Showdown between Musk and Altman has rendered the world’s most wealthy comical under egalitarian eye of court
For the past couple of weeks, on the fourth floor of a courthouse on a quiet street in downtown Oakland, the world’s richest man and one of the world’s most valuable startups have been at war over the future of artificial intelligence.
Being one of the reporters in the room has felt like watching an updated, opposite-coast version of Tom Wolfe’s The Bonfire of the Vanities – ambition, ego, greed and the spectrum of social class on full display. The supporting cast has included Elon Musk fanboys, a stern judge and a who’s-who of Silicon Valley’s most influential people.
All courtroom battles are theatre, but this one has proved to be a unique spectacle, with the judge chastising the lawyers for leading the witness, raising meritless objections and even too much coughing. With Musk on the stand, he griped that an opposing attorney had asked a leading question, to which the judge told him to “tell the jury you’re not a lawyer”. He dutifully followed instructions, but then quickly quipped: “I did take Law 101”. The public burst out laughing.
The trial centers on Musk accusing Silicon Valley’s fastest-rising upstarts, Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, of deceiving and swindling him by founding OpenAI as a non-profit in 2015 and then converting it to a for-profit company without him. Musk alleges that once Altman and Brockman got millions of his investment money, they flipped the script and made OpenAI into an extremely valuable startup – unjustly enriching themselves and the company.
