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Billionaire Elon Musk Enters Courtroom Showdown with OpenAI

Elon Musk arrives at the 10th Breakthrough Prize Ceremony on April 13, 2024, at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles. (AP)
Elon Musk arrives at the 10th Breakthrough Prize Ceremony on April 13, 2024, at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles. (AP)
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Billionaire Elon Musk Enters Courtroom Showdown with OpenAI

Elon Musk arrives at the 10th Breakthrough Prize Ceremony on April 13, 2024, at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles. (AP)
Elon Musk arrives at the 10th Breakthrough Prize Ceremony on April 13, 2024, at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles. (AP)

Jury selection is to begin Monday in a high-profile legal battle between billionaire Elon Musk and artificial intelligence startup OpenAI, which he accuses of betraying its non-profit mission.

The clash in a courtroom across the bay from San Francisco pits the world's richest man against a startup that Musk once backed and now competes against in the booming AI sector.

OpenAI's ChatGPT is a formidable rival to the Grok chatbot made by Musk's xAI lab.

While the lawsuit filed by Musk is part of a feud between him and OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman, it spotlights a debate whether AI should ultimately benefit the privileged few or society as a whole.

Court filings lay out how Altman tried to convince Musk to back OpenAI in 2015, acting as a co-founder for a non-profit lab whose technology "would belong to the world."

Musk pumped some $38 million into the lab before he left.

OpenAI is now valued at $852 billion, with Microsoft among its backers, and is preparing to go public on the stock market.

The judge presiding over the trial is aiming for a jury to decide by late May whether OpenAI broke a promise to Musk in its drive to be a leader in AI or just smartly rode the technology to glory.

- Musk duped? -

Musk argues in his lawsuit that he was deceived about OpenAI's mission being altruistic.

The tycoon cites an email from Altman in 2017 claiming that he remained "enthusiastic about the non-profit structure" of their AI venture after Musk threatened to cut off funding for the lab.

Just a few months later, however, OpenAI established a commercial subsidiary in the face of needing to invest hundreds of billions of dollars in data centers to power its technology.

Over the course of the following two years, Microsoft pumped billions of dollars into OpenAI and the tech stalwart's stake in the startup is now valued about $135 billion.

Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella is among those slated to testify at the trial.

- Aimed at Altman -

Along with calling for OpenAI to be forced to revert to a pure nonprofit, Musk's suit urges the ousting of Altman and OpenAI co-founder and president Greg Brockman.

Musk is also seeking as much as $134 billion in damages and to have the court make OpenAI sever ties with Microsoft.

During pre-trial hearings, US Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers mused that Musk team seemed to be "pulling numbers out of the air" when it came to calculating damages.

If the jury sides with Musk, it will be left to Rogers to determine any remedies or payment.

In what OpenAI has dismissed as a public relations stunt, Musk has vowed that any damages awarded in the suit will go to the startup's nonprofit foundation.

- Quest for control? -

OpenAI internal communications brought to light by the lawsuit reveal tensions that culminated with the temporary ouster of Altman as AI chief executive in late 2023.

Musk's legal team highlighted a 2017 entry in Brockman's personal journal reasoning that it would be lying if Altman publicly asserted OpenAI would stay a nonprofit but became a corporation a short time later.

OpenAI now has a hybrid governance structure giving its nonprofit foundation control over a for-profit arm.

In court filings, OpenAI countered that its break-up with Musk was due to his quest for absolute control rather than its nonprofit status.

"This case has always been about Elon generating more power and more money for what he wants," OpenAI said in a post on X, a platform Musk owns.

"His lawsuit remains nothing more than a harassment campaign that's driven by ego, jealousy and a desire to slow down a competitor."

The startup noted that days after Musk entered the AI race in 2023 he called for a 6-month moratorium on development of advanced AI.

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Technology

India Clears Way for Self-driving, Safety Car Tech to Reduce Road Deaths

A woman crosses street through a dust storm accompanied by rain in Jammu, India, Thursday, June 11, 2026.(AP Photo/Channi Anand)
A woman crosses street through a dust storm accompanied by rain in Jammu, India, Thursday, June 11, 2026.(AP Photo/Channi Anand)
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India Clears Way for Self-driving, Safety Car Tech to Reduce Road Deaths

A woman crosses street through a dust storm accompanied by rain in Jammu, India, Thursday, June 11, 2026.(AP Photo/Channi Anand)
A woman crosses street through a dust storm accompanied by rain in Jammu, India, Thursday, June 11, 2026.(AP Photo/Channi Anand)

India has scrapped a license requirement for radar sensors, freeing automakers to adopt technology that helps cars avoid crashes and drive themselves by sensing surrounding objects, in a bid to make some of the world's deadliest roads safer.

The world's third largest car market, India reported more than 177,000 deaths in nearly half a million ⁠road accidents in 2024, the ⁠latest figures show, according to Reuters.

In a notice on Thursday, the government waived the license requirement for radar sensors operating in the frequency band from 77GHz to 81 GHz. That lets companies ⁠enable the technology without the government having to separately assign the airwaves.

Automakers Maruti Suzuki, Tata Motors and Mahindra & Mahindra, stand to benefit from the change, as well the suppliers behind them, such as Germany's Bosch and Continental.

The radar sensors let a car gauge safe distances, and drive features such as emergency braking, adaptive cruise ⁠control ⁠and blindspot warnings, to form a basis for autonomous driving.

The change brings India in line with the United States, the European Union and a global telecoms standard, all of which dedicate the same frequency band to vehicle radar.

That lets carmakers and suppliers tap into the same off-the-shelf hardware worldwide, rather than having to build an India-specific version.

Technology

AI Robot Cleaners Leave the Lab for China's Living Rooms

The service is a baby step towards a future in which robots increasingly take over manual labor from humans. WANG Zhao / AFP
The service is a baby step towards a future in which robots increasingly take over manual labor from humans. WANG Zhao / AFP
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AI Robot Cleaners Leave the Lab for China's Living Rooms

The service is a baby step towards a future in which robots increasingly take over manual labor from humans. WANG Zhao / AFP
The service is a baby step towards a future in which robots increasingly take over manual labor from humans. WANG Zhao / AFP

Beijing cleaner Lin Meiqiong found her work a little easier the day she was paired with an unlikely new colleague -- a tall, wheeled robot with AI-powered tidying skills.

The 56-year-old and her white-and-silver partner, fitted with cameras and two mechanical claws, are part of a new human-robot cleaning service offered by Chinese household help platform 58.com.

It's a baby step towards a future espoused by tech evangelists in which robots increasingly take over manual labor from humans -- though at the moment, such services are largely a data-gathering exercise for companies and a novelty for curious customers.

"It's definitely different," Lin told AFP in between cleaning the kitchen and wiping down windows.

"I used to have to do everything myself," she said. "It's reduced the workload a bit."

The cleaning service, a collaboration between 58.com and Chinese robotics company X Square, costs 149 yuan ($22) for three hours and is available in Beijing and tech hub Shenzhen.

Helped into the apartment by an X Square engineer, the AI-operated Quanta X1 Pro robot uses its cameras to identify areas it could spruce up.

As Lin scrubbed the floor on her knees, it picked up rubbish and folded clothes strewn across a sofa.

Grasping a pair of dark grey trousers, it raised its upper body to stretch the fabric taut, before laying it flat and arranging it into neat halves.

The process took several minutes and resembled a child learning to fold clothes for the first time.

Future iterations of the robot will respond to voice commands and even be able to chat, said the engineer, Hu Bowen.

- 'Better than a lab' -

Around 200 households have booked the service since it was rolled out in March.

Tan Pei, who works in advertising and booked the robot to clean her Beijing flat, said she had chosen the service because she was interested to "see what it could do".

"Even though it's not that perfect, there are still parts of it that surprised me," such as folding a pair of trousers "quite well", she said.

China's robots have wowed audiences with fluid dancing and set-piece martial arts displays onstage, but their application and performance in real-life settings remains limited.

For companies like X Square, the logic of launching an imperfect service lies in data collection for so-called embodied artificial intelligence.

Unlike large language models trained on vast quantities of internet content, robots lack comparable real-world datasets.

"We don't have a robot internet yet," Christoforos Mavrogiannis from the University of Michigan told AFP.

"It is much more informative to put the robot out there and study what happens than staying forever in the lab."

X Square engineer Hu said he sends his robots to work in a "completely unfamiliar environment".

"That is very challenging, but this unfamiliar data is also very helpful for the robot's growth."

As investment into embodied AI booms, similar trials in China include robots directing traffic in cities like Hangzhou or working on factory floors.

On the domestic help front, firm GigaAI also plans to deploy 100 humanoid robots into households in central Wuhan this autumn for free home-service trials.

Investors have poured more than 57.7 billion yuan ($8.5 billion) into China's embodied AI industry so far this year, already soaring past the total for last year as a whole, according to business database ITjuzi.

- 'Very elementary stage' -

But a myriad of hurdles stand in the way of widespread deployment.

As the Quanta X1 Pro's clothes folding demonstrated, robots still can't match human dexterity.

"Even though many companies are working on building better hands and building autonomy for hands, we don't have that yet," the University of Michigan's Mavrogiannis said.

There are multiple regulatory issues even once the physical capability is there.

Privacy will become a big issue, as robots would have access to huge amounts of personal data.

"We don't know where that data is going, where it's located... who is looking at that information," said Valeria Alessandra Macalupu Chira from Queensland University of Technology.

The safety of clients and their homes is another unresolved issue.

"I think we are still at a very elementary stage," said Yang Jianfei from Singapore's Nanyang Technological University.

Robots currently require supervision by humans who can activate emergency stop functions, he noted, and there are not yet recognized industry-wide safety standards.

Experts agree broad adoption seems a long way off.

Asked whether she thought robots would revolutionize her industry, cleaner Lin did not seem too concerned.

"Compared with people, it's obviously still not quite there," she said. "After all, it's a robot."

Technology

Saudi Arabia Participates in GPAI Paris Meeting for First Time as Member

Saudi Arabia Participates in GPAI Paris Meeting for First Time as Member
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Saudi Arabia Participates in GPAI Paris Meeting for First Time as Member

Saudi Arabia Participates in GPAI Paris Meeting for First Time as Member

Saudi Arabia, represented by the Saudi Data and Artificial Intelligence Authority (SDAIA), participated for the first time as a member of the Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence (GPAI) during the partnership’s fifth plenary meeting, held at the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) headquarters in Paris from June 9–11, the Saudi Press Agency said on Thursday.

The event brought together member countries, experts, and AI policymakers from around the world to discuss the future of artificial intelligence and international cooperation in the field.

The Kingdom was represented at the meeting by Rehab Alarfaj, General Manager of Strategic Partnerships and Indices at SDAIA, who participated in sessions and discussions focused on AI governance, the implementation of the OECD AI Principles, and the future direction of the GPAI’s work.

Alarfaj stressed the importance of developing practical tools to translate AI principles into actionable, real-world applications. These tools should account for differences in national priorities and levels of institutional maturity among countries, while ensuring the principles remain globally consistent and locally applicable.