Through the litigation, OpenAI has accused Musk of taking too much credit for OpenAI’s success. Notably, Musk’s expert supposedly dismissed the scientists and programmers who invented ChatGPT as having “contributed zero percent of the nonprofit’s current value,” OpenAI has alleged.
Star-studded witness list
Musk and Altman will likely testify for more than two hours each, alongside other top tech leaders likely to be called as witnesses for the trial.
Brockman is scheduled to take the stand for 2.5 hours and possibly longer, while co-defendant Microsoft’s Satya Nadella is slated for one hour.
Sutskever is also on the witness list, where he was given a 30-minute slot, as is Shivon Zilis, one of Musk’s associates and the mother of four of his children. Zilis may be a key witness, since Altman foolishly confided in her. During his deposition, Altman called Zilis an “Elon whisperer,” while emphasizing that he was not aware of her personal relationship with Musk during the time or else he would not have turned to her for guidance on how to navigate the rocky relationship.
The trial could stretch for four weeks, and no witness will receive special treatment, Gonzalez Rogers said in an order requiring that all witnesses use the court’s front door to enter the proceedings. That should make for interesting photo ops as Silicon Valley insiders prepare for the trial to reveal more “juicy gossip,” NBC News reported.
For Musk, the buildup to the trial may be frustrating, as reports do not count his own AI firm among OpenAI’s biggest rivals. Instead, Reuters noted that OpenAI “faces unprecedented competition” from Anthropic—recently valued at $1 trillion—while reporting that xAI “trails far behind OpenAI in usage.” Similarly, NBC News cited Anthropic and Google as OpenAI’s biggest rivals.
During Musk’s deposition, OpenAI’s lawyers revealed a likely tactic in fighting against Musk’s lawsuit. They asked Musk if he even still considered AGI to be an “existential threat,” considering that he operates an AI firm that, unlike OpenAI, no longer aspires to be structured as a “public benefit corporation.”
“It has a risk,” Musk testified, as he seems unwilling to acknowledge any contradiction in his own decision to start a for-profit AI company.