Musk’s biggest loyalist became his biggest liability

I sat in the Musk vs. Altman today, painfully aware that no one was going to ask Shivon Zilis the question that was on everyone’s mind: Girl, what is it? Damn are you TO DO?

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

Her job under Musk was to “find the bottlenecks and fix them,” and she says she worked 80 to 100 hours a week to do that. “It was just bananas,” she said. Musk’s first two children – twins – were born in 2021, while Zilis served on OpenAI’s board of directors. She kept this a secret. She did not tell the council who the father was until Business Insider reported court documents indicating Musk was the father.

“My first call was to my father,” said Zilis, who testified that even his own family did not know the children’s paternity. “The call right after that was to Sam Altman.” Greg Brockman, president of OpenAI, said he discovered Zillis’ children through news reports. When he told her about it, she claimed that her relationship with Musk was “platonic” and that she had children through IVF. That was reassuring enough for Brockman, who had been friends with her since 2013. She remained a board member.

On the stand, Zilis spoke softly and quickly. She looked mousey. A significant part of what made her testimony so bad for Musk was that she seemed to be the only person taking notes on what Brockman, Altman, Ilya Sutsekever and Musk were discussing when the co-founders were considering their options for creating a for-profit arm of OpenAI. She also “assisted and facilitated communication between the main parties.” These notes constitute the most important piece of evidence in the trial – more important even than Brockman’s diary.

The purpose of the direct testimony appeared to be to lessen the impact of what Zilis and the plaintiff’s attorneys needed to know. So she told the court that her role was also to tell Altman when Musk was “in a good headspace” for a conversation — perhaps inadvertently reinforcing Brockman’s testimony yesterday that at one point he feared Musk would physically attack her — while vehemently denying that she passed any information to Musk.

Look, she and Musk testified that they lived together and had a romantic relationship and four children. She was originally a plaintiff in the lawsuit. She kept the paternity of her children a secret from his own father. All of these things would be reason enough to doubt his testimony that OpenAI had betrayed its mission during the chaos when Altman was fired by the board. She claimed Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said something along the lines of “we’re above them, we’re below them, we’re around them” during this chaotic time as “terrifying.” (The quote was “We are below them, above them, around them.”)

But it’s really these notes that explain Musk’s case. Try as she might, Zilis couldn’t explain them.

Many ideas were floated in 2017 and 2018. We have seen many emails from Zilis from this period. Notably in one of them, an option was “switch to for-profit mode in the coming weeks (whoa fast!)”. Another email said a “totally non-negotiable” deal for Altman, Brockman and Sutskever “is an ironclad agreement that Elon (or anyone) has absolutely nothing to do.” [sic] control of the AGI they create. In another, she writes to Musk’s financial manager Jared Birchall: “They say they won’t move forward without a guarantee of giving up control.” You and I can say it’s stupid all we want, but they stand their ground.

Zilis also knew that Musk had stopped donations before OpenAI. On August 20, 2017, she wrote: “Funding freeze: OpenAI will likely realize this week that their $5 million in Q3 is, rightly, on hold. I don’t know what impact this will have on the negotiations, but I wanted to point this out because it will likely have a significant psychological impact on them if they find out.” Musk told Brockman and Sutskever more than a week later, on September 1, that he had withdrawn the funding.

There were other machinations:

We had already seen one of her text messages in the filing – the one in which Musk leaves the board and she asks him if she should remain “close and friendly” to continue passing information to him. In her firsthand testimony, she tried to put this into context: “They were going through this strange half-breakup,” she said. But at the cross, we discovered that she didn’t remember it in her testimony.

“Your long-lost memories have been found,” Sarah Eddy, OpenAI’s lawyer, said in one of the funniest moments of the trial. Of course, Musk’s team objected and the objection was upheld, but we’ve all heard it. In fact, it was one of many times when Zilis seemed to have regained memories she didn’t have during her deposition, memories that — coincidentally I’m sure — turned out to be good for Musk’s case.

To be fair, Zilis performed the best on cross-examination of anyone we’ve seen so far, but she doesn’t really seem truthful. And there was even more reason to be skeptical of her when we found out how she left the board, which, according to her deposition, happened “because I got a call from Sam and he said, ‘I heard Elon is going into a competitive business,’ and I said, ‘Well, if that’s true, now is the time to resign.’ »

Mysteriously, she had forgotten about this call between the deposition and today. But she seemed to know Musk was going AI when she texted a friend, who was in her phone as “Shahini Rubicon Fluffer.” (Amazing name. Thomas Pynchon will be so jealous.) “I need to resign from the OpenAI board, btw,” she wrote. “E’s efforts became well known.” Her friend did not seem surprised by this revelation. Zilis continued: “When the father of your babies launches a competitive effort and recruits on OpenAI, there is nothing that can be done.”

Zilis added that Musk “proactively apologized for pruning my friend network through this.”

Here’s what that means, as far as I’m concerned: His primary allegiance was and still is to Musk. To believe she didn’t know about xAI, I would have to believe that despite their three children – at the time – and the time he spent with them every week, he had never discussed it with her. I don’t believe it. Who would do it? There is enough evidence in her meeting notes to suggest that she regularly withheld information from OpenAI on Musk’s behalf – xAI would be no different. I also don’t believe she didn’t give Musk information about the Microsoft deals she approved while serving on the OpenAI board.

Musk had no problem converting all of OpenAI into a for-profit organization or bringing the charity down by recruiting its most talented researchers. He didn’t mind the idea of ​​integrating it with Tesla in various ways. The thing he did the mind had no control over it. This is what I learned from Zilis’ text messages and emails.

Brockman and the OpenAI board were incredibly naive in allowing Zilis to continue working there after learning of the paternity of his twins. But maybe no one expected someone so gentle to be so sneaky. She was smart enough not to raise her voice or nitpick obvious questions during her cross-examination, so her demeanor seemed more trustworthy than anyone we’ve seen so far. It’s just that the takeaway from her written communications is that she prioritized Musk in her life. Everyone else – including, apparently, his own father – comes second. So, at the helm, we might as well assume that she also says what Musk wants to hear.