The trial is scheduled to run for four weeks, with a cast of prominent tech executives set to take the stand.
The trial is scheduled to run for four weeks, with a cast of prominent tech executives set to take the stand. Jury selection begins Monday in a federal courtroom in Oakland, California, in a civil trial that features one tech billionaire, Elon Musk, suing another, Sam Altman.
The case is one part business dispute and one part highly personal grudge match — and it could determine the future of red-hot startup OpenAI and its signature app, ChatGPT. The trial is scheduled to run for four weeks, with a cast of prominent tech executives set to testify.
Witnesses are expected to include not only Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, and Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, but possibly also Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and current and former OpenAI board members, as well as top AI researchers. At the heart of the case is OpenAI’s transformation from a nonprofit research center founded in 2015 into a for-profit behemoth, now with billions of dollarsthat Altman and others accepted his money, advice and time under the pretense of creating a public-spirited enterprise only to later allow people to cash in.
Musk sued Altman and a long list of otherThey argue Musk left OpenAI in a huff in 2018 and never gave the full $1 billion he pledged. They also say Musk agreed with them years ago about the need to convert OpenAI into a for-profit company in order to raise capital — only they say Musk wanted OpenAI for himself and argued for folding it into his automaker, Tesla. Here are five things to know about Elon Musk.
The two men are similar in a few ways. They’re both tech billionaires with a keen interest in AI who have built massive companies in the Bay Area. They share a love of posting on X and have becomeBut they also have sharp differences. Musk, 54, is nearly a generation older than Altman, 41.
Musk is active inMusk is also vastly wealthier, with a $645 billion net worth that makes him the richest person in the world, according toThe timing only adds to the trial’s drama: OpenAI is locked in a heated battle with Anthropic and Google for leadership in the AI market, trying to get both consumers and business customers hooked on chatbots and other AI tools, whilein January, Musk said he planned to ask for $134 billion from OpenAI and Microsoft, which is one of OpenAI’s top backers and a co-defendant in the trial. Musk amended that proposal in athis month, saying instead that any funds disgorged from OpenAI and its executives should go to OpenAI’s charitable arm.
He also said he’d ask the judge to order the firing of Altman and OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman, along with a permanent injunction to preserve OpenAI’s original charter. OpenAI called those proposed outcomes a “San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins joins Raj Mathai to discuss the Molotov cocktail attack at the home of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
Unlike in some other trials, the jury in the case is advisory, meaning the judge will consider their verdict but ultimately make the decision herself about liability. She also saidThe tech industry has been salivating over the upcoming trial, not only because of what it might mean for OpenAI but also because ofit has produced. Among the documents that have been unsealed as part of the case are Brockman’s personal notes in which he mused about.
In a 2016 email that surfaced in the case, Musk wrote to Altman saying OpenAI should work with Microsoft as a cloud-computing provider instead of with Amazon because Musk considered Amazon founder Jeff Bezos to be “The judge, due to her proximity to Silicon Valley, already has years of experience dealing with wealthy tech companies and their high-priced legal teams. Last year, she ruled that Apple had violated a court order in an antitrust case and referred the iPhone maker to federal prosecutors for“The Court will not waste precious judicial resources on the parties’ gamesmanship,” Rogers wrote.
For the trial, she has ordered everyone — billionaires included — to enter the courthouse through the regular front door and go through security screenings.
“That some of the parties and witnesses may have high profiles does not warrant special privileges,” sheseveral surrounding countiesOne potential juror in that case said Musk had “no moral compass” and was excused, while a lawyer for Musk complained to the judge that there were “so many people who hate him so much,” the news site
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