Interestingly, during the trial he promised to donate any potential financial winnings to OpenAI's charity.

A move that surprisingly didn't get much press.

I think you are referring to a tweet on March 16th where he said "Btw, the proceeds of any legal victory in the OpenAI case will be donated to charity. I will in no way enrich myself." Not during the trial, not a donation to OpenAI's charity, and obviously not meaningful given his track record of not following through on public statements.

It was official, he amended the lawsuit to codify it, read it for yourself: https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Musk-...

Thanks, couldn't find this. This is essentially a proposal to the court about how the case could be resolved though, not a promise, and he only proposed it after the judge denied his original proposal (https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Musk-...), which was "give me $134 billion". I think it would have been a little more credible if he had requested this originally.

Even taking it at face value, it's just an idea for the judge to consider, not legally binding for anybody.

Putting it into a filing does not necessarily make it legally binding. I asked ChatGPT and (although it is clearly in the bag for OpenAI ;) it gave more color: https://chatgpt.com/share/6a0baf4a-e408-83ea-a44b-ff68bacb64...

I genuinely don't know how to make a non-sarcastic statement about Mr. Elon Musk's promises.

I especially struggle to not make a Venn diagram of people who still take Mr. Musk's promises seriously, and current state of American politics.

I simply cannot make a sentence about Mr. Musks promises that will pass Hacker News guidelines of being serious and productive.

...And that's how I feel about Mr. Musks promises, particularly those regarding donations and charities. I think the only way that promise by Mr Musk could've been made stronger, is if it were a Twitter poll :).

You’ve written around the existence of pronouns with impressive determination.

Each buck we spend is a vote for a business (which is a bag of ideals and methods) It is surprising that people apparently desire a future where they don't even have to bother listening to those in charge as every word is completely irrelevant. I had considered they don't understand capitalism is quite open to influence but they also do it in elections.

Elon Musk promises a lot of things that never come to fruition.

Have we colonized Mars yet? Asking for a friend.

I don't understand this thinking at all.

I share all the disillusionment and cynicism about Musk, shared here by others.

But he has also done amazing things. When someone declares they are going to create a Martian colony, something literally "out of this world", and against all odds makes unbelievable progress for years, including re-usable rockets that return and land vertically, more efficient powerful engines, and fast operational turnarounds, while making orbital travel mundane, hanging a criticism of schedules on the weak hook of "yet" is myopic.

There will never be a colony on Mars. Not in the way we think about "colonies".

For starters it's too cold, too dry, atmosphere is too thin, and there's no reasonably sustainable power source.

But all of that is irrelevant because there's no magnetic field. So radiation. So unlivable.

There's also no point in a colony there. If life ends on earth it ends on Mars. There are no materials there we want. It offers exactly nothing we can't do better here, for much less money.

Will we land on Mars? Sure. There's always the goal of being first. But live there? No. Unsupported by earth? Very much no.

People don’t look at the complexity of a human character. They take the easiest extreme and run with it. I was on another HN thread where practically everyone was calling Elon a psychopath.

If you think objectively Elon is not a psychopath.