Musk’s biggest loyalist became his biggest liability

I sat in musk vs altman In the trial courtroom today, there was the painful realization that no one was going to ask Shivon Zilis the question that was on everyone’s mind: Girl, what Shame! Do you? doing?

Zilis, who testified under oath that she is the mother of Musk’s four children… What’s the best way to characterize this? A Musk advisor? She denies that she was “chief of staff”, but says she worked for Musk’s “entire AI portfolio: Tesla, Neuralink, and OpenAI” in 2017. The two met through OpenAI, and had a “one off” before becoming “friends and colleagues”. He confirmed, “One-sided” was romantic in nature.

His job under Musk was to “find bottlenecks and solve them” and he claims to have worked 80 to 100 hours a week doing this. “It was just bananas,” she said. Her first two children with Musk – twins – were born in 2021, while Zilis served on the board of OpenAI. He kept this a secret. She did not tell the board who her father was until business insider Reported on court documents that listed Musk as the father.

“My first call was to my father,” said Zilis, who testified that even his own family did not know the paternity of the children. “The call right after that was to Sam Altman.” OpenAI President Greg Brockman testified that he learned about Zilis’s children from news reports. When they confronted her about it, she claimed that her relationship with Musk was “platonic” and that she had had children through IVF. This was reassurance enough for Brockman, who had been his friend since 2013. She remained on the board.

On the stand Zilis spoke slowly and rapidly. She was looking musli. A key part of what made her testimony so bad for Musk was that she was the only person taking notes on what Brockman, Altman, Ilya Sutskever and Musk were discussing when the co-founders considered their options for creating a profitable branch of OpenAI. She was “assisting and facilitating communication between the major parties.” Those notes are the most important evidence in the trial – even more important than Brockman’s diary.

The direct testimony appears to have been aimed at taking the sting out of what Zilis and the plaintiffs’ attorneys were finding out. So she told the court that her role also meant letting Altman know when Musk was “in a good position” to negotiate – perhaps inadvertently reinforcing Brockman’s testimony yesterday that at one point she feared Musk would physically attack her – while she vehemently denied that she had given information to Musk.

See, she and Musk testified that they lived together and had a romantic relationship and had four children. She was originally the plaintiff in the lawsuit. He kept the paternity of his children a secret from his own father. All of these things would be reason enough to doubt his testimony that OpenAI betrayed its mission during the chaos that followed when Altman was fired by the board. He claimed that during that chaotic period, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella had said things like “We are above them, we are below them, we are around them”, which was “terrible”. (The quote was “We are under them, over them, around them.”)

But the notes are exactly what was in Musk’s case. No matter how hard she tried, Zilis couldn’t explain them.

A lot of ideas emerged in 2017 and 2018. We saw a lot of emails from Zilis during that period. In one in particular, there was an option to “Switch to Profit in the Next Few Weeks (Wow, Fast!).” Another email noted that “completely non-negotiable” for Altman, Brockman and Sutskever is a firm agreement to have no association with Elon (or anyone) at all. [sic] Control over the AGI they create.” In another he wrote to Musk’s money manager Jared Birchall, “They say they will not proceed without a guarantee of taking away control. You and I can argue that it’s all nonsense all we want but they’re adamant about it.”

Zilis was also aware of Musk stopping the donation before OpenAI. On August 20, 2017, she wrote, “Funding Freeze: OpenAI is likely to realize this week that their $5M in Q3 is, correctly, on hold. Not sure how this will impact the conversation, but wanted to flag it as it’s likely to have a huge psychological impact on them if they find out.” Musk told Brockman and Sutskever a week later, on September 1, that he had withdrawn the funding.

There were other conspiracies too:

We’ve already seen one of her text messages in the docket – the one where Musk leaves the board and she asks him if he wants to stay “close and friendly” to continue briefing her. In her direct testimony, she tried to put it in context: “They were going through this weird half-breakup,” she said. But in Cross, we learned that he did not remember this in his statement.

“Your long-lost memories come back,” OpenAI lawyer Sarah Eddy said in one of the funniest moments of the trial. Sure, Musk’s team objected, and the objection persisted, but we all heard it. In fact, this was one of several occasions when Zilis recovered memories that were not in his deposition, memories that – coincidentally I’m sure – proved good for Musk’s case.

To be fair, Geillis does the best under cross-examination of anyone we’ve seen so far, but she’s not at all truthful. And there was even more reason to doubt him when we learned how he left the board, which – according to his statement – ​​happened “because I answered Sam’s call and he said, ‘I heard Elon is starting a competing venture’ and I said, ‘If that’s true, it’s time to resign.'”

Mysteriously, she had forgotten that call between the testimony and today. But she found out Musk was making headway on AI when she messaged a friend who was on her phone as “Shahini Rubicon Fluffer.” (Incredible name. Thomas Pynchon would be very jealous.) “By the way, I have to resign from the OpenAI board.” “E’s efforts have become famous.” His friend was not surprised by this revelation. Zilis added: “There is nothing to be done when the father of your children starts competitive efforts and recruits from OpenAI.”

Zillis said Musk “actively apologized that he had truncated my friend network through this.”

As far as I’m concerned, it says it all: His primary loyalty was and is to Musk. To assume that she didn’t know about XAI, I would have to assume that despite having – at the time – three children and spending time with them every week, he never discussed it with her. I don’t believe in him. Who will do it? There is ample evidence in her meeting notes that she regularly hid information from OpenAI on Musk’s behalf – XAI would be no different. I also do not believe that he did not brief Musk about the Microsoft deals he approved while sitting on OpenAI’s board.

Musk had no problem converting the entire OpenAI to profit or bringing the charity to its knees by recruiting its strongest researchers. He had no objection to the idea of ​​incorporating it into Tesla in various ways. that thing Did I couldn’t control my mind. This is what I learned from Zilis’ texts and emails.

Brockman and the OpenAI board were incredibly naïve in allowing Zilis to continue working there after learning of the paternity of his twins. But then, perhaps no one expected that such a humble person would be so devious. She was smart enough not to raise her voice or ask pointed questions during her cross-examination, so her behavior was more relatable than anyone we’ve seen so far. It’s just that the overall conclusion of his written communications is that he has put Musk first in his life. Everyone else – including, apparently, his own father – comes in second place. So on the stand, you might as well assume she’s saying what Musk wants to hear, too.