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Musk’s lawyers questioned Altman over allegations of deception and his network of financial investments, but the OpenAI CEO painted a picture of Musk as obsessed with controlling the company.
Emails show that Elon Musk's company is expanding its use of portable gas-fired power at its Colossus 2 site as a fight over air quality continues.
Who, me? | Image: The Verge; Getty Images After two weeks of hearing from assorted witnesses that he was a lying snake, the jury finally heard from the lying snake himself: Sam Altman. At the end of the testimony, his lawyer William Savitt asked him how it felt to be accused of stealing a charity. "We created, through a ton of hard work, this extremely large charity, and I agree you can't steal it," Altman said. "Mr. Musk did try to kill it, I guess. Twice." Altman was fully in "nice kid from St. Louis" mode, and did a passable impression of a man who was bewildered at what was happening to him. When he stepped down from the stand holding a stack of evidence binders, he even look … Read the full story at The Verge.
Mr. Altman, the C.E.O. of OpenAI, said on Tuesday that he worried Elon Musk wanted control of the A.I. lab.
The OpenAI chief rejects claims he deceived Elon Musk as high-stakes AI trial nears its end Sign up for the Breaking News US newsletter email The OpenAI CEO, Sam Altman, took the stand on Tuesday to defend himself and his company against a lawsuit by Elon Musk. Altman is set to be one of the final witnesses in the trial, which has pitted two of the tech industry’s most powerful men against each other in a dramatic courtroom showdown. Musk has accused Altman and OpenAI of breaking the AI firm’s founding agreement by restructuring it into a for-profit enterprise, alleging that Altman essentially swindled him into co-founding the company and providing tens of millions in financial backing. Musk also claims Altman unjustly enriched himself in the process and is seeking the CEO’s removal from OpenAI, the redistribution of $134bn to the firm’s non-profit and the undoing of its for-profit conversion. Continue reading...
Start-up’s CEO takes the stand in legal battle with billionaire
OpenAI's CEO recalls a "particularly hair-raising" conversation with the SpaceX founder.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says Elon Musk did "huge damage" to the culture of the AI startup. During testimony as part of Musk's lawsuit against OpenAI, Altman said Musk required OpenAI president Greg Brockman and former chief scientist Ilya Sutskever to rank researchers by their accomplishments and "take a chainsaw through a bunch." Altman conceded that this was the management style the Tesla CEO was known for, but that it was incompatible with his startup. "I don't think Mr. Musk understood how to run a good research lab," Altman testified when his lawyer, William Savitt, asked about the impact of Musk's departure from OpenAI on morale. "For a … Read the full story at The Verge.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has begun his testimony against Elon Musk in a high-profile jury trial in a California federal courtroom. Altman, alongside OpenAI president Greg Brockman, is a primary defendant in the trial brought by Musk. Altman, Brockman, and Musk were all part of the initial founding team at OpenAI, with Musk investing up to $38 million in the ChatGPT-maker's early days. But the relationship between Musk and other OpenAI founders eventually soured, and Musk stepped away from the company, later going on to found his own direct competitor, xAI. In recent years, Musk and Altman have traded barbs and made a slew of allegations agains … Read the full story at The Verge.
The trial has exposed even more details about OpenAI’s fractious corporate past than previously documented OpenAI, despite its name, is usually extremely secretive about its operations. It promotes a carefully crafted image to the world. Over the course of Elon Musk’s case against the startup and its CEO, Sam Altman, however, the artificial intelligence firm has been forced to publicly contend with some of the messiest parts of its rise to power. The Musk v OpenAI trial, which on Monday entered its third week, has featured a who’s who of Silicon Valley testifying about OpenAI’s past and its CEO’s contentious leadership. Musk’s attorneys have used former executives, private text messages, diary entries and internal email exchanges to portray Altman as untrustworthy. Altman, who denies Musk’s allegations, will take the stand in the coming days. OpenAI has likewise issued denials. Continue reading...
Elon Musk’s lawyer argued that Microsoft’s Satya Nadella played a role in getting Mr. Altman his job back at OpenAI when he was briefly fired in 2023.
Microsoft chief explains his decision to back AI lab’s boss in 2023 coup attempt during testimony in Elon Musk’s lawsuit
The tech leaders, with combined net worths exceeding $670 billion, have brought props to court and traded icy stares as their legal dispute reaches a denouement.
Elon Musk and Sam Altman battle it out in court, and the outcome could carry significant ramifications for how AI development is shaped.
In the second week of the landmark trial between Elon Musk and OpenAI, Musk’s motivations for bringing the suit were under scrutiny. Last week, Musk took the stand, alleging that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and president Greg Brockman had deceived him into donating $38 million to the company. He claimed that they’d promised to maintain…
In a week thats’s seen renewed hope for ending the war in Iran, ten weeks since it started, with four weeks of stalemate, a ceasefire and skirmishes over the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. Intermittent peace talks have boiled down to a fourteen-point, one-page “memorandum of understanding”, crafted by Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, which has been sent to Pakistani mediators and is being reviewed by Iran.
Sometimes, companies pick CEOs based on carefully laid succession plans designed to maximize investor confidence and future performance. Other times, apparently, companies pick CEOs based on a bunch of video calls while the current CEO is texting the former CEO about who the new CEO even is. Such was the story of The Blip, the days in 2024 when Sam Altman was ousted from OpenAI. We knew that situation was chaotic; the ongoing Musk v. Altman trial is showing just how chaotic it really was. Verge subscribers, don't forget you get exclusive access to ad-free Vergecast wherever you get your podcasts. Head here. Not a subscriber? You can sign … Read the full story at The Verge.
Elon Musk’s court battle against OpenAI has laid bare tensions between the start-up's leaders and raised questions about the billionaire’s motivations.
OpenAI has introduced a Trusted Contact feature for ChatGPT that allows users to designate a friend or family member to receive automated alerts if conversations suggest self-harm risk. The company said human reviewers aim to assess safety notifications within one hour before deciding whether to contact the designated person via email, text, or in-app message. […]
Leaders at the tech giant were skeptical of OpenAI—but wary of pushing it into the arms of Amazon, according to emails dating back to 2018.
