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OpenAI CEO Sam Altman took the witness stand Tuesday to defend his business record in\u00a0a trial\u00a0pitting him against Elon Musk, rebutting testimony that disparaged his leadership at a pivotal time for the ChatGPT maker.<\/p>\n
Musk, the world\u2019s richest man, is seeking Altman\u2019s ouster from the company leadership as part of a civil lawsuit accusing him of betraying their shared vision for\u00a0OpenAI. Since its start as a nonprofit funded primarily by Musk, OpenAI has\u00a0evolved into a capitalistic venture\u00a0now valued at $852 billion.<\/p>\n
More than two weeks into the trial in a federal courthouse in Oakland, California, neither of the tech titans has emerged as an overly sympathetic character. But nobody has more to lose than Altman.<\/p>\n
Even if Musk loses the case,\u00a0the trial\u00a0has invited further scrutiny of Altman\u2019s leadership at a crucial time for the company and its competition with Musk\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
Under a barrage of questions by a lawyer for Musk, Altman said he did not agree with trial testimony that depicted him as dishonest.<\/p>\n
\u201cI believe I am an honest and trustworthy businessperson,\u201d Altman said.<\/p>\n
A jury that\u2019s already heard about Altman\u2019s character from a parade of his former allies and adversaries will ultimately decide the verdict. But the repercussions could reverberate widely.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is not looking good for any of them, and I think that that\u2019s 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,\u201d said Sarah Kreps, director of Cornell University\u2019s Tech Policy Institute.<\/p>\n
Testimony about Altman has been a font of social media memes<\/p>\n
The lawsuit accuses Altman and his top lieutenant, Greg Brockman, of double-crossing Musk by straying from the San Francisco company\u2019s founding mission to be an altruistic steward of a revolutionary technology. The lawsuit alleges they shifted into a moneymaking mode behind his back. Musk is seeking an unspecified amount of money to be paid to fund the altruistic efforts of OpenAI\u2019s charitable arm.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Since the start of the trial, testimony about Altman\u2019s turbulent tenure at OpenAI 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\u00a0ouster as CEO, when Altman asked if things were moving \u201cdirectionally good or bad\u201d and she wrote back: \u201cSam this is very bad.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
In video testimony last week, Toner said a starting point for the decision to oust Altman was when OpenAI\u00a0co-founder Ilya Sutskever, a respected AI scientist, reached out to confide some of his own concerns.<\/p>\n
\u201cA phrase we used was \u2018a pattern of behavior,\u2019 so no one single cause,\u201d Toner said. \u201cThe pattern of behavior related to his honesty and candor, his resistance of board oversight.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sutskever was instrumental in the\u00a0unsuccessful attempt\u00a0to 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\u2019s board that characterized Altman as pitting his executives against one another and exhibiting a \u201cconsistent pattern of lying\u201d that was causing a loss of trust and productivity.<\/p>\n
He said he later backtracked and signed a letter supporting Altman\u2019s reinstatement to try to keep the company from being destroyed.<\/p>\n
Altman has cast Musk as bent on control of OpenAI<\/p>\n
The trial has carried risks also for Musk, who is pursuing an initial public offering this summer for his rocket ship maker,\u00a0SpaceX, which could make him the world\u2019s first trillionaire.<\/p>\n
Sutskever testified to his early admiration for Musk as an entrepreneur but said that once they were working together as co-founders, Musk\u2019s push for a controlling stake in the startup \u201cjust felt aggressive to me.\u201d<\/p>\n
OpenAI has brushed off Musk\u2019s allegations as an unfounded case of sour grapes that\u2019s aimed at undercutting its rapid growth and bolstering Musk\u2019s own xAI, now part of SpaceX.<\/p>\n
Altman and Musk both vied to be OpenAI\u2019s CEO in its early years. In his testimony Tuesday, Altman said he had concerns about Musk\u2019s attempts to gain more control over OpenAI, which was aiming to safely build a better-than-human form of AI called\u00a0artificial general intelligence.<\/p>\n
\u201cPart of the reason we started OpenAI is we didn\u2019t think AGI could be under the control of any one person, no matter how good their intents are,\u201d Altman said.<\/p>\n
He described what he called a \u201cparticularly hair-raising moment when my co-founders asked Mr. Musk about, well, \u2018If you have control, what happens when you die?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Altman said Musk\u2019s response was that maybe \u201ccontrol of OpenAI should pass to my children.\u201d Altman said he did not feel comfortable with that.<\/p>\n
Altman said Musk was known to be \u201cfairly mercurial\u201d and only trusted himself to make the right decisions that were not obvious to others but which Musk believed would \u201cturn out to be correct.\u201d Among the pressures on OpenAI were Musk\u2019s repeated attempts to have his car company Tesla absorb OpenAI, a proposal Altman said would not have aligned with OpenAI\u2019s mission.<\/p>\n
Altman testified that OpenAI has ended up creating \u201cthrough a ton of hard work, this extremely large charity\u201d and sought to challenge Musk\u2019s contention that Altman had violated the nonprofit\u2019s original purpose.<\/p>\n
\u201cMr. Musk did try to kill it, I guess twice,\u201d Altman added, before Musk\u2019s lawyer interrupted to object to Altman\u2019s remark. The judge struck it from the record.<\/p>\n
Near the end of his testimony, Altman said he had thought incredibly highly of Musk during his early involvement with OpenAI, but \u201cfelt he abandoned us\u201d as he pulled away his commitment and financial contributions.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been an incredibly painful thing for me,\u201d he said. He called Musk a \u201ccritical contributor\u201d to OpenAI and attributed his leaving to jealousy as he was working on launching a competing AI startup.<\/p>\n
____<\/p>\n
O\u2019Brien contributed from Providence, Rhode Island.<\/p>\n
#Sam #Altman #defends #honest #trustworthy #businessperson #trial #testimony<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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