Musk v. Altman week 3: Elon Musk and Sam Altman traded blows over each other's credibility. Now the jury will pick a side. The trial spilled plenty of dirt--and raised more questions than answers about how the AI giant should be governed. In the final week of the trial, lawyers traded blows over Elon Musk's and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman's credibility. Altman was grilled on his alleged history of lying and self-dealing involving companies that do business with OpenAI. But he fired back, painting Musk as a power-seeker who wanted to control the development of artificial general intelligence (AGI)--powerful AI that can compete with humans on most cognitive tasks.

Showdown between Musk and Altman has rendered the world's most wealthy comical under egalitarian eye of court For the past couple of weeks, on the fourth floor of a courthouse on a quiet street in downtown Oakland, the world's richest man and one of the world's most valuable startups have been at war over the future of artificial intelligence. Being one of the reporters in the room has felt like watching an updated, opposite-coast version of Tom Wolfe's The Bonfire of the Vanities - ambition, ego, greed and the spectrum of social class on full display. The supporting cast has included Elon Musk fanboys, a stern judge and a who's-who of Silicon Valley's most influential people. All courtroom battles are theatre, but this one has proved to be a unique spectacle, with the judge chastising the lawyers for leading the witness, raising meritless objections and even too much coughing. With Musk on the stand, he griped that an opposing attorney had asked a leading question, to which the judge told him to "tell the jury you're not a lawyer".

Elon Musk and Sam Altman are going to court over OpenAI's future Elon Musk says he's suing to save the company's mission. The case could have huge consequences for OpenAI and the AI race. After a yearslong legal feud, Elon Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman are heading to trial this week in Northern California in a case that could have sweeping consequences. Ahead of OpenAI's highly anticipated IPO, the court could rule on whether the company is allowed to exist as a for-profit enterprise and might even oust its current executive leadership, including Altman. Musk is suing OpenAI, alleging that Altman and OpenAI president Greg Brockman deceived him into bankrolling the company in its early days by promising to maintain it as a nonprofit dedicated to developing AI that benefits humanity, only to later restructure the company to operate a for-profit subsidiary. Musk cofounded OpenAI with Altman and others in 2015, but he left in 2018 after a bitter power struggle.

Ilya Sutskever has announced on X, formerly known as Twitter, that he's leaving OpenAI almost a decade after he co-founded the company. He's confident that OpenAI "will build [artificial general intelligence] that is both safe and beneficial" under the leadership of CEO Sam Altman, President Greg Brockman and CTO Mira Murati, he continued. In his own post about Sutskever's departure, Altman called him "one of the greatest minds of our generation" and credited him for his work with the company. Jakub Pachocki, OpenAI's previous Director of Research who headed the development of GPT-4 and OpenAI Five, has taken Sutskever's role as Chief Scientist. After almost a decade, I have made the decision to leave OpenAI.

OpenAI is reinstating CEO Sam Altman to its board of directors and said it has "full confidence" in his leadership after an outside investigation into the turmoil that led the company to abruptly fire and rehire him in November. OpenAI said the investigation by the law firm WilmerHale concluded that Altman's ouster had been a "consequence of a breakdown in the relationship and loss of trust" between Altman and the prior board. The ChatGPT maker also said it has added three women to its board of directors: Sue Desmond-Hellman, a former CEO of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; Nicole Seligman, a former Sony general counsel; and Instacart CEO Fidji Simo. The actions are a way for the San Francisco-based artificial intelligence company to show investors and customers that it is trying to move past the internal conflicts that nearly destroyed it last year and made global headlines. "I'm pleased this whole thing is over," Altman told reporters Friday, adding that he's been disheartened to see people leaking information to try to "pit us against each other" and demoralize the team. At the same time, he said he's learned from the experience and apologized for a dispute with a former board member he could have handled "with more grace and care".

The fallout from the OpenAI board's failed attempt to fire CEO Sam Altman last November took an unexpected turn on Thursday, in events that could have a significant bearing on the future of the company and the wider world of artificial intelligence. Elon Musk filed a lawsuit against OpenAI in a San Francisco court, alleging that Altman and co-founder Greg Brockman have violated OpenAI's founding mission to develop AI safely and for the benefit of humanity. The billionaire owner of SpaceX and X (formerly Twitter) co-founded OpenAI alongside Altman and Brockman back in 2015, but stepped away from the company in 2018. Musk disagreed with Altman and Brockman's plan to turn OpenAI from a non-profit to a for-profit company, and before stepping down, reportedly mounted an unsuccessful bid to install himself as CEO. Musk is suing Altman, Brockman, and several of OpenAI's business entities for breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duty, and unfair business practices, seeking unspecified damages above 105,000.

When Sam Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI, took to the stage in San Francisco nine days ago he hinted at another significant development in the world of artificial intelligence. "Four times now in the history of OpenAI, the most recent time was just in the last couple weeks, I've gotten to be in the room, when we sort of push the veil of ignorance back and the frontier of discovery forward, and getting to do that is the professional honour of a lifetime," he told the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) summit. Given that he leads the company behind ChatGPT – a chatbot that has transformed the debate around AI – this was a tantalising comment. And a major event in AI did occur the next day – Altman was fired. OpenAI's board announced on Friday 17 November that it had sacked the 38-year-old for failing to be "consistently candid in his communications" with its members, without giving further details about the alleged breaches of trust.

Folks, if you predicted on Friday that the closely watched OpenAI power struggle would end in the most pointless-seeming way possible … well, just look. Late Tuesday night, four days after CEO Sam Altman's shocking ouster from the A.I. company, we found ourselves (mostly) back where we started: Altman is returning to OpenAI as its CEO, albeit not to its board of directors; Greg Brockman is once again president of OpenAI, but also will not be a member of the board; Mira Murati, who briefly took the helm as interim CEO, is just regular ol' CTO again; the three researchers who'd stepped down Friday in solidarity with Altman and Brockman are either back at the company or requesting to return; Altman & co. will once again operate with the backing of Microsoft, not as direct employees of the Big Tech pioneer. When it comes to the Main Characters of this saga and their loyalists, it seems most everyone's pretty happy. "[W]e are so back," Brockman exclaimed, sharing a selfie with his smiling team (who celebrated, according to the Information's Erin Woo, by setting off a false fire alarm at OpenAI HQ). Twitch co-founder Emmett Shear is no longer interim CEO but is "deeply pleased by this result, after 72 very intense hours of work," and is "glad to have been a part of the solution."

Over five chaotic days that transfixed Silicon Valley and beyond, the world's leading artificial intelligence company, OpenAI, appeared to be on the verge of imploding in a power struggle. The maker of ChatGPT, the sensational chatbot, had a mission to safely develop smarter-than-human AI. But that mission looked in jeopardy on Friday when OpenAI's non-profit board of directors fired Altman, suggesting he had been dishonest in his communications with them. To many spectators, the future of not just AI but also humanity hung in the balance. Finally late on Tuesday night, after three CEO changes and a full-court press by Microsoft, the board gave Altman his old job back.

It's been an eventful weekend at OpenAI's headquarters in San Francisco. In a surprise move Friday, the company's board of directors fired co-founder and CEO Sam Altman, which set off an institutional crisis that has seen senior staff resign in protest with nearly 700 rank-and-file employees threatening to do the same. Now the board is facing calls for its own resignation, even after Microsoft had already swooped in to hire Altman's cohort away for its own AI projects. Here's everything you need to know about the situation to hold your own at Thanksgiving on Thursday. This saga began forever ago by internet standards, or last Thursday in the common parlance.