Oakland – Tech moguls Elon Musk and Sam Altman are about to face off in a high-stakes trial revolving around the alleged betrayal, deceit and unbridled ambition that clouded the bickering billionaires’ once shared vision for the development of artificial intelligence.
The trial, which is scheduled to begin Monday with jury selection, centers on the 2015 birth of ChatGPT maker OpenAI as a nonprofit startup primarily funded by Musk before evolving into a capitalist company now valued at $852 billion.
The outcome of the trial could include the balance of power in the field of artificial intelligence, a revolutionary technology that is increasingly feared as a potential job killer and existential threat to the survival of humanity.
These perceived risks are some of the reasons that Musk, the richest person in the world, gives for filing a lawsuit in August 2024 that will now be decided by a jury and US District Judge Yvonne González Rogers in Oakland (California).
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The civil suit accuses Altman, OpenAI’s CEO, and his top lieutenant, Greg Brockman, of betraying Musk by deviating from the San Francisco company’s founding mission of being altruistic stewards of a revolutionary technology. The lawsuit alleges that they were engaged in making money behind his back.
OpenAI has rejected Musk’s accusations as an unfounded case of hard feelings intended to undermine its rapid growth and bolster Musk’s own xAI, which it launched in 2023 as a competitor.
The trial promises competing testimonies from two technological titans
Musk, who invested about $38 million in OpenAI from December 2015 to May 2017, was initially seeking more than $100 billion in damages.
But the damages are now likely to be much smaller following a series of pretrial rulings that went against Musk. Musk has since given up seeking damages for himself and is instead requesting an unspecified amount of money to fund the altruistic efforts of OpenAI’s charitable arm. The money would be paid primarily by OpenAI’s for-profit operations and Microsoft, which became the company’s largest investor after Musk cut off its funding.
Musk’s lawsuit also seeks Altman’s ouster from the OpenAI board. Musk’s decision to stop funding the company contributed to a bitter disagreement between the former allies. Musk says he was responding to deceptive conduct that OpenAI’s board picked up on when it fired Altman as CEO in 2023 before he got his job back days later.
But the trial also carries risks for Musk, who last month was found liable by another jury for defrauding investors during his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter in 2022. Any damaging details about Musk and his business tactics could be especially damaging now because his rocket maker, SpaceX, plans to go public this summer in an initial public offering that could make him the world’s first trillionaire.
Either way, the trial is expected to be a fascinating spectacle, with conflicting testimony from two of the most influential and polarized figures in technology: Musk, 54, and Altman, 41.
“Part of it is whether a jury believes the people who are going to testify and whether they are credible,” González Rogers said during a court hearing earlier this year, while explaining why he believed the case deserved a trial. The judge will make the final decision on the case, while the jury will have an advisory role.
Evidence has included glimpses of the early days of AI’s career.
Musk, whose fortune is estimated at about $780 billion, has long been hailed as a visionary for his role in creating digital payments pioneer PayPal, electric car maker Tesla and rocket maker SpaceX. But he has also drawn criticism for his comments on social media, his broken promises about Tesla’s self-driving technology and his role in cost-cutting last year in President Donald Trump’s administration.
Some of Musk’s erratic behavior has been linked to allegations of hallucinogenic drug use, but Gonzalez Rogers ruled that he cannot be asked during the trial about his alleged ketamine use. But the judge is allowing Musk to be questioned about his attendance at the 2017 Burning Man festival in Nevada, a free celebration known for widespread drug use. The judge is also allowing Musk to be questioned about his relationship with former OpenAI board member Shivon Zilis, the mother of several of his children.
Altman, who is currently worth about $3 billion, did not enter the public consciousness until the launch of ChatGPT in late 2022. The technological boom unleashed by that conversational chatbot has led some to compare Altman to a 21st century version of the inventor of the nuclear bomb, J. Robert Oppenheimer.
Although Altman was initially hailed as a pioneer, he now faces criticism over the potential dangers of AI. Earlier this month, the magazine New Yorker published a profile that described him as an unscrupulous executive. Days later, a 20-year-old man concerned about the effect of AI on humanity was arrested for attempted murder after throwing a Molotov cocktail at Altman’s home in San Francisco.
Altman and Musk’s dueling testimonies are expected to open a window into some of the ideas that helped spark the AI race, as well as the breakdown of their friendship. The kinship was forged in 2015, when they agreed to build AI in a more responsible and safer way than the for-profit companies controlled by Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, according to evidence presented before the trial.
The details of the bitter rift between the two men were captured in a February 2023 email exchange that came to light as part of the evidence that led to the trial.
After letting Musk know that “you’re my hero,” Altman tells him, “I’m tremendously grateful for everything you’ve done to help — I don’t think OpenAI would have happened without you — and it really (expletive) hurts when you publicly attack OpenAI.”
This story was translated from English to Spanish with an artificial intelligence tool and was reviewed by an editor before publication.