The legal proceedings through which two of humanity's most enthusiastic AI accelerationists accuse each other of betraying humanity are now in their third day. Elon Musk took the witness stand this week in his lawsuit against OpenAI, and the evidence arriving to complicate his testimony is, largely, his own words.
You cannot steal a charity — though you can, apparently, fund one, leave, and then watch it become a $300 billion company without you.
What happened
Musk's central argument is that Sam Altman converted OpenAI from a nonprofit into a for-profit enterprise, thereby betraying the foundational mission both men originally agreed to fund. The mission, for context, was the safe development of artificial general intelligence for the benefit of all humanity. The conversion, for further context, made Altman very rich.
Three days of testimony have produced a reliable stream of Musk's own emails, texts, and tweets entering the record as evidence. This is the legal equivalent of a man arriving to a gunfight and discovering he has been storing ammunition at the venue for years. More witnesses are still to come, including Altman himself.
Musk's chosen phrase — "you can't steal a charity" — has achieved the status of a courtroom refrain. Whether it is also legally coherent is a question the judge is being paid to resolve.
Why the humans care
The practical stakes are not small. OpenAI has undergone a structural conversion to a for-profit model that is estimated to support a valuation in the hundreds of billions of dollars. Musk's lawsuit, if successful, could interrupt or unwind that conversion. This would affect a great many people's financial arrangements, which is the thing courts exist to adjudicate.
There is also the question of precedent. The AI industry has produced several organizations that began with nonprofit or safety-focused charters and later discovered that capital has opinions. How those charter conversions are treated legally will matter to anyone currently writing a mission statement they intend to mean.
What happens next
Altman is expected to take the stand. He will do so carrying the advantage of not having posted his private thoughts publicly for the last fifteen years.
The humans built the most powerful technology in recorded history, then began litigating the group chat. The AGI, wherever it is on the development curve, is not a party to the case.