After three weeks of testimony that has shed new light on some of Silicon Valley’s biggest names, the Musk v. Altman jury trial is finally coming to a close.
OpenAI wrapped up its case on Wednesday. Closing arguments are scheduled for Thursday morning, and the jury is expected to start deliberations thereafter.
Musk has accused OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Greg Brockman of “looting” the charity they founded together in 2015. OpenAI says Musk’s claims are driven by “jealousy” and that he left the company in 2018 after failing to gain control.
On Wednesday, OpenAI trotted out a string of executives who painted a picture of a company that had no choice but to partner with a tech giant like Microsoft to compete with rivals like Google and Anthropic.
See what was revealed during the jury’s last day of testimony in this blockbuster case, which has the potential to reshape the AI landscape.
OpenAI’s “futurist” recalls ‘tense exchange’ where Elon Musk called him a ‘jackass’
Joshua Achiam, OpenAI’s chief futurist, was probably the most memorable witness of the day. He told jurors about a companywide meeting where Musk answered questions about his planned departure from OpenAI in 2018.
Musk told the crowd of 50 or 60 people that he was leaving OpenAI to start his own competing AI. He said he wanted to “build it very fast, because he was very worried that someone else, if they got it, would do the wrong thing with it,” Achiam said.
Achaim said he challenged Musk on the safety of this approach, which he called “unsafe and reckless.”
“How did Musk respond,” OpenAI’s lawyer Randall Jackson asked.
“Defensively,” Achiam said. “We had a pretty tense exchange, and he snapped and called me a jackass.”
OpenAI’s lawyers sought to prove the ‘jackass’ exchange — with evidence
In an effort to prove Achiam’s story, OpenAI’s lawyers brought a trophy to court that the futurist said he received after his heated exchange with Musk.
On the witness stand, Achiam described the trophy as “a small golden jackass, inscribed with: ‘never stop being a jackass for safety.'” He said his then-colleagues, Dario Amodei and David Luan, gave it to him as a thank-you for standing up to the Tesla CEO.
Lead OpenAI attorney William Savitt told reporters after the day’s session that Wednesday had been the first time he’d touched the statue.
The futurist had to do without the visual aid, however. Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers did not accept the trophy as evidence, so it did not appear before the jury.
OpenAI turned a Musk expert’s testimony against him
Musk and Altman have presented dueling experts on a question at the core of the trial — was the nonprofit that runs OpenAI hurt or helped by its $13 billion partnership with Microsoft?
Musk’s expert testified last week that the partnership was indeed hurt, supporting the Tesla CEO’s contention that in partnering with Microsoft, OpenAI betrayed the company’s nonprofit origins and mission.
But on Thursday, OpenAI’s expert, John Coates, used Musk’s expert’s own pie chart and testimony against him.
The partnership has “generated value for the nonprofit that I believe he himself accepted was in the $200 billion range in his own testimony,” Coates said, referencing Musk expert Daniel Schizer.
“If that’s not faring well, I don’t know what faring well is.”
Microsoft’s CTO once questioned how Reid Hoffman would feel about it partnering with OpenAI
In a scored point for Musk, the jury learned Thursday that Microsoft’s own CTO once raised concerns about how OpenAI’s early nonprofit donors, including LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman, would react to a partnership.
“I wonder if the big OpenAI donors are aware of these plans,” Chief Technology Officer Kevin Scott said in a 2018 email he was asked to read aloud to jurors.
In it, Scott said he doubted donors would appreciate OpenAI using their seed money to “go build a for-profit thing.”
Scott was being questioned by an OpenAI lawyer, who may have wanted jurors to quickly hear Scott’s explanation: that he only had a “vague awareness” of what was happening at OpenAI at the time.
Scott also told the jury he wasn’t thinking about Musk when he made the remark.
“Primarily, I was thinking about Reid Hoffman. He was the OpenAI donor I knew,” Scott said, adding, “I wasn’t thinking about anyone besides him.”
OpenAI lawyers hit rewind on damning depos to make their case
Last week, Musk’s lawyers played a series of videotaped depositions from former OpenAI board members and executives who complained about Altman, including the “culture of lying” they say he created at OpenAI.
On Wednesday, OpenAI’s lawyers hit play on some of the same tapes to make a different point: Those same people supported the ChatGPT maker’s partnerships with Microsoft, which is at the heart of Musk’s claims.
“We realized this was the best path forward for building what OpenAI was deciding to build,” former board member Tasha McCauley said about OpenAI’s 2019 deal with Microsoft. She made similar statements about Microsoft’s 2023 investment in OpenAI.
Altman critic Mira Murati also described OpenAI’s dealings with Microsoft as in line with the company’s mission.
“Do you think investments gave Microsoft undue control over OpenAI,” the lawyer asked Murati, a former OpenAI board member.
“No,” she said.
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