One of the most controversial and overexposed men in the world is suing another man, who is equally unsympathetic and equally inescapable. Both are insanely rich.<\/p>\n
It is so tempting to look away.<\/p>\n
Elon Musk\u2019s lawsuit<\/a> against Sam Altman involves onetime colleagues and buddies who became peevish enemies. Now they would like to take each other down. Happens all the time. These guys just have more lawyers.<\/p>\n Ignoring this conflict would be a mistake, however. The rancorous dispute between Mr. Musk and Mr. Altman, which went to trial this week with opening statements in an Oakland, Calif., federal courtroom<\/a> on Tuesday, goes to the heart of Silicon Valley, a place that has always cloaked itself in virtue.<\/p>\n Mr. Altman and Mr. Musk started working on what was supposed to be a different sort of tech lab<\/a> in 2015. OpenAI was a Manhattan Project for artificial intelligence, a nonprofit venture that would act as a shield against rapacious behavior by less benevolent outfits. The goal was to \u201cshift the dialog toward being about humanity winning rather than any particular group or company,\u201d according to a document in the case.<\/p>\n Mr. Musk, the chief executive of Tesla, provided the initial funding. Mr. Altman was OpenAI\u2019s leader and spokesman. But Mr. Musk says their interests quickly diverged when it became clear just how much money was up for grabs. OpenAI converted to a for-profit company<\/a> last year. \u201cA textbook tale of altruism versus greed,\u201d Mr. Musk asserted in his suit\u2019s opening salvo.<\/p>\n The fact that the person calling himself an altruist here is likely to become the world\u2019s first trillionaire doesn\u2019t necessarily make it untrue. In his lawsuit, filed in 2024, Mr. Musk said Mr. Altman, OpenAI president Greg Brockman and others \u201cunjustly enriched\u201d themselves in the development of OpenAI \u201cto the tune of billions of dollars.\u201d<\/p>\n OpenAI, whose value is approaching $1 trillion, had the inevitable response: No, you\u2019re the one who is greedy. The company argued that Mr. Musk walked away when he could not take over the entire enterprise.<\/p>\n \u201cThis case has always been about Elon generating more power and more money for what he wants,\u201d OpenAI said in a statement.<\/p>\n One of the few things the moguls agree on is that their feud evokes the works of a certain Elizabethan playwright. Mr. Musk, 54, said in his suit that Mr. Altman\u2019s \u201cperfidy and deceit are of Shakespearean proportions.\u201d Mr. Altman, 41, mused in a blog post this month that \u201cthere has been so much Shakespearean drama between the companies in our field.\u201d<\/p>\n If there is a Shakespeare play that could sum up this soured friendship, it\u2019s \u201cJulius Caesar.\u201d Brutus wants to stop Caesar from gaining too much power, or so he says. Caesar is quite surprised that he\u2019s being assassinated by a supposed friend. \u201cEt tu, Brute?\u201d he cries. Brutus ends the play as dead as Caesar but is mourned as \u201cthe noblest Roman of them all.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Musk should be so lucky to draw such praise.<\/p>\n \u2018For the Good of the World\u2019<\/p>\n In the middle of the last decade, Mr. Altman was a Silicon Valley insider running the top start-up incubator, Y Combinator. Ambitious and persuasive, he didn\u2019t want just to fund companies. He was on a mission to save humanity, which \u2014 unknown to the masses \u2014 was at great risk.<\/p>\n \u201cI think A.I. will probably, most likely, lead to the end of the world,\u201d Mr. Altman said in 2015<\/a>. It was a fear he would often express. Why not, he asked, create a bulwark against the other A.I. companies \u201cfor the good of the world\u201d?<\/p>\n Mr. Altman drew in Mr. Musk, who was even more worried about where A.I. was heading. \u201cWe are summoning the demon,\u201d Mr. Musk once said.<\/p>\n Immediately, there was a problem. People everywhere work on nonprofit ventures for modest salaries. They sacrifice for their ideals. Mr. Altman knew that would not fly in Silicon Valley. The engineers and scientists would \u201cget start-up-like compensation if it works,\u201d he promised.<\/p>\n The nonprofit was dead almost before it began. OpenAI is owned by its employees and investors, including Microsoft, Amazon, Nvidia and SoftBank, as well as the OpenAI Foundation. (Mr. Altman has no direct equity in OpenAI but has other investments that make him comfortably a billionaire.) OpenAI is planning to sell shares to the public in one of the richest stock offerings in history.<\/p>\n Silicon Valley is the great wellspring of wealth in modern America. Nine of the 10 richest Americans are tech entrepreneurs, with Warren Buffett the only exception. People might be offended by OpenAI\u2019s turnabout, but few could say they were shocked.<\/p>\n Except the richest man in the world, whose own A.I. venture, xAI, is now part of one of his other companies, SpaceX. SpaceX<\/a> will soon sell shares to the public as a decidedly for-profit operation.<\/p>\n No Happy Ending<\/p>\n Tech companies are subject to relatively few constraints these days. Congress is generally passive. Federal regulators have been hobbled. The Trump administration is stocked with venture capitalists and others receptive to tech and its money, as is President Trump.<\/p>\n What\u2019s left for tech opponents are civil suits. Social media companies face an onslaught of cases. One of the first, in Los Angeles last month, found that Meta and YouTube were to blame<\/a> for anxiety and depression in a young woman who was a heavy user.<\/p>\n \u201cTrials are all we have right now, and things are better because of them,\u201d said Max Tegmark, a co-founder of the Future of Life Institute, a nonprofit trying to reduce catastrophic technology risks. \u201cTrials provide information that is not otherwise accessible.\u201d<\/p>\n The exhibits in the Musk\/Altman trial are an example of material that presumably would never have seen the light otherwise. That includes emails between the two leaders as they tried getting OpenAI off the ground.<\/p>\n \u201cDo you have any objection to me proactively increasing everyone\u2019s comp by 100-200k per year?” Mr. Altman wrote to Mr. Musk in 2015. \u201cI think they\u2019re all motivated by the mission here but it would be a good signal to everyone we are going to take care of them over time.\u201d<\/p>\n The Future of Life Institute gives OpenAI an overall grade<\/a> of C plus for safety while xAI got a D. \u201cA.I. is less regulated in America than sandwiches,\u201d said Mr. Tegmark, who is also a physics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. \u201cYou can\u2019t open a sandwich shop without having your kitchen inspected. But you can release an A.I. girlfriend for 11-year-olds and that\u2019s fine.\u201d A defeat for OpenAI might begin to change that, he said.<\/p>\n Some A.I. watchdogs said they would like to see OpenAI brought to justice the way Meta and YouTube were. But they would prefer almost any plaintiff to Mr. Musk.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t have long-term faith in a system where we\u2019re legislating through private litigation,\u201d said Sacha Haworth, executive director of the Tech Oversight Project, a Washington-based advocacy group. \u201cI don\u2019t want to rely on a billionaire with a grievance.\u201d<\/p>\n If Mr. Musk wins, she pointed out, it would weaken or even destroy OpenAI, \u201copening up a large share of the market that an Elon Musk company can then gobble up.\u201d<\/p>\n And if OpenAI gets the suit dismissed? \u201cIt would send a signal that it\u2019s OK to launch as a nonthreatening nonprofit working for the public\u2019s benefit and then cynically change to a for-profit without any accountability,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Ms. Haworth\u2019s conclusion: \u201cThere\u2019s no happy ending here.\u201d<\/p>\n