Through the lawsuit, OpenAI has accused Musk of taking too much credit for OpenAI’s success. Specifically, Musk’s expert allegedly dismissed the scientists and programmers who invented ChatGPT because they “contributed zero percent to the current value of the nonprofit,” OpenAI has alleged.
Star-studded witness list
Musk and Altman will likely testify for more than two hours, with other top tech leaders also likely to be called as witnesses at the trial.
Brockman is scheduled to take the stand for 2.5 hours or possibly more, while co-defendant Microsoft’s Satya Nadella is scheduled to take the stand for an hour.
Sutskever is also on the witness list, where she was given 30 minutes, along with Shivon Zilis, one of Musk’s associates and the mother of his four children. Zilis may have been a key witness, as Altman foolishly believed him. During his statement, Altman called Zilis an “Elon whisperer”, while emphasizing that he was not aware of his personal relationship with Musk at the time, otherwise he would not have turned to him for guidance on how to manage the rocky relationship.
Gonzalez Rogers said in an order that the trial could last up to four weeks and that no witnesses would receive special treatment, with all witnesses required to use the court’s main door to enter the proceedings. As NBC News reports, Silicon Valley insiders are preparing for the trial to reveal more “juicy gossip,” so it should make for an interesting photo op.
For Musk, the preparation for the test may be disappointing, as the report does not count his own AI firm among OpenAI’s biggest rivals. Instead, Reuters notes that OpenAI “faces unprecedented competition” from Anthropic – recently valued at $1 trillion – while reporting that XAI “far lags behind OpenAI in usage.” Similarly, NBC News cited Anthropic and Google as OpenAI’s biggest rivals.
During Musk’s statement, OpenAI lawyers revealed a possible strategy to fight against Musk’s lawsuit. He asked Musk whether he still considered AGI an “existential threat”, noting that he operates an AI firm which, unlike OpenAI, no longer wishes to be structured as a “public benefit corporation”.
“There is risk in this,” Musk testified, as he is unwilling to acknowledge any contradictions in his decision to start a for-profit AI company.
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