Morning Brew Daily - Elon Sues OpenAI & The Search for Missing Malaysia Flight 370 Back On?

Episode Date: March 4, 2024

Episode 271: Neal and Toby explain why Elon Musk is suing OpenAI and Sam Altman. Plus, the search for the Malaysia airline flight that disappeared ten years ago could resume, and how wicked snow storms and Texas wildfires are impacting the ski and cattle industries. Then the guys share their winners of the weekend, including Dune 2 saving the box office and Caitlin Clark making history. Finally, there was a massive Helium deposit found in Minnesota and what we are watching for this week. Use code MORNINGBREW50 to get 50% OFF your first Factor box at https://bit.ly/3UUZGG0 Listen to Morning Brew Daily Here: https://link.chtbl.com/MBD Watch Morning Brew Daily Here: https://www.youtube.com/@MorningBrewDailyShow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Good morning for your daily show. I'm Neil Fryman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, 10 years later, we still don't know what happened to Malaysian Airlines Flight 370, but the search goes on. Then we'll dig into the long simmering and now escalating beef Elon Musk has with OpenAI and Sam Altman. It's Monday, March 4th. Let's ride.

Neil, you were out on Friday and we had the Kyle Hagee filling in for you in the studio. but the people were missing you. Where did you go? And what was the highlight of your much-deserved day off? I miss the people, too. I was in the great Canadian province of Quebec, and the highlights were ice skating on a frozen lake.

It does not get any better than that, skiing on Mount Trebon and getting yelled at by three historic clerks for speaking English. You had a very, very Canadian day off. Okay, before we jump into our show today, let's hear a word from our sponsor, Factor. Neil, first Factor ad for you, but you've had a chance to sample their chef-made, never-frozen, pre-made meals.

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Elon Musk is not one to let petty disagreements lie, but the latest chip on his shoulder might have a bigger impact on the future of humanity than his other feuds. He's suing the $80 billion AI leader, OpenAI, and its co-founder Sam Altman and Greg Brockman. The crux of Elon's misgivings are reflected right there in the name, Open AI. Elon actually co-founded the company alongside Sam Altman and others back in 2015, with the vision for it to be an open source nonprofit designing technology for the good of humanity.

But he left the board in 2018 because he didn't like the direction it was heading. The suit argues that Open AI has let its for-profit arm overtake the original mission of the nonprofit by becoming a, quote, de facto subsidiary of the largest technology company in the world, Microsoft. Taking $13 billion for Microsoft and licensing its GBT4 model to turn it into a profit generator, doesn't seem very non-profitly in Elon's eyes. Neil, this suit was filed on Friday, and in the meantime, Elon and Sam have already traded sarcastic bars back and forth on Twitter. This was a showdown that's been brewing for a while now, and it's fully kicked into high gear.

The Elon Musk-Sam Altman drama is the biggest Oprah on. in Silicon Valley right now. They co-founded Open AI together, had this big falling out in 2018. Elon Musk left to, you know, just completely left OpenAI. But this really all hinges on the Microsoft deal. Back in 2019, Microsoft invested $1 billion in OpenAI. And then in subsequent years, has now invested $13 billion. It now owns 49 percent, essentially, of Open AI. So a lot of OpenAI's headaches, Elon Musk and a bunch of other investigations by the government, all hinge on its very tight, very tight relationship with Microsoft. Yeah, and it's very interesting from legal's perspective here, because there's going to be a lot of questions introduced in a court

of law that really don't have that much clear legal precedent. One of the things that the suit asked the court to do is kind of define what constitutes artificial general intelligence, which is basically the age question, the question for our entire age right now, because that will help it narrow down the scope of its licensing agreement with Microsoft, because there is, you no part of the agreement that says it's allowed to license its artificial general intelligence to it. So there's going to be a lot of thorny legal questions. What's so interesting about the backstory here too is Elon Musk has been a very outspoken critic of AI in the past, which again seems off-brand for him because he's kind of an accelerationist, let's do things,

move fast, break things. But for a long time, he's been sounding the alarm around AI. He said he compared the threat of AI to the threat of nuclear warheads as far back. back as 2018. And remember, he was the one who gathered all these tech leaders to sign a letter saying, let's pause testing of open AI or powerful AI systems for six months, just figure out where we react. Doesn't feel very Elon-y. No, but you have to say, he has been consistent in this regard. Sam Altman and Open AI in their memos to staff over the past few days have said that the fact that you have a for-profit business and our developing AI is not sort of, is not incompatible with our original mission. And then you can point

to Elon Musk actually starting a for-profit AI company called XAI to show that the person who's bringing this lawsuit also may not disagree with this. There's also reports that back in 2017, Elon Musk tried to win control of Open AI and turn it into a for-profit company. So I'm sure that Sam Altman, Open AI, will bring all of these reports up during this trial. Yeah, unfortunately, or fortunately, whichever side you're on, does not look like he will win this case per se because he's alleging that opening eye breached a contract that pretty much doesn't really exist. It's simply not a thing. The complaint makes a reference to a quote founding agreement, but there literally is no founding agreement attached as an exhibit in the case. So it's basically

a vibe that Elon's trying to argue that everyone had this vibe around them through email correspondence that like, hey, we were going to develop this as a nonprofit entity and that vibe has shifted. It's literally like a vibes based argument. And in the court of law, the vibes based argument. it doesn't usually hold up. Either way, this case will lead to really interesting discussions in a courtroom about AI and benefiting humanity, these really existential questions that will get in a Delaware courtroom. And we're going to see some pretty cool emails leaked up. Which is always fun.

Pretty deep cut tech emails. Okay, 10 years ago this week, Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 took off from Kuala Lumpur for Beijing and 30 minutes later disappeared into the night. And to this day, it remains more. modern aviation's greatest unsolved mystery. How do you lose a huge commercial jet in the year 2014? It's unfathomable. And it's not that they haven't looked. The vanishing of the jet, a Boeing 77, sparked the largest search operation in history. Throughout the past decade, governments have spent hundreds of millions of dollars, combing 710,000 square kilometers of the southern Indian

ocean, where the plane is presumed to have gone down. And yet, the only thing they found from the plane is a few pieces of debris that washed up on the East African shore. But families of the passengers are hopeful that a new search could provide closure. Marking the 10-year anniversary of the plane's disappearance this weekend, the Malaysian government announced they were considering another expedition to find it with help from a Texas-based salvage company Ocean Infinity. Ocean Infinity conducted a search back in 2018 that came up empty, but it's got new underwater robot vehicle technology that it thinks increases the likelihood of discovering MH370. be truly one of the most perplexing mysteries of our time. They still have no clue what happened to

this plane. It's crazy. I mean, here we are a decade later still talking about the search for this airplane, which one just goes to show how gripping of a mystery it truly is, but also how relevant of an issue it still is to this day, because you need to find this plane so you can help prevent a plane from going, missing in the future. Also, it's just closer for the families as well. But again, you need to ensure this doesn't happen again. In the only way that you can truly do that is to find the actual aircraft. So even though it's a decade later, even though you might be saying, oh, it's futile at this point, we have new technology now, so let's resume the search and see if we can find this unsolved mystery. That is exactly what

families are framing this search as they're saying, yes, it would be closure for us, but really, this is about the future of airline safety, so something like MH370 doesn't happen again. Toby, we've gone down the rabbit hole for what happened to this, and there are so many theories ranging from very outlandish conspiracies from the U.S. government shooting it down to Putin, shooting it down, to it getting hijacked and landing on a remote island, to more plausible things like perhaps the pilot committing a mass murder suicide that has been floated, though. There is absolutely no evidence. In the pilot's profile, he's a very senior member. There was absolutely nothing on his resume or any of his experience that would point to this. But it is true that this

plane lost contact with anybody 38 minutes, and as it was flying up to Beijing, it took a very steep turn back over Malaysia that could only have been done manually. So for some reason, the pilot or somebody did turn around this plane to go over Malaysia. Perhaps it was to make an emergency landing. That's one of the theories. But we still don't know. We do know that it was flying for six hours down into the southern Indian Ocean. There are so many different tiny details in this case that every time you hear a new one, you're like, oh, that could explain it. I mean, the deviations in-flight path, the fact that satellite transmissions went offline, then resumed for those six hours. There's the thing that maybe it glided after fuel exhaustion or it went

into an uncontrollable died. The captain had a flight simulator at home that was plotting out different routes. And then the fact that he didn't read back the radio frequency, as was procedure in his last radio transmission. So again, this is a rabbit hole that the further down that you want to go, there's always more and more to it. So just very interesting. My idea is let's send the guy who found Amelia Earhart's plane to look for this plane as well because, I mean, it just goes to show you how long the ocean can kind of hold on to secrets for because, I mean, Amelia Earhart crashed in 1937 and we just maybe found her plane. So MH370 could be another one of those kind of decades-long histories. I mean, the Titanic wasn't found until 1985 and that was more than 70 years after it sunk. The

is this southern Indian Ocean is so inhospitable. It's so vast. Just when you think you're searching for the right place, maybe you're not and you need to find another area. So I hope they find it, but it does seem like a very tall task. Let's move on. There has been some crazy weather in two very different parts of the country disrupting everything from the ski industry to cattle ranching that we need to talk about. Wildfires in Texas and massive snowstorms in the Sierra Nevada's have smashed into the two most populous states in the country, leaving a trail of destruction in their wake. In Texas, a fire that started in a panhandle county has grown to become the largest in the state's

history, burning over a million acres, and as of yesterday was still only about 15% contained. Meanwhile, in California, a days-long blizzard has blasted parts of the state with feet of snow, wind gusts of reaching 190 miles per hour, and even a tornado. It's likely that four to 12 feet of snow has fallen across the Sierra Nevada's in the last three days with more on the way. She had another sign that El Nino combined with the growing effects of climate change is leading to one of the more extreme weather years in recent memory. Neil, it's not just that these storms are massively disrupting people's lives and properties. They are also upending entire industries as well. They are.

I mean, when you look at snow in the mountains, you're probably thinking, oh, hey, this is going to be an incredible ski day. I need to get over to Mammoth or Tahoe. But the problem is there's too much snow. It's completely paralyzing life out there. If you've seen videos this weekend of Donner Pass, it is a complete, I can't say it on the podcast, but it's completely frozen over. There's blizzards disrupting travel. They've closed 100 miles of I-80. People are getting stranded. Locals in Tahoe are like, yeah, we're used to this, but it has completely paralyzed travel and forced numerous ski resorts to close down. Yeah, when you're getting so much snow, it's Fortunately, the ski resource to close down, you know that that is a lot of snow.

If we just zoom out to the U.S. ski industry in general, it's been going through a tough time. There's been a recent study that it's lost $5 billion over the past two decades due to increasingly a lack of snow on mountain ranges. So now we're seeing both ends of the spectrum, extreme snow, extreme not snow. If we also shift gears to Texas a little bit, the fires in Texas have been spreading across. It's really been disrupting the cattle industry. One, because it's mostly burning grazing land that really, it's basically tender because it's dried grass, sweeping through a lot of the cattle. And then also tens of thousands of livestock have likely been burned in the wildfires as well.

And Texas is the place where the cattle industry dominates. Had 12 million cattle at the start of last year. And it just produces 85 percent. 85 percent of the state's herd is in the panhandle as well. So it's an extremely vulnerable part that is under kind of seeds by these wildfires. And each of these cows cost about $3,000. So the ranchers there are going to be financially wrecked from them, but it's super sad. The most immediate concern right now is to find water and food for these cattle because, as you said, everything is completely burned.

And meanwhile, just in nationally, the cattle inventory is at its lowest level since 1951. So people are probably like, is this going to lead to a spike in beef prices? and this does seem to be contained to this local area, but obviously it's financially devastating for them. Okay, before we jump into the next part of our show, we're going to take a quick break. Study and play. Come together on a Windows 11 PC.

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Kayak, got that right. Welcome to our winners of the weekend, the segment where Toby and I share two things from the week's news that fell asleep last night, grinning ear to ear. Toby, you won the pre-show IKEA Bookshelf Construction Race, so you get to go first. My winner of the weekend is Dune, too. So I saw this movie last night, and I certainly was not the only one. Dune open to the biggest box office hall since the Barbie movie pulling in $81.5 million in its opening weekend. IMAX once again did an outsized share of the heavy lifting, bringing in 23% of domestic ticket sales.

How about this quote? The only reason it wasn't higher is we ran out of seats. That's from Rich Gelfon, the CEO of IMAX. I'm so happy this movie did well, Neil One, because it's another one of those movies that just has to be experienced on a full screen. so it means theaters are getting a much-needed boost. And two, I love the first tune in the book, so I'm pumped that this movie was also great. After all the hype and word of mouth, I do feel like I need to see it, but I do want to see it on IMAX. And apparently, I won't be able to get a seat for another few weeks.

There were actually 3.15 a.m. showings at Lincoln Square in New York City that people went to because everywhere else was sold out. This is one of my biggest regrets. I did not see it in IMAX. And even more so than the Oppenheimer of the Worlds, I think, that this movie deserves to be seen in iMacs, one just from the visuals, but also the audio. You need to feel it in your chest when it starts doing like that, that Dune soundtrack that we've heard. So fantastic movie. And what I also have been seeing is I've noticed it's kind of transcended from the niche

cultural moment that the first Dune movie had. It was still affected by the pandemic. Dune has long been kind of for more hardcore sci-fine fantasy people. but this movie, I think, is going to escape into the broader culture, and we're already seeing that just word of mouth and how strong the box office was. And I can't think of a better movie to do it. It truly was an amazing film. I called it a film there.

This is Toby Review Hour. No, it's a big boost for the box office, which is pacing 18% behind last year. And maybe it's because there's been no big movies that came out recently. Dune was supposed to come out, June 2 was supposed to come out last November, but it got delayed due to the writers and actors, they couldn't promote it, and now they could promote it. And they've been on a massive promotional tour, and it's working out. And Timothy Shalameh, what can you say?

He's one of the most bankable stars in Hollywood right now. It was so funny to every scene I would point out to him, we go, that's Wanka on the screen right there. Let's really walk you go right there. All right, my winner is Caitlin Clark, the Iowa Hawkeye, who seems to shatter college basketball records week after week. Yesterday, Clark set perhaps the most impressive record of all when she passed Pete Marevich to become the all-time leading score in Langell. NCAA Division I history, women's or men's. The frenzy around Clark this year has been almost

indescribable. The game yesterday against Ohio State was the priciest women's basketball game ever with the cheapest tickets to get in to the Iowa City arena going for over $400 and the most expensive topping $5,000. rapper Travis Scott could probably afford it and he was in attendance to watch who he called one of the greatest humans of all time. Clark will tell you the most important outcome of the game was that Iowa beat Ohio State to state. secure the two seed going into the Big Ten tournament this week. Oh, and that Big Ten tournament, it's completely sold out, the first sellout in its history. I mean, it is crazy how big she's become. We're running out of ways to describe the Caitlin Clark effect, but one of the

funniest parts of this particular game was the pregame host MC held an on-court interview with two of her cousins. That is a megastar stuff. When you're bringing out the first and second cousins to get a unique inside, a unique quote on Caitlin Clark, that shows that you're, you've reached megastar status. Also, you mentioned Travis Scott. He was there. He walked in the arena. The first person he dapped up was Jake from State Farm, which is just so many collisions.

World's colliding. Yeah, world's colliding there all around Caitlin Clark. So I think that pointing to people who have been drawn into orbit just shows how big that pull of gravity really is. Totally. And this is her farewell tour because last week she declared for the WMBA trap. She did have one more year of eligibility at Iowa, but she's going, Pro. And the Indiana Fever are, who have the number one pick, are probably so excited to have her.

Yeah, they're already advertising. They're season tickets. And I think everyone knows why. Let's move on. Big news for anyone who ever used to suck helium out of balloons at birthday parties to talk in that funny little voice. Your bit can continue because drillers just rediscovered what might be the biggest reservoir of helium gas in North America in a Minnesota wilderness this past week. It's not just the size of the reservoir that has scientists fired up. It's also the purity. The helium concentration was measured at 12.4%, which is roughly 30 times the industry standard for commercial helium. Now, you might only think of helium as a thing that enables that funny voice that I was describing earlier, but it's actually one of the more sought-after gases in the world because in its liquid form, it's among the safest and most stable coolants out there used in various

machines in the medical field, including MRIs. And now we have a whole lot more of it. We do. I mean, it's getting a little hairy there because scientists estimated we have anywhere from 10 to maybe 200 years of helium left. It's a non-renewable resource. It's also a part of a geopolitical game because there, Russia makes it and Cotter makes it. The U.S. used to be the largest exporter. So it's very important to have our own domestic supply. And there were concerns there that we were running out or selling it off to private interest. So the fact that we found a huge helium deposit and we're going to gauge whether we're able to actually extract from it and make a plant is actually huge dues. I'm pumped. Yeah, I do want to go back

to that purity number too because this discovery came in at 12.4%. Scientists were calling that a absolute dream. Put that in perspective, helium concentrations above 0.3% are considered economically viable. So that 30x number is something that is something that has scientists, researchers. It's so funny to say that they're fired up about it. They are. People were literally pumping their fists when they measured the concentration of this. I also said rediscovered, because it is interesting, this deposit was originally kind of stumbled upon back in 2011. I have no real idea why it took this long to kind of revisit this location. Maybe in 2011, there wasn't as much of a shortage as there was today. And also helium is usually found as

a byproduct of looking for other things like oil or natural gas. So it might not have been what the people who originally found it were looking for. But still, helium, very pumped up. But also, I mean, this is, it's a big deal for the U.S. government because they have a reserve called the Federal Helium Reserve, which is 500 miles of pipeline full of helium. It extends from Oklahoma to Kansas to Texas. It is this massive reserve. And in 1996, Congress said, you have to sell off all the helium to, you know, away from the government. You have to privatize it and get a company to buy because we don't want the government to own all of this helium anymore. That raised a lot of concerns among people in industries like medicine and national security who need helium to

operate and they were worried about the supply chain. Now the Biden administration has said, maybe we shouldn't auction off all of this helium. So the helium supply chain is actually very critical and this federal helium reserve is a big piece of that. And we'll see what what happens with that. Okay, let's move on to our. our week ahead preview to get you prepared for this very, very busy first full week of March. First up, tomorrow night is the State of the Union address where Joe Biden will sell America on Joe Biden. With the president trailing likely GOP candidate Donald Trump in most polls, Biden's going to try

to win over voters by touting a strong U.S. economy, floating more taxes on the wealthy and corporations, and promoting a unity agenda that focuses on topics like fentanyl and ending cancer. Toby, over under applause. One minute, 43 seconds. I'm taking the under on the applause. Remember, last day of the union, Biden kind of went off script, started jousting with Republicans a little bit.

I wonder if we're going to see some of that off-scriptness or because it kind of left voters feeling more energized when he mixes it up with people. That is the secondary objective of this is to show that, hey, I've got the vitality to run again. So that's what a lot of people are going to be looking at. How does Joe Biden come across just as a leader? True.

France could make history today because lawmakers, are expected to vote in favor of adding an amendment to the country's constitution that would guarantee abortion rights. And if the amendment is passed, France will become the first country in the world to include the right to an abortion in its constitution. That was genuinely one of those facts that you read. And I said ha to myself because I did not expect that to be the first country in the world. France makes sense in terms of the countries that would add it. But that's a good trivia fact this morning. It is. It could happen. It's directly spurred by the Roe v. Wade's scrapping by the U.S. Supreme Court two years ago. The Oscars are on Sunday, Oppenheimer,

which is cleaned up in all the other award shows, is the heavy favorite to win Best Picture and other top honors, including Best Director, Best Lead Actor and Best Supporting Actor. As for the telecast itself, Ryan Gosling is going to perform I Am Ken, which is one of two songs from Barbie nominated for Best Original Song, and Jimmy Kimmel will host for the fourth time, putting him into a tie with Jack Lemon and Whoopi Goldberg for the fourth most times hosting. That'd be a heck of a dinner party. My prediction, because I know you asked, Neil, Bradley Cooper wins best actor.

No way. I don't know. I've read this one article that was like, just give it to him, and now I'm fully on bar with it. I haven't even seen Maestro, but we'll see if that comes true. Emma Stone, I think wins for poor things. And I think get this Oppenheimer wins best picture. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

Well, we have Super Tuesday tomorrow, and 15 U.S. states are heading to the polls. This is typically a huge day on the election calendar, but because Trump is romping, it's not as meaningful as it has been in the past. Yeah, not so super. That's all I can come over. Not so super Tuesday. Honestly, not your worst. Lots going on in the econ world, too.

We have Jerome Powell making his twice a year trek to Capitol Hill to testify in front of lawmakers. And his message is unexpected to change. The Fed is not rushing to cut interest rates. And that's because the economy is still humming along. The jobs report on Friday is expected to show little change to the super low, 3.7% unemployment rate. I think Jay Pows testifying in Capitol Hill, there's going to be a lot of words coming out of his mouth, but not a lot will be said, hopefully the opposite of this podcast.

I think that's your goal anytime you're testifying in front of Congress. Say a lot, but don't say anything. Exactly. Okay, let's wrap it up there. We are off to the races this week. Before you know it, it's going to be Friday again. If you have any feedback on the show, don't hesitate to send it to our email address, Morning Brew Daily at MorningBrew.com.

Just don't sign off with cheers. That's all I ask. Aw. Let's roll. Are you a cheers guy? I like cheers. It's pretty happy. Okay.

Let's, I guess we never email each other. Let's roll the credits, and you notice some people got promoted. Emily Milliron is our executive producer. Raymond Liu is our producer. Yuchinawa Ogu is our technical director. Billy Minino is on audio, hair and makeup is just getting out of a 3.15 a.m. Dune 2 showing. Devin Emery is our chief content officer and our show is a production of Morning Brew.

Great show today, Neil. Let's run it back tomorrow. Yamava Resort and Casino at San Manuel is California's number one entertainment destination for today's superstars. Catch the Jonas Brothers return to the Yamava Theater stage on April 30th, the powerful vocals of Demi Lovato on May 17th, and the signature Southern Country Rock of Eric Church on July 19th. Tickets on sale now at Yamavat Theater.com, only at Yamava Resort and Casino, celebrating its 40th anniversary.

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