Musk v. Altman proved that AI is led by the wrong people
Musk v. Altman proved that AI is led by the wrong people
马斯克诉奥特曼案证明：AI 行业正由错误的人领导
Public opinion of the AI industry is already sinking. A parade of untrustworthy executives makes it look worse. 公众对人工智能行业的看法正在不断下滑。而一系列不可信的高管表现，让这一局面变得更加糟糕。
The tech trial of the year, Musk v. Altman, was ultimately a fight for control. Elon Musk argued that Sam Altman, with whom he helped found the now-massive company OpenAI, shouldn’t direct the future of AI. Altman’s lawyers, in turn, poked at Musk’s own credibility. A jury came to a verdict on Monday after just two hours of deliberation, dismissing Musk’s claims due to the statute of limitations. 年度科技审判“马斯克诉奥特曼案”本质上是一场控制权之争。埃隆·马斯克认为，曾与他共同创立了如今庞大的 OpenAI 公司的萨姆·奥特曼，不应主导人工智能的未来。作为反击，奥特曼的律师则质疑了马斯克本人的信誉。周一，陪审团在仅两小时的审议后作出裁决，以诉讼时效已过为由驳回了马斯克的诉讼请求。
In a strictly legal sense, three weeks of testimony added up to nothing. But the trial offered a more damning broader takeaway: Almost nobody in this saga seems worth trusting. Some of the most powerful people in tech seem temperamentally incapable of dealing with each other honestly. And if that’s true, it raises a bigger question: Why are they in control of a trillion-dollar industry that’s set to upend people’s lives? 从严格的法律意义上讲，三周的证词最终一无所获。但这场审判揭示了一个更令人沮丧的广泛结论：在这场风波中，几乎没有人值得信任。科技界一些最有权势的人似乎在性格上就无法做到彼此坦诚。如果事实确实如此，那么一个更大的问题随之而来：为什么由这样一群人来掌控一个注定要颠覆人类生活的万亿美元产业？
OpenAI was, in the testimony of both Musk and Altman, founded to stop powerful AI from being owned and advanced by the wrong people. Testimony and evidence showed its founding team fretting about who would control artificial general intelligence (AGI), a buzzword for AI that broadly equals or surpasses human knowledge and ability. They deeply feared Google DeepMind and its leader, Demis Hassabis. In 2015, Altman said he’d been mulling over whether anything could “stop humanity from developing AI” — and after concluding it was impossible, that he wanted “someone other than google to do it first.” 根据马斯克和奥特曼双方的证词，OpenAI 的创立初衷是为了防止强大的人工智能被错误的人所拥有和推进。证词和证据显示，其创始团队曾极度担忧谁将控制通用人工智能（AGI）——这是一个指代在广度上等同或超越人类知识与能力的 AI 的流行词。他们深切地畏惧谷歌旗下的 DeepMind 及其领导者德米斯·哈萨比斯。2015 年，奥特曼曾表示，他一直在思考是否有办法“阻止人类开发 AI”，在得出结论认为这不可能实现后，他希望“由谷歌以外的人率先做到这一点”。
Fellow cofounders Greg Brockman and Ilya Sutskever so strongly opposed one-person control that they seemed willing to torpedo a lucrative deal that could — in their words — give Musk an “AI dictatorship.” In a part of the same email addressed to Altman, Brockman and Sutskever questioned his motivations, writing, “We haven’t been able to fully trust your judgements throughout this process … Is AGI truly your primary motivation? How does it connect to your political goals?” 其他联合创始人格雷格·布罗克曼和伊利亚·苏茨克维对“个人独裁”的反对态度如此强烈，以至于他们似乎宁愿破坏一笔利润丰厚的交易，以免——用他们的话说——让马斯克建立起“AI 独裁统治”。在发给奥特曼的同一封邮件中，布罗克曼和苏茨克维质疑了他的动机，写道：“在整个过程中，我们无法完全信任你的判断……AGI 真的是你的首要动机吗？它与你的政治目标有何关联？”
These concerns would be quickly borne out. A central focus of Musk v. Altman was “the blip,” a five-day period in November 2023 when OpenAI’s board removed Altman as CEO. Sutskever had spent more than a year architecting his ouster, assembling a 52-page memo alleging “a consistent pattern of lying, undermining his execs, and pitting his execs against one another.” The implications were broader than executive infighting, potentially impacting the public rollout of AI systems. Then-CTO Mira Murati, for instance, testified in court that Altman told her OpenAI’s legal team had okayed skipping a safety review for one of its models — a statement, she said, that turned out to be false. 这些担忧很快得到了印证。马斯克诉奥特曼案的一个核心焦点是“小插曲”事件，即 2023 年 11 月 OpenAI 董事会罢免奥特曼 CEO 职位的五天时间。苏茨克维花了一年多时间策划了这次罢免，并整理了一份 52 页的备忘录，指控奥特曼“一贯撒谎、破坏高管工作，并挑拨高管之间的关系”。其影响远不止于高管内斗，还可能波及 AI 系统的公开部署。例如，时任首席技术官米拉·穆拉蒂在法庭上作证称，奥特曼曾告诉她，OpenAI 的法律团队已批准跳过某款模型的安全审查——但她表示，这一说法后来被证实是虚假的。
In closing arguments, Musk attorney Steven Molo hammered home the long list of people who had testified under oath that Altman was, in one way or another, a liar — all of whom Altman had worked with for years. “The defendants absolutely need you to believe Sam Altman,” Molo told the jury. “If you cannot trust him, if you don’t believe him, they cannot win. It’s that simple.” 在结案陈词中，马斯克的律师史蒂文·莫洛反复强调了长长的一串证人名单，这些人都在宣誓后作证称奥特曼在某种程度上是个骗子——而这些人都是与奥特曼共事多年的伙伴。“被告绝对需要你们相信萨姆·奥特曼，”莫洛对陪审团说，“如果你们不能信任他，如果你们不相信他，他们就无法胜诉。事情就是这么简单。”
But during court proceedings, Musk — who now leads competing lab xAI, under his space company SpaceX — didn’t come off any better. Joshua Achiam, now OpenAI’s chief futurist, testified that Musk’s race against Google led him to take an “obviously unsafe and reckless” approach to achieving AGI. When he and others raised concerns, he says, Musk argued that OpenAI’s for-profit makeover created incentives to disregard safety, but his own xAI is for-profit and has, at best, a haphazard approach to safety. And in the name of making sure OpenAI remained open, Musk was obsessive in his need for control over it. In closing arguments, Sarah Eddy, one of OpenAI’s attorneys, told the jury that Musk “wanted dominion over AGI.” 但在庭审过程中，马斯克——他现在领导着其太空公司 SpaceX 旗下的竞争实验室 xAI——的表现也好不到哪去。现任 OpenAI 首席未来学家约书亚·阿奇姆作证称，马斯克与谷歌的竞争促使他采取了一种“明显不安全且鲁莽”的方式来实现 AGI。他说，当他和他人提出担忧时，马斯克辩称 OpenAI 的营利性转型导致了对安全的忽视，但马斯克自己的 xAI 也是营利性的，且在安全方面充其量只是随心所欲。而且，马斯克以确保 OpenAI 保持“开放”为名，却对他人的控制权有着近乎偏执的需求。在结案陈词中，OpenAI 的律师之一莎拉·埃迪告诉陪审团，马斯克“想要的是对 AGI 的统治权”。
As one X user put it, “if untrustworthyness had mass, putting Musk and Altman too close to one another would collapse the courtroom and all of earth into a black hole.” 正如一位 X 用户所言：“如果‘不可信’也有质量，那么把马斯克和奥特曼靠得太近，足以让法庭乃至整个地球坍缩成一个黑洞。”
OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment. On X, Musk posted a statement saying he’d be filing an appeal. OpenAI 没有立即回应置评请求。马斯克在 X 上发表声明称，他将提起上诉。
It’s not just Musk and Altman, either. Trial evidence suggested Murati helped get Altman removed, then switched sides to support his reinstatement while appearing “totally uninterested” in disclosing the role she’d played. Shivon Zilis, a close Musk associate who served on OpenAI’s board, asked Musk if he’d “prefer I stay close and friendly to OpenAI to keep info flowing” during his departure — avoiding revealing that she had two children with him at the time. Brockman’s diary entries played a key role in Musk’s case; at one point, he admitted Musk could “correctly” claim “we weren’t honest with him” if OpenAI made a for-profit shift without his involvement. 不仅是马斯克和奥特曼，审判证据还显示，穆拉蒂曾协助罢免奥特曼，随后又倒戈支持他复职，同时对披露自己在其中扮演的角色表现得“毫无兴趣”。曾任 OpenAI 董事会成员的马斯克亲密伙伴希冯·齐利斯，在马斯克离开时曾问他是否“希望我与 OpenAI 保持亲近友好，以便获取信息”——却隐瞒了她当时已与马斯克育有两个孩子的事实。布罗克曼的日记在马斯克的案件中起到了关键作用；他曾承认，如果 OpenAI 在没有马斯克参与的情况下转向营利性，马斯克完全有理由声称“我们对他不够诚实”。
Musk v. Altman gave each man an opportunity to sling dirt at the other and, in theory, establish himself as the more scrupulous guardian of AI. But a more obvious takeaway is that several of the AI industry’s household names are at best naive — and, at worst, hypocrites with little regard for the consequences of their actions. 马斯克诉奥特曼案给了双方互相抹黑的机会，理论上也能让他们各自标榜为更严谨的 AI 守护者。但一个更明显的结论是，AI 行业中几位家喻户晓的人物，往好了说是天真，往坏了说则是对自身行为后果毫不关心的伪君子。
Public sentiment about AI is at an all-time low. In a Pew Research survey from last summer, half of US adults said the “increased use of AI in daily life makes them feel more concerned than excited” — and only 10 percent said they felt more excited than concerned. 公众对人工智能的情绪正处于历史最低点。在去年夏天皮尤研究中心的一项调查中，半数美国成年人表示，“日常生活中 AI 使用的增加让他们感到担忧多于兴奋”——而只有 10% 的人表示他们感到兴奋多于担忧。