Lawyers for Elon Musk, Sam Altman wind down OpenAI trial with testy parting shots

OAKLAND, Calif.— Elon Musk’s lead attorney wound down the landmark trial of OpenAI on Thursday with a blistering attack — again questioning the trustworthiness of the tech firm’s CEO Sam Altman — while a lawyer for the company insisted that Musk’s central claims were baseless.In his closing arguments, Musk lawyer Steven Molo conjured a vivid scenario to try to drive home allegations that Altman and OpenAI President Greg Brockman betrayed the firm’s founding contract by putting commercial gain over creating AI for public benefit.“Imagine that you’re on a hike, and you come upon one of those wooden bridges that you see on a trail and it’s over a gorge,” Molo said inside the federal courtroom.

“There’s a river that’s 100 feet below and it looks a little scary, but a woman standing by the entry to the bridge says, ‘Don’t worry, the bridge is built on Sam Altman’s version of the truth.’“Would you walk across that bridge? I don’t think many people would,” the lawyer added, drawing laughs from trial attendees.Altman looked on without emotion, sitting between Brockman and the company’s “Chief Futurist” Joshua Achiam, who memorably testified Wednesday that Musk called him a “jackass” at a company-wide meeting years ago. The Tesla CEO, who left OpenAI’s board in 2018, was in Beijing for President Trump’s summit with his Chinese counterpart.During her closing arguments, OpenAI lawyer Sarah Eddy pushed back on Molo’s attacks and asserted Musk’s three days of testimony last month were “contradicted” by numerous witnesses.“All these witnesses say the same thing,” Eddy said.“No one made a commitment to Mr.

Musk.He does not have a charitable trust to enforce.” Musk — who donated $38 million to OpenAI years before launching his own high-profile artificial intelligence project, xAI — is seeking about $150 billion in damages and a court order unwinding OpenAI’s for-profit status.Eddy argued there were n...