In a trial featuring a clash between Elon Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, neither of the tech titans has emerged as an overly sympathetic character. But nobody has more to lose than Altman, who is expected to take the stand this week to defend himself.
Already, testimony about Altman's turbulent tenure at the ChatGPT maker has become prime fodder for internet jokes. One piece of evidence that has inspired countless memes was a text exchange between Altman and a company officer, Mira Murati, in 2023 during his short-lived ouster as CEO, when Altman asked if things were moving “directionally good or bad” and she wrote back: "Sam this is very bad.”
Musk, the world's richest man, is seeking Altman's second ouster from the company leadership as part of a civil lawsuit accusing him of betraying their shared vision for OpenAI. Since its start as a nonprofit funded primarily by Musk, Open AI has evolved into a capitalistic venture now valued at $852 billion.
Even if Musk loses, the trial has invited further scrutiny of Altman’s leadership at a pivotal time for the company and its competition with Musk’s own AI firm and another rival, Anthropic, formed by a group of seven ex-OpenAI leaders. All three firms are moving toward planned initial public offerings that are expected to be some of the largest ever.
A jury that’s already heard about Altman’s character from a parade of his former allies and adversaries will ultimately decide the verdict. But the repercussions could reverberate widely.
“This is not looking good for any of them and I think that that’s a little bit unfortunate for the AI industry at a time when the public perception of AI is quite negative and seems to be getting worse,” said Sarah Kreps, director of Cornell University’s Tech Policy Institute.
Musk warned Altman would be one of America's ‘most hated’ men
The lawsuit accuses Altman and his top lieutenant, Greg Brockman, of double-crossing Musk by straying from the San Francisco company’s founding mission to be an altruistic steward of a revolutionary technology. The lawsuit alleges they shifted into a moneymaking mode behind his back.
Shortly before the trial began, Musk abandoned a bid for damages for himself and instead is seeking an unspecified amount of money to be paid to fund the altruistic efforts of OpenAI’s charitable arm. In a text exchange with Brockman proposing a possible settlement, Musk warned that Brockman and Altman “will be the most hated men in America” as a result of the trial.
While Musk, the head of SpaceX, Tesla and a slew of other companies, was well known by the San Francisco Bay Area jury pool, fewer knew who Altman was before the start of the trial, even if they were familiar with ChatGPT.
As the trial has played out in a federal courtroom in Oakland, California over the last two weeks, jurors have heard from witnesses including OpenAI ex-board members Helen Toner and Tasha McCauley, who spoke about the decision to fire Altman in 2023 before they were themselves ousted from the board of directors when Altman returned to his role.
In video testimony last week, Toner said a starting point for the decision to oust Altman was when OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever, a respected AI scientist, reached out to confide some of his own concerns.
“A phrase we used was ‘a pattern of behavior,’ so no one single cause,” Toner said. “The pattern of behavior related to his honesty and candor, his resistance of board oversight.”
Sutskever was instrumental in the unsuccessful attempt to oust Altman but later said he regretted his role in the shakeup. In his own testimony Monday, Sutskever confirmed that he wrote a 2023 memo to OpenAI’s board that characterized Altman as pitting his executives against one another and exhibiting a “consistent pattern of lying” that was causing a loss of trust and productivity.
Sutskever said Altman’s behavior contributed to an environment that was “not conducive” to the company's goals, including its mission to safely build artificial general intelligence. He said he later backtracked and supported Altman’s reinstatement because he was concerned about what would happen to a company he worked hard to create and “cared very much about.”
“I felt that, had I not done this, the company would have been destroyed, and I felt that this was a Hail Mary,” he testified.
OpenAI begins presenting its side
The trial has carried risks also for Musk, who is pursuing an initial public offering this summer for his rocket ship maker, SpaceX, which could make him the world's first trillionaire. Among the witnesses has been Shivon Zilis, a former OpenAI board member who served as a conduit between Musk and OpenAI's leaders and also didn't disclose that Musk was the father of her two young twins, according to trial testimony.
Not until midday Monday, on the third week of the trial, did OpenAI begin calling its own witnesses, starting with Bret Taylor, the current chair of OpenAI’s board who painted a more positive portrait of Altman’s leadership.
“I think Sam has done a great job as CEO,” Taylor said. “He’s been forthright with me and the other board members.”
Syracuse University professor Shubha Ghosh, an expert in business and technology law, said regardless of the outcome of the case, he has doubts about Altman staying on as CEO of OpenAI in the long run.
“A lot this of might depend upon a testimony,” he said. “And I don’t know what he’s going to say or how he’s gonna say it. But even like the best case, movie theater type performance, with all the music playing and whatnot, I don’t see him coming off as a fairly strong leader, especially (since) this case has gone this far."
