{"id":619009,"date":"2026-05-02T09:56:31","date_gmt":"2026-05-02T09:56:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/619009\/"},"modified":"2026-05-02T09:56:31","modified_gmt":"2026-05-02T09:56:31","slug":"a-subplot-of-the-musk-altman-trial-which-billionaires-deserve-the-keys-to-the-god-machine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/619009\/","title":{"rendered":"A subplot of the Musk-Altman trial: Which billionaires deserve the keys to the God machine?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n A version of this story appeared in CNN Business\u2019 Nightcap newsletter. To get it in your inbox, sign up for free here<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n

New York\u00a0\u2014\u00a0\n <\/p>\n

\n Elon Musk finally shared an opinion that a lot of people can agree on: Microsoft should not control the future of AI.\n <\/p>\n

\n Trouble is, Musk doesn\u2019t seem to understand who should.\n <\/p>\n

\n For context: Musk sued OpenAI<\/a> and its executives over what may seem like a minor distinction \u2014 OpenAI\u2019s shift from primarily being a nonprofit \u201clab\u201d to a for-profit private company overseen by a nonprofit foundation. Musk is trying to prove that OpenAI\u2019s leaders lied to him and betrayed the charitable mission of developing AI in a safe, transparent manner in order to make money. But OpenAI\u2019s leaders are essentially making a sour-grapes argument; they claim that Musk, a co-founder who left in 2018, is only saying he\u2019s bothered by OpenAI\u2019s commercial shift now because of its blockbuster success in the same market that Musk\u2019s newer AI company is competing in.\n <\/p>\n

\n But all of that is beside the bigger point.\n <\/p>\n

\n In testimony this week, Musk repeatedly emphasized his belief that in the early days of OpenAI he needed to be in charge to ensure the tech was used safely. When Microsoft came along to invest $20 billion in the startup, Musk bristled at the idea because \u201cMicrosoft has their own motivations\u201d that would diverge from what he believed were OpenAI\u2019s more philanthropic aims.\n <\/p>\n

\n Musk posed a seemingly rhetorical question, as my colleagues Samantha Delouya and Hadas Gold reported<\/a> from the trial in Oakland, turning to the jury at one point to ask: \u201cI don\u2019t know, do you really want Microsoft controlling digital superintelligence?\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n Musk seems to be making the point that Microsoft, maker of some of the most ubiquitous and despised workplace products in history (Outlook, Teams), is not the cool, benevolent technoking\/memelord that should get the keys to sophisticated AI that, to borrow from Musk\u2019s testimony, could \u201ckill us all.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n But Musk\u2019s alternative to Microsoft, at least in OpenAI\u2019s early days, was himself. Or rather, Musk plus four board members appointed by \u2014 you guessed it \u2014 Musk. He testified that he needed \u201ccontrol\u201d of OpenAI early on, expecting his stake would eventually be diluted by new investors.\n <\/p>\n

\n Again, this all may be beside the point.\n <\/p>\n

\n Let\u2019s take Musk and all the other AI executives at face value and believe them when they say they want to reach \u201cartificial general intelligence (AGI),\u201d aka \u201csuperintelligence,\u201d aka some hypothetical level at which the machine\u2019s intellect surpasses that of humans. (We will, for the purposes of this newsletter, just gloss over the fact that AGI is little more than science fiction masquerading as a real possibility in order to wring capital out of investors and scaring the bejesus out of the public with references to the \u201cTerminator\u201d movies. And we will not, for now, dwell on the fact that no two AI evangelists share a common definition of AGI or a protocol for measuring it. We shall not, in this setting, scream that AGI is nothing but a bogeyman born of dull minds trapped in bodies that have failed to touch grass.)\n <\/p>\n

\n And let\u2019s also take them at face value when they say it will someday have the power to kill everybody. Sure, why not.\n <\/p>\n

\n If that\u2019s the case, then surely we should have some way to control it.\n <\/p>\n

\n But while Musk and OpenAI\u2019s lawyers are arguing back and forth about all of this, they appear to only be considering a limited set of options. Our list of choices when it comes to benevolent leaders with a vast amount of control over humanity\u2019s future, at least as mentioned in this trial, appears to be confined to Musk, OpenAI (led by CEO Sam Altman), Microsoft, and possibly Google or Meta or Anthropic.\n <\/p>\n

\n That\u2019s it. That\u2019s the only model, and those are the choices.\n <\/p>\n

\n Some folks might be OK with that arrangement, but based on comments from the random group of citizens available for jury selection, it doesn\u2019t seem like it\u2019s a popular list of overlords.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cElon Musk is a greedy, racist, homophobic piece of garbage,\u201d one juror wrote in their voir dire questionnaire. Another called him a \u201cworld-class jerk.\u201d Even federal Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers had to admit: \u201cThe reality is that people don\u2019t like him\u2026 Many people don\u2019t like him, but that doesn\u2019t mean that Americans nevertheless can\u2019t have integrity for the judicial process.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n Gonzalez Rogers, for one, has no time for doomsday prophesies of the billionaire class.\n <\/p>\n

\n On Thursday, as Musk\u2019s lawyer repeated the industry hype in court \u2014 \u201cwe could all die!\u201d \u2014 Gonzalez Rogers shut it down, pointing out Musk\u2019s obvious philosophical contradictions.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cIt is\u2026 ironic that your client, despite these risks, is creating a company that is in the exact space. I suspect there are plenty of people who don\u2019t want to put the future of humanity in Mr. Musk\u2019s hands.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n But that\u2019s beyond the scope of this case, she continued.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cThis is not a trial on whether or not AI has risks. This is not a trial about whether or not AI has damaged humanity. That may be a trial in the future.\u201d\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A version of this story appeared in CNN Business\u2019 Nightcap newsletter. To get it in your inbox, sign…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":619010,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[182,181,507,74],"class_list":["post-619009","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/619009","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=619009"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/619009\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/619010"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=619009"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=619009"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=619009"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}