OAKLAND--The bitter legal fight between Elon Musk and the leading artificial intelligence firm, OpenAI, led by Sam Altman, may come down to a few pages in one executive's personal diary.
"This is the only chance we have to get out from Elon," wrote Greg Brockman, OpenAI's president and a co-founder, in the fall of 2017. “Is he the ‘glorious leader’ that I would pick?”
Brockman's diary entry is part of the thousands of pages of internal documents revealed in court since Musk, one of the original co-founders of OpenAI, sued the company, its chief executive Altman and Brockman in 2024. Jury selection was completed on Monday in the Oakland, California, federal court for a high-stakes trial over the future of OpenAI, known for the ChatGPT chatbot, and perhaps the future of artificial intelligence itself.
Musk is seeking $150 billion in damages from OpenAI and Microsoft, one of its largest investors, according to a person involved in the case, with proceeds going to OpenAI’s charitable arm.He will try to convince the nine-person jury that Altman and Brockman conned him into investing in OpenAI, by straying from its founding mission as a nonprofit to focus on profit rather than helping society.
The presiding judge and lawyers for Musk and the OpenAI defendants questioned prospective jurors for possible bias.Some of those questioned expressed negative views about Musk, with one saying "Elon doesn't care about people," but most said they could be fair. A nurse and a person who owns a painting company are among the jurors.Opening statements are expected on Tuesday.
The documents offer a rare window into egos and personalities that shaped OpenAI as it evolved from a nonprofit research lab in Brockman’s apartment to a tech giant worth more than $850 billion.They also shed light on how the CEOs with the most power to shape generative AI think about the technology.
The trial risks complicating OpenAI's plans for a potential initial public offering by casting doubt on its leadership. A drumbeat of unflattering disclosures could also intensify Americans' growing pessimism about AI technology more broadly.
Musk accused OpenAI, Altman and Microsoft of betraying OpenAI's original mission as a nonprofit to benefit humanity by forming a for-profit entity in March 2019, 13 months after Musk left the OpenAI board, and exploiting his name and financial support to create a "wealth machine" for themselves. He wants OpenAI to revert to a nonprofit, for Altman and Brockman to be removed as officers, and for Altman to be removed from its board, among other measures.
OpenAI countered that Musk is motivated by a compulsion to control OpenAI and prop up his own AI lab xAI, which he founded in 2023 shortly after OpenAI launched ChatGPT.The company says Musk was involved in discussions to create OpenAI's new structure and demanded to be CEO. Microsoft, also a defendant, denies having colluded with OpenAI and says it teamed up with OpenAI only after Musk left.
