Musk v Altman: Much ado about nothing

Musk v Altman was nominally about OpenAI's conversion to a for-profit entity, and how it went about that change. But really, the suit seems mostly to have been about Elon Musk being mad at Sam Altman — or at OpenAI, for being successful without him — and wanting him punished in some way. Verge reporter Liz Lopatto spent the last month covering the trial, in all its chaos, and joins Decoder to ask: In a courtroom full of untrustworthy, unreliable people all fighting with each other, did anyone even have a reputation left to lose? 0:00 Intro 1:30 Guest intro — Liz Lopatto on covering the trial 2:21 What the case was ostensibly vs. actually about 3:24 Courthouse vibes 4:52 Sam Altman & Elon's reputations: is there a floor? 5:51 Mira Murati — the most damaged reputation 8:53 Helen Toner and the Anthropic connection 9:11 The AI elite 11:49 The jury verdict: statute of limitations 17:46 Why the jury decided — not the judge 20:07 Musk's real goals: punish Altman, distract OpenAI 23:21 Musk's litigation strategy: bleed OpenAI dry 27:48 Andrej Karpathy joins Anthropic 29:24 The jackass trophy — Dario Amodei's origin story 30:31 Outro Follow Decoder on TikTok: @decoderpod Follow Decoder on Instagram: @decoderpod Subscribe: http://goo.gl/G5RXGs Like The Verge on Facebook: https://goo.gl/2P1aGc Follow on Twitter: https://goo.gl/XTWX61 Follow on Instagram: https://goo.gl/7ZeLvX Follow on TikTok: http://bit.ly/42VeCVU Watch The Vergecast on YouTube: https://bit.ly/40RFRkg The Vergecast Podcast: https://bit.ly/3WQDexZ Decoder with Nilay Patel: http://apple.co/3v29nDc More about our podcasts: https://www.theverge.com/podcasts Read More: http://www.theverge.com Community guidelines: http://bit.ly/2D0hlAv Wallpapers from The Verge: https://bit.ly/2xQXYJr Shop our Verge merch store here: https://bit.ly/4kPCmEc