JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
A jury in Oakland, California, has dismissed all the claims in Elon Musk's lawsuit against OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and others. OpenAI is the company behind ChatGPT. And a lot of Silicon Valley was watching this case for its implications on the future of artificial intelligence. Also watching was Rachael Myrow, senior editor of KQED's Silicon Valley News Desk. She is with us now from the courthouse. Hi there.
RACHAEL MYROW, BYLINE: Hi there.
SUMMERS: Rachael, remind us if you can, what were these claims that Elon Musk made against Sam Altman and others affiliated with OpenAI?
MYROW: Elon Musk co-founded OpenAI with Altman and others back in 2015 as a nonprofit explicitly to develop artificial intelligence safely and for the benefit of humanity. The company, which is now a for-profit subsidiary built on top of that nonprofit, is now approaching worth a trillion dollars ahead of an anticipated IPO. Musk, who also has an IPO of his own planned for SpaceX, claimed his former co-founders betrayed OpenAI's nonprofit mission by transferring its employees and intellectual property to that for-profit and cutting deals that critics say left the nonprofit little more than a well-capitalized fig leaf.
SUMMERS: What was the jury asked to consider?
MYROW: It boiled down to just two claims - breach of charitable trust and unjust enrichment. And as you just said, the advisory jury and the judge dismissed his claims. They found Musk waited too long to file his lawsuit and that his claims were made past the statute of limitations. And I should mention it took them less than two hours to reach this unanimous decision. This was an advisory jury - just nine members - but the judge said in the courtroom she was in agreement. And frankly, given the sharpness of some of her exchanges with the Musk attorneys during the trial, that wasn't a big surprise.
For OpenAI, the immediate news is relief. The IPO can proceed. Altman stays on in his leadership roles. The dominating for-profit structure stands, at least until we hear what happens with Musk's appeal.
SUMMERS: And how is OpenAI's legal team responding to this decision?
MYROW: Outside the courthouse, OpenAI lead attorney William Savitt called the lawsuit a hypocritical attempt on Musk's part to sabotage a competitor. The jury, Savitt said, saw through that.
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WILLIAM SAVITT: It did not take them two hours to conclude, upon deliberation of hundreds and hundreds of pieces of evidence and days and days of testimony, that Mr. Musk's lawsuit is nothing more than an after-the-fact contrivance that bears no relationship to reality. And they kicked it exactly where it belongs, which is to the side.
SUMMERS: And what did Elon Musk's attorney have to say?
MYROW: Marc Toberoff said Musk would appeal, and then he restated his team's argument, which is that Altman and the other co-founders got away with theft.
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MARC TOBEROFF: You take publicly subsidized funds in the form of a charity, and when you - your ambitions require more money, you simply put all the fruits of that revenue - the technology, in this case - into a for-profit apparatus, and the directors and officers of the charity are enriched to the tune of billions.
SUMMERS: Rachael, what stood out to you as the big takeaways from the trial?
MYROW: The evidence. First and foremost, an extraordinary archive of emails, texts and personal journal entries that gave the public an unprecedented look at how OpenAI was built. Whatever you think of the verdict, that historical record shows the sausage-making process included ambition, backstabbing and self-enrichment. But outside the courthouse, there have been protesters wearing stop AI T-shirts, reminding anybody who will listen that these billionaires, who claim to be most interested in the benefit of humanity, have been at the forefront of developing AI that's been reshaping our lives, often in negative ways, and spending big money to fend off any meaningful regulation while doing it.
SUMMERS: KQED's Rachael Myrow, thanks so much.
MYROW: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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