 a.m., which was nice. But yeah, like so basically like there were 30 unreserved seats and anyone could go for them, whether it was like there were a lot of observing lawyers too, like other just like for high-profile cases like these, I just find like a ton of lawyers come out of the woodwork or firms like ghosting their underlings to go type up notes and stuff like that, you know. It was super interesting. The students, like —
The subjects aside, this is a very interesting court — a case, excuse me.
No, totally. It was super like — I had a lot of fun. I was complaining a lot for being super tired, but like it was like genuinely fascinating stuff. Like you don't get — There's only so many things that can haul powerful — the world's most powerful, rich, and powerful people in front of them in like a federal court requiring you to come there, at least for now, is one of those. So, it was like super interesting to just see and to see them get smacked by the judge was also very funny and like just get your ass down. They were like clearly not used to getting like told no or talked to like that.
When a judge knows you're a freak, that's how you know. That's how you know you got to step back a little bit.
But I love — I just I'm fascinated by the amount of characters and just like how rowdy this courtroom seemed. For how short — it was a fairly short case. It was like only what? A week?
No, it was three weeks I want to say.
Still fairly short I feel like.
Pretty — She was like — so the judge, Yvonne I believe it's Gonzalez Rogers. She was like very — she's known for being like a hard ass and very strict in very charming ways to me. She would like make all the lawyers like shut up and like, you know, all these people who were getting paid like $3,000 an hour just had to like say, "Yes, ma'am. I'm sorry." But she was like very fast. She's very on it. She's like, "You're on a clock. Each side only gets so many hours to question witnesses." They had to like divide their time up and be more strategic than I realized just on how much time you're spending with a given witness. And she would tell them no a lot when they would try getting certain things in. One of the things you were talking about, the Terminator thing, one of the things she had to tell Elon's side to knock it off was like this existential threat AI stuff. She's like, "Look, that is not the purview of the case. You keep going on about this." They tried to bring in this expert. But yeah, exactly. She was like, "Chill out. Stop it."
I don't know how much of that came through from the outsider that you guys saw.
Oh, I mean that was sort of my takeaway is that Elon was sort of doing the whole Terminator angle like we have to be really careful about this. And it's like, "But that's not really why you convened this court case. That's like you're talking about something totally different." And I don't know if that was strategically purposeful on his part. If like I feel like he had to have known he was not going to succeed here and was trying to create a narrative or if he really truly is just that stupid. I think it's honestly the former in this case.
Yeah, I mean, either way he clearly benefits from the headlines and keeping Sam Altman tied up going into this IPO. So, whether or not he thought he had any chance of winning I don't know, but he still benefits anyway.
I think so, too. Yeah. I think that's right. I think like look, all he — if he wins, he deals not necessarily a kill stroke, but he up OpenAI royally in a lot of ways, right? If he loses, he's out lawyer fees and that's it. Like —
That's chump change to him.
Yeah, that's nothing.
So, I think he was really — And like he's also someone who doesn't have a problem — I don't even know if this is an understatement — doesn't have a problem being disingenuous on why he's doing certain things.
And so he can like — he can say yeah yeah yeah, of course principle blah blah blah, but like as long as they can't prove that he's perjuring himself or whatever, or like he can just do this whole thing all day long. So —
I totally agree.
So, Elon's angle was sort of if Sam Altman gets his way, he's going to destroy the planet. What was OpenAI and Sam Altman's angle going into this? Did they sort of stick to the hey, you were too late? Was that really all they were doing here?
I think there are a few things. One, their statute of limitations, which I think they were smart — ultimately they were smart to stick to and say like look, you know, you have 3 years from when you find out that something or when you say you found out that they're trying to change this into a for-profit, then you have a 3-year window of time to file your lawsuit. And so a lot of what OpenAI was focusing on were emails like explicitly saying, "Here was when we are talking about changing it." And these emails go back to like 2017 or 20 — like very long.
So, it was pretty clear that Elon Musk was aware is what it sounds like. He like he knew that this was going to happen. And like I'll be honest, I feel like maybe it's just hindsight, but like knowing where we're at now, it seems fairly obvious it had to have gone that way if they were trying to bring it to the scale they're trying to now. Like I don't know. Like again, maybe it's just for like I'm just looking back like, "Oh, duh." because that's how it is now, but it just is like this was obviously going to be a huge money investment if they wanted to ramp it up this way.
And they found that out fairly early on, I would argue. Yeah, I think you're right. I do think there is some level of hindsight, but like even back when they were doing the math on how much computing power costs to train these models, like this was already adding up, you know, way back then, you know? So like it's very hard to make the argument that you didn't know you would require, you know, X amount of money to do this. Now, whether that means you should or should not convert the thing into a for-profit company is one thing, but like you had to have known it then because like you're literally getting the computing bills. You know you need either Elon to cough up more cash or do something else, basically.
I kind of wish they just had him keep coughing up more cash. That would have been really funny, honestly. Just drain him.
Yeah, seriously. Although, him then you'd have Elon in charge of OpenAI, which, you know, your mileage may vary.
Yes. See, that's the thing is these two, they're both just odious, awful people. Like I just hate them both. There's not like a scenario where it's like, "You know, would Elon be worse as the head of OpenAI?" I don't really think so. Like it would be bad, but like in a similar way but just like more just like a more chad like it's a different —
The more Terminator apocalypse or the base Terminator apocalypse?
Yeah, that's what it would be exactly because we see what he does with Grok and xAI. It's just like it's basically the same but way worse and also is the same like weird British transphobic turf.
How do you see his Twitter replies?
Yeah, exactly. That's like the only difference.
You would somehow inject J.K. Rowling's voice into ChatGPT or something.
Which would make me kill myself faster.
Mike, let's go back to the courtroom for a second.
What witnesses — like what events did you find particularly compelling? Was there anything that really stood out to you as like somebody that brought new information that you had previously considered or anything that stands out to you?
So yeah, let's see. Oh well, there are a few big moments that were really interesting. One, I do see so obviously, you know, a lot of the folks who listen to this and yourselves are not huge Elon fans, but I see how he puts his thing on for the public. So the whole time he was talking to the jury, right? He's not talking to me, he's not talking to the judge, he's not even talking to his lawyer. When he answered questions, he's just sitting there and facing the jury. And you know, lawyers advise their clients to do this, but like for him, what he does is like puts on this thing that I think has historically charmed Silicon Valley people, technologists, sort of like this idea where he talks in his very muttery Elon sort of stumbling way, but about these like big, like audacious things, right? And like him walking through how he wants to take us to Mars or the moon or whatever. Like he's like rattling off what he's having for breakfast or something. I think I can see how the average person could, or just a person, could be like, 'Wow, that's wow. Look at this entrepreneur, da da da da da.' Like it was because, you know, we've heard this shtick for so long. I just sort of like roll my eyes at it, but I was just like, 'Okay, now I see how this can work on someone or whatever.' I mean, clearly it didn't in this case, but I saw that for the first time like with people.
The other thing I would say is Altman. When Altman got up and testified, Elon's lawyer, this guy named Steven Molo, is like a big trial attorney, he just like blasted him in the face with like, he basically just calls him a liar for like three hours. And it was like insane. It was very... but it was very... Altman is like this interesting character who like tries to sort of play — demure is the wrong word — but just sort of like, 'Okay, I'm being humble. Like I'm the thoughtful technologist. I'm like, you know what I'm saying?' And so after he did that for a bit, but then he started getting rattled, I would say. Like he... and like to be fair, like if someone called me a liar for like hours, I probably would not be happy. But I've never really seen him not lose control, but just sort of have a different sort of non-studied affect that he usually has. And it was very interesting to see him get like openly frustrated on the stand there, if that makes sense.
Yeah. No, that's right. I've never really thought about that, but he always does come off as like sort of a traditional Silicon Valley type of guy where I feel like there was that shift in 2022, 2023 in particular, especially leading up to the '24 election. But like, Silicon Valley people aren't like the Sam Altman types anymore. They're sort of like fist, like bashing their fist on the table like, 'You got to get this at my desk right now.' This isn't like... they threw out the, like, found the, like, the bouncy ball seats that they once had back in the 2010s though. They don't got those anymore. They don't feed them.
Oh, but Sam Altman is like sort of — and I don't think he is. I think he puts on a lot of — like a lot of these people in the past put on this facade. I don't think he is, but he does code that way still, I think in a way. He codes as like a woke guy in a way even though he's not, but he does code that way.
