The legal battle between Elon Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman traces back to a period when they agreed on a critical goal: safeguarding humanity from the potential dangers posed by artificial intelligence.
That partnership fell apart, and now a jury must resolve the bitter legal conflict between these two tech powerhouses.
Yet even as the trial unfolds, urgent questions about AI’s risks continue to hang over the Oakland, California federal courtroom. The technology itself isn’t directly under scrutiny — the judge has cautioned attorneys not to become “sidetracked” by debates over its hazards — but testimony from witnesses has explored worries about job losses and Musk’s stark warning that superintelligent AI could one day wipe out the human race.
Musk, the world’s wealthiest individual, brought the lawsuit, alleging that Altman, his fellow OpenAI co-founder, broke commitments to maintain the company as a nonprofit venture. Altman, in return, claims Musk is attempting to undermine the company behind ChatGPT to give his own AI firm a competitive edge.
One witness, renowned AI researcher Stuart Russell, argued that this “winner takes all” tug-of-war over AI’s future poses a threat to humanity all on its own.
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Musk’s legal team called Russell to testify as an expert witness, paying him $5,000 per hour. The UC Berkeley computer scientist outlined a wide array of AI-related harms, spanning racial and gender bias, widespread job losses, the spread of false information, and the psychological toll on some chatbot users who descend into delusional thinking after forming emotional bonds with AI.
“Whoever builds AGI first would hold an enormous advantage” and extend that lead further and further ahead of the competition, Russell explained in court. AGI, or artificial general intelligence, refers to next-generation AI capable of outperforming humans across a broad range of tasks.
A judge’s warning hasn’t kept AI risk discussions out of the courtroom
The case centers on OpenAI’s founding in 2015 as a nonprofit startup largely bankrolled by Musk.
Both Musk and Altman — who has yet to take the stand — have insisted their vision was for OpenAI to develop AGI safely, for the good of all humankind rather than for any single person’s profit or dominance. Each side insists it’s the other one who was really trying to seize control.
A nine-person jury drawn from the San Francisco Bay Area will ultimately decide whose version of events holds up.
From the start, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers cautioned the legal teams, especially Musk’s attorneys, to steer clear of broader AI safety concerns that fall outside the scope of Musk’s allegations about OpenAI straying from its charitable purpose.
“This is not a trial about the safety risks of artificial intelligence. This is not a trial about whether or not AI has harmed humanity,” Gonzalez Rogers told the lawyers before jurors entered the courtroom.
Even so, Musk found a way to work those themes into his testimony last week. When asked to define artificial general intelligence, Musk described it as the point when AI reaches “the same intelligence level as any human,” adding that “we’re approaching that threshold” and predicting AI could outpace humans as early as next year.
Musk said he harbors “extreme concerns” about AI and has held them for years. He explained he wanted to establish a “counterbalance” to Google, which at the time controlled “all the funding, all the computing power and all the top AI talent” with nothing to check its dominance.
“I worried AI could be a double-edged sword,” he said.
Musk and OpenAI each claim to be putting humanity first
During his time on the stand, Musk repeatedly emphasized that he could have launched OpenAI as a for-profit company, just like his other ventures. “I made that choice intentionally,” he said, “for the benefit of the public.”
The judge, however, showed a degree of skepticism. Speaking to attorneys last week before the jury entered, Gonzalez Rogers noted that Musk, “regardless of all these dangers, is launching an organization operating in the same arena,” pointing to the billionaire’s xAI startup, founded in 2023 and later merged into his aerospace company SpaceX.
OpenAI’s defense team similarly maintains that the organization’s mission is to serve the public interest. Greg Brockman, an OpenAI co-founder and president who is named alongside Altman and the company as a defendant in Musk’s suit, testified that he viewed the technology they were building as “transformative” — surpassing corporations, corporate structures and any single leader. As he put it, the effort was “about humanity as a whole.”
Brockman testified this week that guiding OpenAI’s “mission” was always his top priority, and accused Musk of seeking to exercise total authority over the organization.
Brockman recounted an initial meeting where Musk appeared receptive to Altman taking the CEO role at OpenAI. Ultimately, though, “he declared that people needed to understand he was the one calling the shots.”
Beyond financial damages, Musk is asking the court to remove Altman from OpenAI’s board of directors. A victory for Musk could throw OpenAI’s plans for a stock market debut into disarray.
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