In Musk v. Altman trial, the entire AI industry lost

The biggest tech trial of the AI era — which ended anticlimactically Monday on procedural grounds — revealed a sector consumed by the same power struggles and profit motives its leaders once warned would corrupt artificial intelligence. Why it matters: The trial cemented a growing public fear about AI: that the people racing to control the world's most powerful technology are driven less by humanity-saving ideals than by money, power and personal rivalries. The big picture: OpenAI's founders originally positioned themselves as an alternative to Google DeepMind, fearing a single tech giant would monopolize transformative AI systems. But testimony and internal documents showed the organization's leaders quickly became consumed by power struggles. OpenAI executives worried in 2017 that Elon Musk "could become a dictator" and sent him an email with the subject line "honest thoughts." Musk responded saying "I've had enough" and later suggested the company be folded into Tesla. Among the court documents were texts Sam Altman sent during his brief 2023 ouster, including him pleading repeatedly to attend board meetings and being rejected. The trial also confirmed reports that OpenAI met with Anthropic to discuss a potential merger at that time. What they're saying: "Does anybody really believe that love of humanity is driving any of this? It's power," Anthony Aguirre, CEO of the Future of Life Institute, which focuses on AI governance, told Axios. The trial "may be over, but the real choice is still ahead of us: whether AI becomes infrastructure that serves the public, or a set of products that lock us in," Raffi Krikorian, chief technology officer at Mozilla, said in an email. Catch up quick: Jurors unanimously ruled that Musk's lawsuit against OpenAI, Altman, co-founder Greg Brockman and Microsoft was barred by the statute of limitations. Musk's side argued OpenAI abandoned its founding nonprofit mission by accepting billions of dollars in b...

Original source: Axios