\n<\/p>\n
A<\/span> nine-person jury is set to decide whether Elon Musk\u2019s allegations of \u201cstealing a charity\u201d against Sam Altman and OpenAI are legitimate, with deliberations to begin in earnest on Monday. Whatever its outcome, the case has been an illuminating, at times exhausting, look behind the scenes at the history of OpenAI and how some of the most powerful figures in the tech industry operate.<\/p>\n Attorneys for both sides have introduced reams of private text messages, emails and even diary entries to support their arguments. A who\u2019s who of Silicon Valley testified in the trial, including Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and the mother of some of Musk\u2019s children, Shivon Zilis. Both Altman and Musk also took the stand for hours, facing combative cross-examinations that painted them each as untrustworthy.<\/p>\n Over the course of three weeks in an Oakland, California, federal courthouse, the trial has pit the richest person in the world against the biggest names in artificial intelligence. It has provided moments of embarrassment for both tech moguls and underscored just how bitter the feud between them has become.<\/p>\n The core of Musk\u2019s case revolves around allegations that Altman, OpenAI and its president, Greg Brockman, broke a founding agreement of the AI firm, established as a non-profit in 2015, when they later restructured it into a for-profit entity. Musk claims that he was swindled by Altman, who lured Musk in as a co-founder and took his financial backing, then twisted the company for personal gains. Musk\u2019s suit claims a breach of charitable trust and unjust enrichment by Altman and Brockman.<\/p>\n <\/span>Greg Brockman, president of OpenAI, and his wife, Anna, outside federal court in Oakland, California, on 4 May.<\/span> Photograph: Manuel Orbegozo\/Reuters<\/p>\n As the trial progressed, a mix of academic experts and tech industry bigwigs all weighed-in on Musk\u2019s allegations. Collectively, they presented two differing accounts of OpenAI\u2019s history: one where an impatient Musk left the company he knew would eventually seek profit, and another where Altman pursued power while deceiving anyone necessary in order to attain it.<\/p>\n OpenAI has denied all of Musk\u2019s allegations, arguing that not only was he aware of plans to create a for-profit entity but that he made a failed bid to take total control of the company, departed it in a huff in 2018, and founded a competitor, xAI. OpenAI has cast Musk as a sore loser in the AI race who is seeking revenge through the suit. The AI firm also maintains that its for-profit arm is still overseen by a non-profit, which its lawyers repeatedly described as one of the most well-resourced charitable organizations in the world.<\/p>\n Musk is seeking the removal of Altman and Brockman, the undoing of OpenAI\u2019s for-profit restructuring and the redistribution of $134bn from its for-profit entity to its non-profit organization. If the jury finds OpenAI is liable, the verdict could present sizable difficulties for the company, which is seeking to go public later this year at a valuation of $1tn.<\/p>\n The first marquee witness in the trial was Elon Musk himself, whose attorney called him to the stand in the opening week of proceedings. Musk testified for three consecutive days about his allegations against Altman, at times becoming combative and raising his voice during moments of frustration.<\/p>\n Musk\u2019s testimony began with friendly questioning from the Tesla CEO\u2019s lead attorney, Steven Molo, who allowed Musk to recap his career and present his story of OpenAI\u2019s beginnings. In Musk\u2019s retelling, he was the primary reason that the company ever got off the ground. He claimed the startup\u2019s founding mission to better humanity was borne out of his fear that Google could not be trusted to develop artificial intelligence. He argued that his benevolent hopes for OpenAI were dashed by a conniving Altman, who seized control of the company and abandoned its charitable mission in pursuit of profit.<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019re going to make this lawsuit very complicated, but it\u2019s actually quite simple,\u201d Musk said. \u201cWhich is: it\u2019s not OK to steal a charity. That\u2019s my view.\u201d<\/p>\n The testimony took a turn as soon as Musk\u2019s cross-examination began, with OpenAI\u2019s lead attorney, William Savitt, prodding him with rapid-fire questions about what he knew about the AI firm\u2019s for-profit plans and when he knew them. The judge cautioned Musk not to give meandering answers; at points, he became testy, once likening Savitt\u2019s questions to being asked \u201chave you stopped beating your wife\u201d, eliciting a rebuke from the bench.<\/p>\n \u201cYour questions are not simple. They are designed to trick me, essentially,\u201d Musk said to Savitt.<\/p>\n <\/span>Shivon Zilis, mother of four of Elon Musk\u2019s children, in Oakland, California, on 6 May.<\/span> Photograph: Manuel Orbegozo\/Reuters<\/p>\n Musk wasn\u2019t present for remaining parts of the trial and, despite Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers\u2019s order that he remain ready to be recalled as a witness, he joined Donald Trump this week on a diplomatic trip to China.<\/p>\n \u201cMr Musk isn\u2019t here today. My clients are,\u201d OpenAI\u2019s lawyer said during his closing arguments on Thursday. \u201cMr Musk came to this court for exactly one witness: Elon Musk. Now he\u2019s in parts unknown.\u201d Musk\u2019s lawyer sheepishly apologized for his client\u2019s absence.<\/p>\n After Musk\u2019s testimony at the start of the trial, the centibillionaire\u2019s lawyers presented several video depositions and called a series of witnesses in an attempt to show that Altman was not trustworthy in his dealings at OpenAI. Several of the company\u2019s former top executives took the stand, often being called on to rehash a five-day period in 2023 when Altman was fired by the OpenAI board before being reinstated amid a power struggle.<\/p>\n While it didn\u2019t focus on the case\u2019s granular questions of breaching a charitable trust, this portion of the trial repeatedly painted an unflattering portrait of Altman as a deceptive operator. Former chief technical officer Mira Murati described Altman as often \u201csaying one thing to one person and completely the opposite to another person\u201d, while former board member Natasha McCauley accused Altman of creating \u201crepeated crisis events\u201d through his leadership.<\/p>\n OpenAI co-founder and former chief scientist Ilya Sutskever was questioned by Musk\u2019s lawyer Molo about statements in his deposition and his concerns about Altman\u2019s dishonesty.<\/p>\n \u201cYou told the board that Altman \u2018exhibits a consistent pattern of lying, undermining his execs and pitting his execs against one another\u2019,\u201d Molo asked.<\/p>\n \u201cYes,\u201d Sutskever responded.<\/p>\n Sutskever, McCauley and Murati were all involved in the 2023 attempt to push out Altman and have since left the company.<\/p>\n When Altman took the stand in the final week of the trial, he first presented his own version of OpenAI\u2019s history and Musk\u2019s involvement. Altman argued that Musk was a difficult, erratic co-founder who demoralized staff with an aggressive management style and sought power for himself. At one point, Altman alleged, Musk wanted \u201ctotal control\u201d over the company and once suggested that power could be passed down to his children when he died.<\/p>\n Altman also took aim at Musk\u2019s mantra that his rival stole a charity, claiming that OpenAI built one of the largest charities in the world and that it was Musk who was intent on destroying it.<\/p>\n \u201cThis whole \u2018you can\u2019t steal a charity\u2019. I agree you can\u2019t steal it. Mr Musk did try to kill it,\u201d Altman said.<\/p>\n During cross-examination, Musk\u2019s lawyer again pressed Altman on whether he was trustworthy and read out earlier testimony from former colleagues denigrating his character.<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019ve repeatedly been called deceptive and a liar by people with whom you\u2019ve done business, right?\u201d Musk\u2019s lawyer asked.<\/p>\n \u201cI have heard people say that,\u201d Altman responded.<\/p>\n Beyond Musk and Altman, jurors heard from OpenAI president Brockman, Microsoft CEO Nadella and former OpenAI board member-turned Musk romantic partner Zilis. Each delivered some of the most memorable moments of the trial.<\/p>\n Nadella, who was called because Microsoft is OpenAI\u2019s primary business partner and is also accused in the suit of aiding and abetting OpenAI\u2019s breach of trust, took the stand on Monday. He discussed his own role in OpenAI\u2019s development and in one remark took a dig at the board members who tried to oust Altman in 2023 \u2013 saying that they couldn\u2019t communicate their rationale and threw the company into chaos.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was sort of amateur city, as far as I\u2019m concerned,\u201d Nadella testified. \u201cI was very worried that the employees were going to leave en masse.\u201d<\/p>\n Brockman, meanwhile, faced scrutiny over a personal diary he kept during the founding years of OpenAI and which contained entries like \u201cfinancially, what will take me to $1bn?\u201d Musk\u2019s lawyers presented the diary as proof of a callous ambition and an intent to deceive their client, while OpenAI framed it as a cherry-picked, stream-of-consciousness document that proved nothing. Either way, Brockman did not seem happy about it becoming public.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s very painful,\u201d Brockman said. \u201cIt\u2019s very deeply personal writings that weren\u2019t meant for the world to see, but there\u2019s nothing in there that I\u2019m ashamed of.\u201d<\/p>\n The trial became even more personal when Zilis, who is the mother of four of Musk\u2019s children and an executive at Neuralink, took the stand. OpenAI\u2019s lawyers accused her of acting as an insider source for Musk while she was on the board of OpenAI, funneling him information while hiding her romantic involvement with the billionaire. Zilis denied ever acting as a spy for Musk.<\/p>\n At one point in Zilis\u2019s testimony, lawyers brought up a text exchange between her and a friend after it became public that Musk was starting his own AI company in 2023 and she left OpenAI\u2019s board. Like much of the trial, it offered a glimpse of the strange reality that the world\u2019s tech elite live within.<\/p>\n \u201cE\u2019s effort has become well known,\u201d Zilis texted.<\/p>\n \u201cFuck,\u201d the friend responded. \u201cYou ok.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhen the father of your babies starts a competitive effort and will recruit out of openai there\u2019s nothing to be done,\u201d Zilis replied.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A nine-person jury is set to decide whether Elon Musk\u2019s allegations of \u201cstealing a charity\u201d against Sam Altman and OpenAI are legitimate, with deliberations to begin in earnest on Monday. Whatever its outcome, the case has been an illuminating, at times exhausting, look behind the scenes at the history of OpenAI and how some of<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":49484,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[5795,667,12277,24529,2222,91,1816,1371,5794],"class_list":{"0":"post-49483","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-crime-justice","8":"tag-altman","9":"tag-california","10":"tag-courtroom","11":"tag-cringey","12":"tag-drama","13":"tag-elon","14":"tag-learned","15":"tag-musk","16":"tag-sam"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49483","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=49483"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49483\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/49484"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=49483"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=49483"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=49483"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Musk blows up, takes off<\/h2>\n
A long list of people calling Sam Altman a liar<\/h2>\n
\u2018Amateur city\u2019, Musk\u2019s partner and a personal diary<\/h2>\n