A new scale of humiliation ritual kicked off this week as Elon Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI went to trial in Silicon Valley. The Tesla CEO, who co-founded OpenAI, is suing the artificial intelligence firm and two of its other co-founders, Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, for diverting from its original nonprofit goal of developing A.I. for the public good in favor of for-profit motives.
“This lawsuit is very simple: It is not OK to steal a charity,” Musk said on the witness stand on Tuesday.
The trial is big by every conceivable measure. Both Musk and OpenAI have mustered high-dollar legal armies who are prepared to wage potentially years of litigation, including this federal trial. Millions of dollars are being lit on fire each week it unfolds, and the fight is over sums that are similarly astronomical: Musk is seeking more than $130 billion in damages, as well as the removal of Altman and Brockman from the company, and a return of OpenAI to a pure nonprofit position. The jury’s decision could change the very future of Silicon Valley and the future of tech throughout the world forever.
But it probably won’t. Winning, at least in the legal sense, doesn’t appear to be Musk’s main goal. What the trial offers him is an opportunity: a very public forum in which to challenge OpenAI’s story, drag its leadership through potentially embarrassing discovery and testimony, and inflict as much pain as possible on his rivals.
