AI risks loom over Musk-OpenAI trial

OAKLAND — Concerns over the risks posed by artificial intelligence have loomed large over a US trial pitting Elon Musk against OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman, even as the court focuses on a business dispute rather than the technology itself.

At the center of the case is the breakdown of a partnership once built on a shared goal: ensuring that increasingly powerful AI benefits humanity rather than any single company or individual.

Musk, a cofounder of OpenAI, filed the case accusing his fellow cofounder of breaking promises to keep the company a nonprofit. Altman, in turn, accuses Musk of trying to hobble the ChatGPT maker for the benefit of his own AI company, xAI.

The trial is being held in federal court in Oakland, California, and centers on the 2015 birth of OpenAI as a nonprofit startup primarily funded by Musk.

Both Musk and Altman have said they wanted OpenAI to safely develop artificial general intelligence for the benefit of humanity and not under any one person's control. Both camps allege that it's the other side that was trying to control it.

A jury of nine people selected from the San Francisco Bay Area will decide which side holds merit.

Early on, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers warned lawyers, particularly Musk's team, not to turn the case into a broader debate on AI safety.

"This is not a trial on whether or not AI has damaged humanity," Gonzalez Rogers told lawyers before jurors arrived at the federal courthouse.

Still, Musk managed to skirt the judge's guidance in his testimony. Musk said he has "extreme concerns" about AI and has had them for a long time. "I was concerned AI would be a double-edged sword," he said.

Witness testimony has touched on concerns over AI risks, including workforce disruption, racial and gender discrimination, job displacement, misinformation and emotional attachments that take some AI chatbot users down a spiral of psychosis.

Musk also told the court he could have founded OpenAI as a for-profit company like his other ventures, but "deliberately chose this", saying, "for the public good".

The judge expressed skepticism, noting that Musk is now building in the same field through his AI company xAI, launched in 2023.

OpenAI's side also defended its position. Cofounder and president Greg Brockman, a defendant in the lawsuit along with Altman, said the technology under development at OpenAI was "transformative" and "about humanity as a whole".

Brockman testified that his No. 1 goal was always the OpenAI "mission", and that Musk sought unilateral control over the company. He recalled a meeting where at first Musk seemed open to Altman being CEO, but later, "he said people needed to know he was in charge".

Musk is seeking damages and Altman's removal from OpenAI's board. If he wins, it could derail OpenAI's plans for a potential initial public offering.

Agencies via Xinhua