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Elon Musk’s Confidante Is Cast as His Inside Source at OpenAI
Shivon Zilis worked closely with Elon Musk while she was on OpenAI’s board. Her ties to the world’s richest man were detailed in a landmark trial on Wednesday.

1d agoBy Cade Metz and Mike Isaac
After Microsoft invested $10 billion in OpenAI in early 2023, Elon Musk said in a social media post that OpenAI was “effectively controlled” by the tech giant.

Shivon Zilis, a confidante of Mr. Musk who had spent years working for his companies and had approved the Microsoft deal as a member of OpenAI’s board of directors, disagreed.

“You are naïve,” he told her.

Ms. Zilis, who is also the mother of four of Mr. Musk’s children, described her private conversation with the world’s richest man during testimony on Wednesday in a blockbuster trial in an Oakland, Calif., federal court that pits Mr. Musk against OpenAI and its chief executive, Sam Altman.

Mr. Musk sued OpenAI two years ago, accusing the artificial intelligence company of breaching its founding contract by putting commercial gain over the public good. He founded OpenAI as a nonprofit in 2015 with Mr. Altman and a group of A.I.

Protecting an Open Internet
How can we encourage the protection of an open internet?An open internet is critical to functioning, free societies. As governments around the world turn their attention to issues of internet governance — including efforts to tackle disinformation and protect user data — the risk of fragmented internet experiences increases. Some policies deliberately create fragmentation, and some policies result in fragmentation as an unintended consequence.

Policy deliberation: It is important that policy frameworks address the distinctions among different forms of fragmentation, the (limited) scenarios in which content fragmentation is justified and how to minimize the impact of fragmentation. To discourage fragmentation, internet regulation can focus on a number of intermediate goals, such as:

Distributing power outside of governments and governmental organizations
Discouraging corporate consolidation
Promoting individual rights, especially regarding encrypted and personal data
Promoting open and transparent standards that don’t lock people or publishers into specific platforms
Regulations should also account for the global nature of the internet, particularly when it comes to the rights of journalists — and the public — to communicate and share information within and across borders.

Journalistic concerns: Internet blocks and shutdowns make it challenging for news providers to both report and distribute their work. They also limit the public’s ability to access a range of information above and beyond what their government selects. An open internet is particularly important for people to access online-only and online-first media. In some cases, independent media can help raise awareness about internet censorship and technical issues that threaten an open internet.
Governance: Tech stakeholders can help protect a free and open internet by incorporating encryption into their products by default, participating in multistakeholder governance processes and supporting interoperable standards. Interoperability means that devices, platforms and applications made by different companies can work together, which in turn gives end-users more choice.

Artificial Intelligence in Journalism
How do we enable the benefits and manage the harms of artificial intelligence in journalism?CNTI’S Assessment
The impact of AI is massive and widespread, and the landscape is changing rapidly. We are already seeing impacts for news reporting, circulation and consumption. Taking advantage of the benefits while limiting the harms will require a careful balancing act in our deeply complex information environment. For newsrooms, the use of generative AI tools offers benefits for productivity and innovation. At the same time, it risks inaccuracies, ethical issues and undermining public trust.

Policy deliberation: Legislation will need to offer clear and consistent definitions of AI categories, grapple with the repercussions of AI-generated content for copyright and civil liberties and offer accountability for violations. The Artificial Intelligence and Data Act (AIDA)’s failure to pass in Canada also suggests that deliberations will need to include avenues for meaningful public participation.

Public understanding: As newsrooms implement AI, they need to remember that while communicating about how they are using AI is important, transparency alone is not enough. The public largely lacks a nuanced understanding of journalistic practices and they need that context to make sense of AI. That means transparency initiatives must be broader than initially conceived and include information about human journalists’ work.