Elon Musk vs OpenAI Trial, Google Cloud Surge, Meta’s Blocked Acquisition, Anthropic Winning

About this episode

The episode discusses the Musk v. OpenAI trial, the AI race, and various cultural trends.

This week on More or Less, the crew kicks off with a very on-brand derail—Stagecoach turning into a wind-blown 90s reunion-turned-half-capacity vibe, segueing into a chaotic trend report of “booty shorts vs. jorts” before Jessica reframes it as “OpenAI or jorts.” From there, it’s into the real storylines: the Musk v. OpenAI trial in Oakland (Altman and Brockman showing up, Musk posturing, and the judge shutting down theatrics), and whether it’s substance or just WWE for tech. The AI race heats up with reports of ChatGPT missing targets while Anthropic pulls ahead, sparking a broader debate on whether frontier models are sliding into commodity territory—Sam argues narrative over fundamentals while Dave pushes on open-source pressure and who actually foots the data center bill. The conversation expands into geopolitics (regulatory capture, China’s open-source momentum, Meta’s blocked agent play) and earnings (Google Cloud riding Anthropic demand), landing on a sneaky insight: AI’s real cost explosion might be storage, not tokens. They close with a rapid-fire culture sweep—Maria Sharapova’s podcast, NYT rankings, Elon’s Mars comp fantasy, Met Gala backlash, and the final punchline…

People in this episode

Hosts: Sam Lessin, Jessica Lessin, Dave Morin

Topics covered

• Elon Musk
• OpenAI trial
• AI race
• Google Cloud
• Meta acquisition
• geopolitics
• cultural trends

Keywords

• Elon Musk
• OpenAI
• Google Cloud
• Anthropic
• Meta
• AI race
• geopolitics
• cultural trends

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: OpenAI, Meta, Google Cloud, Anthropic

Books & works: Maria Sharapova’s podcast

Places: China

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