{"id":32282,"date":"2026-05-08T13:43:31","date_gmt":"2026-05-08T13:43:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/32282\/"},"modified":"2026-05-08T13:43:31","modified_gmt":"2026-05-08T13:43:31","slug":"musk-v-altman-day-8-witnesses-testify-openai-strayed-from-safety-nonprofit-ideals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/32282\/","title":{"rendered":"Musk v. Altman \u2014 Day 8:\u00a0Witnesses testify OpenAI strayed from safety, nonprofit ideals"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"(AI illustration by Joe Dworetzky\/Bay City News via ChatGPT)<\/p>\n

THE LINE TO ENTER THE COURTHOUSE Thursday for courtroom seating in the trial of Elon Musk\u2019s lawsuit against Sam Altman and OpenAI was the shortest since the trial began eight days ago, but inside the jury heard key testimony.<\/p>\n

The jury heard from three witnesses \u2014 a former OpenAI employee working on safety issues, a board member who voted to fire Altman, and an expert on nonprofit governance \u2014 each suggesting that the company was not properly fulfilling its mission.<\/p>\n

The suit is based on Musk\u2019s claim that under the leadership of CEO Altman and President Greg Brockman, OpenAI has abandoned its mission as a charitable corporation in favor of enriching its insiders.<\/p>\n

\"\"The depressed press, remembering the trial\u2019s good old days. (AI illustration by Joe Dworetzky\/Bay City News via ChatGPT)<\/p>\n

Rosie Campbell, former AI safety employee<\/p>\n

Musk\u2019s legal team called Rosie Campbell to testify about her experience as an OpenAI employee working on AI safety. She said she\u2019d been attracted to OpenAI\u2019s mission to benefit humanity.<\/p>\n

In 2024, Campbell was part of OpenAI\u2019s \u201cReadiness Team\u201d charged with thinking about \u201cthe risks of AGI (artificial general intelligence) and how to mitigate them.\u201d The team was particularly concerned about \u201cconcentrations of power\u201d in which a small number of companies control disproportionate amounts of AI capability.<\/p>\n

READ MORE<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

For a deeper dive into the origins of the Musk v. Altman case, see Joe Dworetzky\u2019s four-part report on how OpenAI\u2019s founders went from tech allies to bitter courtroom enemies.<\/p>\n

\u2018Before the Bell Rings\u2019<\/p>\n

Part 1<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0Part 2<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0Part 3<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0Part 4<\/a><\/p>\n

She said that, at the time, OpenAI also had a \u201cSuperalignment Team\u201d focused on ensuring that AI is developed in alignment with human values and remains under human control.<\/p>\n

In the years she worked at OpenAI, she observed changes in the company as it became less focused on research and more focused on commercial products.<\/p>\n

Campbell was at OpenAI in November 2023 when OpenAI\u2019s board fired and then re-hired Altman as CEO. After Altman\u2019s reinstatement, two independent board members resigned and were replaced. She said she was concerned that the new board members did not have \u201cthe same kind of safety experience\u201d as the previous members.<\/p>\n

At the end of 2024, Campbell was told that the AGI Readiness Team was going to be dissolved and that the Superalignment Team would also be disbanded. Members of those teams were given the opportunity to find other jobs within OpenAI, but Campbell didn\u2019t see opportunities to focus on the work she wanted to do. She opted to leave the company.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt would be difficult to achieve the mission without that kind of work being done,\u201d Campbell said.<\/p>\n

Under cross examination, Campbell was asked if she understood that the development of AI required massive amounts of \u201ccompute\u201d \u2014 such as the computing power supplied to OpenAI through deals with Microsoft. Computing power was needed for developing commercial AI products, she acknowledged, but it was \u201cnot necessarily needed to achieve the mission.\u201d<\/p>\n

Natasha McCauley, former OpenAI board member<\/p>\n

After Campbell testified, segments of Natasha McCauley\u2019s video deposition were played for the jury. McCauley, a tech entrepreneur and AI educator, joined the nonprofit OpenAI\u2019s board of directors in November 2018. She resigned in November 2023 after Altman was reinstated as CEO.<\/p>\n

McCauley appeared nervous and at times her testimony was halting.<\/p>\n

At the time she\u2019d joined the board, she said she\u2019d been \u201ccautiously optimistic\u201d about OpenAI\u2019s nonprofit structure. The organization, she believed, was \u201coriented around its mission\u201d and had been \u201cstructured to resist pressure from investors.\u201d<\/p>\n

That structure, though, needed the organization\u2019s leadership to keep the board informed.<\/p>\n

She said that the board had \u201cbuckets of concerns\u201d about Altman\u2019s leadership: resistance to oversight, lies and concerns being expressed by OpenAI\u2019s senior leadership. There were \u201crepeated crisis events,\u201d she said, \u201cstemming from Sam\u2019s behavior.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had real doubts that we could trust what the CEO was telling us,\u201d McCauley said.<\/p>\n

\"\"Casting out the doubt. (AI illustration by Joe Dworetzky\/Bay City News via ChatGPT)<\/p>\n

She said that the board was hearing about a \u201ctoxic culture\u201d in which others were \u201ccopying\u201d that dishonest behavior.<\/p>\n

After the board fired Altman, McCauley and other board members heard reports that Altman and co-founder Greg Brockman were making calls to OpenAI employees saying, \u201cThere\u2019s been an evil coup.\u201d<\/p>\n

McCauley testified that there were growing doubts about whether OpenAI\u2019s nonprofit board was exercising meaningful oversight over the company\u2019s for-profit arm at a time when, she said, \u201cthe stakes [for AI safety] were going to get a lot higher.\u201d<\/p>\n

David Schizer, nonprofit governance expert<\/p>\n

Among the day\u2019s attractions was the scheduled testimony of David Schizer, former dean of Columbia Law School and an expert witness engaged by Musk\u2019s lawyers to testify on nonprofit governance. Schizer focused on the customary practices of nonprofit corporations, with a particular focus on situations where the nonprofit has a for-profit subsidiary.<\/p>\n

Schizer\u2019s testimony touched on different aspects of nonprofit governance, including contracting, relationships with affiliates, independence of directors and board-CEO relationships.<\/p>\n

Schizer\u2019s academic work has included nonprofit corporate governance. He brings the personal experience of running a nonprofit organization with more than a thousand employees as CEO for three years.<\/p>\n

\"\"After $300,000 it\u2019s all just a rounding error. (AI illustration by Joe Dworetzky\/Bay City News via ChatGPT)<\/p>\n

He said he was paid $1,500 an hour for his work, which is the same rate as he charges for his consulting work. He did not have a precise answer to the question of how many hours he had worked on this case, though he estimated he\u2019d been paid between $300,000 and $375,000 so far. He said he had never testified before as an expert.<\/p>\n

His background includes a Yale undergraduate degree followed by law school at Yale. He had a prestigious clerkship for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg.<\/p>\n

Genial and straightforward, he explained to the jury during direct testimony the difference between for-profit corporations and nonprofits. The former pursues profits, the latter a mission.<\/p>\n

He walked through the role of the board of directors of a nonprofit corporation, explaining that directors have a responsibility to serve the nonprofit with care, loyalty and fidelity to the nonprofit\u2019s mission. Unlike a for-profit corporation, a nonprofit\u2019s fundamental purpose is to pursue its mission, not profits for its owners. Nonprofit corporations do not have owners.<\/p>\n

He said that the board doesn\u2019t manage the nonprofit but rather oversees the officers and employees to ensure they are fulfilling the nonprofit\u2019s mission. One particularly important responsibility, he said, was to select and evaluate the work of the CEO. Schizer said that if a board determines that a CEO is not advancing the mission, it is appropriate to discharge the CEO.<\/p>\n

\"\"Did your GPT-4 come with a safety and was it on before you fired it? (AI illustration by Joe Dworetzky\/Bay City News via ChatGPT)<\/p>\n

Schizer answered a series of questions from Musk\u2019s lawyer Steven Molo that were all based on specific circumstances involving OpenAI that Molo believes will be proved during the trial. Schizer\u2019s role as an expert is not to determine factual matters but to give his opinion of what they mean, if the facts are proven true.<\/p>\n

He said \u2014 assuming that Molo proves the facts he used \u2014 that OpenAI has not followed the customary practices of nonprofit corporations in a number of key areas.<\/p>\n

For instance, Molo contends that Altman released the ChatGPT-4 Turbo model without a safety review and falsely told others that no review was required. Schizer said a board cannot accept that conduct, even if it were to turn out that the model was safe. He further stated that the safety of AI is a core part of OpenAI\u2019s mission, and the board should not tolerate that conduct. Similarly, he added, failure of Altman to provide complete and reliable information to the board was unacceptable.<\/p>\n

Much of Molo\u2019s examination was devoted to Schizer\u2019s opinion on the impact on OpenAI of a transaction in 2023, when Microsoft invested $10 billion in OpenAI and obtained an enhancement of its financial stake in the company and its future revenue. He also talked about a \u201crecapitalization\u201d of OpenAI in 2025 that restructured Microsoft\u2019s economic stake and expanded its claim to revenues of future revenue if AGI is achieved.<\/p>\n

Schizer testified that in both cases the nonprofit had given up significant value to other stakeholders without doing an adequate evaluation of the value of what it received in return. He questioned whether the transactions were fair to the nonprofit.<\/p>\n

On cross examination, Randall Jackson, one of Microsoft\u2019s lawyers, tried to downplay Schizer\u2019s credentials and expertise on grounds that he knew nothing about AI technology and that he was not able to value OpenAI\u2019s intellectual property. Schizer said he did not need to know about artificial intelligence to evaluate what a nonprofit board\u2019s responsibilities are.<\/p>\n

Jackson\u2019s main point was that the nonprofit\u2019s stake in the for-profit is currently estimated to be worth $200 billion, a staggering amount of money for a nonprofit.<\/p>\n

He asked Schizer if there is \u201cany aspect of its mission that OpenAI cannot pursue because it doesn\u2019t have enough money?\u201d<\/p>\n

Schizer said that if the board had fulfilled its responsibility, OpenAI could have had more money.<\/p>\n

\"\"We rest our case\u2026 until Monday. (AI illustration by Joe Dworetzky\/Bay City News via ChatGPT)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(AI illustration by Joe Dworetzky\/Bay City News via ChatGPT) THE LINE TO ENTER THE COURTHOUSE Thursday for courtroom…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":32283,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[6744,24,3013,25,580,7255,1302,20319,140,155,462,9508,2140,9509,19756,13257,10137,11823,20014,6964,7602,320,13611,20706,9510,5976,13955,157,12752,20315,370,969,13258,1161,2066,2925,13956,12737,11580,2899],"class_list":{"0":"post-32282","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-openai","8":"tag-agi","9":"tag-ai","10":"tag-artificial-general-intelligence","11":"tag-artificial-intelligence","12":"tag-chatgpt","13":"tag-corporate-governance","14":"tag-courts","15":"tag-david-schizer","16":"tag-elon-musk","17":"tag-featured","18":"tag-featured-news","19":"tag-federal-court","20":"tag-greg-brockman","21":"tag-gregory-brockman","22":"tag-helen-toner","23":"tag-ilya-sutskever","24":"tag-judge-yvonne-gonzalez-rogers","25":"tag-jury-selection","26":"tag-jury-trial","27":"tag-lawsuit","28":"tag-lawsuits","29":"tag-microsoft","30":"tag-musk-v-altman","31":"tag-natasha-mccauley","32":"tag-nonprofit-organizations","33":"tag-oakland","34":"tag-oakland-federal-court","35":"tag-openai","36":"tag-openai-trial","37":"tag-rosie-campbell","38":"tag-sam-altman","39":"tag-san-francisco","40":"tag-shivon-zilis","41":"tag-silicon-valley","42":"tag-tech-companies","43":"tag-tech-industry","44":"tag-tech-lawsuit","45":"tag-trial","46":"tag-trials","47":"tag-xai"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32282","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32282"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32282\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32283"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}