May 1, 2026

"We are not going to get into issues of catastrophe and extinction...."

"But we’re not going to get into that. We just are not going to have this whole thing explode for the world to view it."

Said Judge Gonzalez Rogers, quoted in "Is A.I. a Threat to Humanity? Not in This Trial. One of Elon Musk’s abiding fears is that A.I. could one day threaten humans. But the jurors deciding his suit against OpenAI probably won’t hear about it" (NYT).

30 comments:

john mosby said...

What about eucatastrophe? CC, JSM

Shouting Thomas said...

The antidote to the AI panic is Marc Andreessen’s “The Techno-Optimist Manifesto.”

narciso said...

Skynet they said

And every film and tv program for the last 60 years

tim maguire said...

I don’t see how it’s relevant to the case, but lots of AI researchers see human extinction as a possible outcome.

Achilles said...

The fast part is coming.

Altman is a lizard person. Everyone should want him stopped.

Aggie said...

"...“I suspect that there are a number of people who do not want to put the future of humanity in Mr. Musk’s hands,” the judge said. “But we’re not going to get into that. We just are not going to have this whole thing explode for the world to view it.”...

This, from the judge. Sounds like a trial that would be better placed in the Biden era. Is it cause for a mistrial, a judge revealing such strong opinions, deciding what will be tabled in court and what will be discarded, before things even get started?

narciso said...

As objective as delaware chancery courts

Aggie said...

The way Altman has moved, the way he interacts, he's got that look - the look of a person that is confident that his world revolves around him.

john mosby said...

Aggie: " Is it cause for a mistrial, a judge revealing such strong opinions, deciding what will be tabled in court and what will be discarded, before things even get started?"

It's exactly the judge's role, especially in a civil suit where he is supposed to do everything he can to get the parties to settle without a trial, to define the issues the trial will be about, and to exclude irrelevant evidence. Trump could have used a judge who took that responsibility seriously.

As for expressing strong opinions, is he expressing them, or just recognizing them? "I suspect that there are a number of people who do not want to put the future of humanity in Mr. Musk’s hands" differs only in scale from "I suspect that there are a number of people who do not want AAA Tree Surgeons to fix Mr Schmedlap's roof." Plus the judge immediately follows it with "we’re not going to get into that." CC, JSM

narciso said...

Why bring it up then

rrsafety said...

Gonzalez Rodger is one of the best judges in the country. Runs a tight ship and allows zero nonsense. Plays it straight. I wouldn’t be surprised if Dem might consider her for a Supreme but she isn’t an ideological nut so they probably will ignore her.

Old and slow said...

Lawsuits that I hope succeed. Sam Altman is a snake.

Iman said...

Can they at least keep the robots away from the meds?!

narciso said...

Buy robot insurance

Big Mike said...

From X via Instapundit:

Musk vs OpenAI's lawyer — the cross-examination exchanges

William Savitt — Wachtell Lipton's lead defense lawyer, Supreme Court clerk, trained to break witnesses.

Savitt opens with a misleading premise.
Musk: "You're being misleading. What you're saying is false."

Savitt tries again with a different loaded frame.
Musk: "Your questions are not simple. They are designed to trick me."

Savitt demands a yes or no answer to a complicated question.
Musk: "If you ask a question where there is no possible simple answer, I must give a longer answer because any simple answer would be misleading the jury."

Musk reaches for an analogy: "The classic answer to a yes or no question is not so simple. For example, if you ask the question 'will you stop beating your wife?'..."

Judge Gonzalez Rogers cuts him off: "No, we're not gonna go there."

The courtroom laughs.

Savitt apologizes for the question.
Musk: "I find it funny you saying it wasn't an unfair question since you're only asking unfair questions."

Savitt: "I'm doing my best."
Musk: "That is not true."

OpenAI's lawyer came to break Musk.
Musk wasn't having it.

Big Mike said...

@rrsafety, as a retired techie who has led the development of very advanced systems — and who possesses a patent in machine learning — the comments by Gonzalez Rodgers that are excerpted by Althouse, above, and her comment related to the above exchange between William Savitt and Elon Musk, do not permit me to admire her intelligence nor her integrity.

Big Mike said...

tim maguire (7:31), is quite right and worth contemplating.

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

It seems it might be material to the case. But then I'm not an overcredentialed legal analyst.

narciso said...

Elon expounded on his concern

narciso said...

It depends what boundaries are put on the system

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

I don’t see how it’s relevant to the case, but lots of AI researchers see human extinction as a possible outcome.

Good point. Musk in fact is one of those pioneers of AI who has those fears and explains it in detail. Specifically, teaching AI to lie, to deceive, is a choice that leads down that apocalyptic path. And anyone who has interacted with AI knows the results include false info. According to Musk's suit, Altman and his other partner lied to Musk (and preserved it in writing!) and are teaching OpenAI's machines to lie too. The whole point of keeping it open source was to prevent this exact black-box engineering where CEO's sell you a product but won't or can't explain how it works.

DarkHelmet said...

I suspect there are a number of people who do not want to put the future of humanity in Altman's hand, or the hands of Judge Rogers.

What is the purpose of the judge expressing an opinion on 'a number of people's' feelings about Musk?

As to the substance, it would be nice for the rest of us to get some better insight as to whether the future of humanity is actually at stake. If the trial could facilitate that it would be more productive than most legal proceedings.

DarkHelmet said...

Incidentally, the LLMs I've used have in common the ability to appear authoritative, while revealing a total lack of understanding. I think all of them have been trained on journalists.

rrsafety said...

Folks, don’t just take snippets from Althouse. OpenAI’s attorneys were going on and on about how awful and dangerous many people thought Elon Musk is. This took place OUTSIDE the presence of the jury. The judge’s admonishment of the OpenAi attorneys was “I suspect there are plenty of people who don’t want to put the future of humanity in Mr. Musk’s hands, but it doesn’t matter, we aren’t going to get into those issues,”

Wilbur said...

My father would have said "Who in the hell names their daughter Gonzalez?"

rrsafety said...

Her name is not Gonzalez, it is Yvonne. She is a Texan.

tim maguire said...

DarkHelmet said...it would be nice for the rest of us to get some better insight as to whether the future of humanity is actually at stake.

For Christmas (!), my daughter gave me the book “If anyone builds it, everyone dies.” You can guess from the title what their point of view is, but the authors are not fringe players and a lot of big names have blurbs on the dust-jacket. It’s a scary book.

Big Mike said...

@rrsafety, the article linked by Althouse is behind a paywall.

Josephbleau said...

“We are not going to get into issues of catastrophe and extinction...."

Good, so net zero and catastrophic global warming are not justiciable. There is no basis in law.

Josephbleau said...

Please note that LLMs are the basis for a Trillion dollar world wide industry that produces high quality tangible results. The reason people are afraid of it is not because it does not perform, but rather that it does.

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