OAKLAND, CA– in trial Featuring a clash between Elon Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, neither tech giant comes off as an overly sympathetic character. But no one has more to lose than Altman, who is expected to take the stand this week to defend himself.
Already, testimony about Altman’s turbulent tenure at ChatGPT maker has become fodder for Internet jokes. One piece of evidence that inspired countless memes was a text message exchange between Altman and a company official, Mira Moratti, in 2023 during his brief tenure. Ousted from the position of CEOWhen Altman asked if things were moving “in the right or bad direction,” she replied, “Sam, that’s too bad.”
Musk, the world’s richest man, is seeking to remove Altman for a second time from leading the company as part of a civil lawsuit accusing him of betraying their shared vision for… OpenAI. Since its beginnings as a nonprofit funded primarily by Musk, Open AI has done just that It has developed into a capitalist enterprise It is now worth $852 billion.
Even if Musk loses, Trial He called for greater scrutiny of Altman’s leadership at a pivotal time for the company and its competition with Musk’s own AI company and another competitor, Anthropic, which was formed by a group of seven former OpenAI leaders. All three companies are heading toward planned initial public offerings that are expected to be some of the largest ever.
A jury that has already heard about Altman’s character through a parade of his former allies and adversaries will ultimately decide the verdict. But the repercussions could reverberate far and wide.
“This doesn’t look good for any of them, and I think that’s a bit unfortunate for the AI industry at a time when public perception of AI has become very negative and seems to be getting worse,” said Sarah Krebs, director of the Technology Policy Institute at Cornell University.
The lawsuit accuses Altman and his assistant, Greg Brockman, of overstepping Musk by straying from the San Francisco company’s founding mission to be an altruistic steward of revolutionary technology. The suit alleges they switched to making money behind his back.
Shortly before the trial began, Musk abandoned trying to obtain damages for himself and instead is seeking an unspecified amount of money to be paid to fund the altruistic efforts of OpenAI’s charitable arm. In a text exchange with Brockman proposing a possible settlement, Musk warned that Brockman and Altman “will be the most hated men in America” as a result of the trial.
While Musk, the head of SpaceX, Tesla and a slew of other companies, was well known by jurors in the San Francisco Bay Area, few knew who Altman was before the trial began, even if they were familiar with ChatGPT.
As the trial took place in a federal courtroom in Oakland, California over the past two weeks, jurors heard from witnesses, including former OpenAI board members Helen Toner and Tasha McCauley, who spoke about the decision to fire Altman in 2023 before they were booted from the board when Altman returned to his position.
In video testimony last week, Toner said the starting point for the decision to fire Altman was when OpenAI Co-founder Ilya Sutskevera respected AI scientist, reached out to him with some of his own concerns.
“The phrase we used was ‘pattern of behavior,’ so there is no single cause,” Toner said. “A pattern of behavior related to his honesty, frankness, and resistance to board oversight.”
Sutskever was instrumental in Failed attempt to oust Altman but later said he regretted his role in the change. In his own testimony Monday, Sutskever confirmed that he wrote a 2023 memo to OpenAI’s board that described Altman as pitting his executives against each other and exhibiting a “consistent pattern of lying” that was causing a loss of trust and productivity.
Sutskever said Altman’s behavior contributed to an environment “unfavorable” to the company’s goals, including its mission of safely building artificial general intelligence. He said he later backed down and supported Altman’s reinstatement because he was concerned about what would happen to the company he had worked so hard to create and “cared so much about.”
“I felt like if I hadn’t done that, the company would have been ruined, and I felt like that was a Hail Mary,” he testified.
The trial also carries risks for Musk, who is seeking an initial public offering this summer for his rocket ship maker. SpaceXWhich could make him the world’s first trillionaire. Among the witnesses was Shivon Zillis, a former OpenAI board member who served as a conduit between Musk and OpenAI leaders and also did not disclose that Musk was the father of her young twins, according to trial testimony.
It was not until midday on Monday, in the third week of the trial, that OpenAI began calling its witnesses, starting with Brett Taylor, the current chairman of OpenAI’s board who has painted a more positive picture of Altman’s leadership.
“I think Sam has done a great job as CEO,” Taylor said. “He was honest with me and the other board members.”
Shobha Ghosh, a Syracuse University professor and expert in business and technology law, said that regardless of the outcome of the case, he has doubts about Altman remaining as CEO of OpenAI in the long term.
“A lot of this may depend on testimony,” he said. “And I don’t know what he would say or how he would say it. But even in the best of cases, like performing in movie theaters, with all the music playing and angels descending or whatever, I don’t see him coming out as somewhat of a strong leader, especially (since) this issue has come this far.”
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O’Brien contributed from Providence, Rhode Island