A jury was selected Monday during the first day of trial for Musk v. Altman in federal court in Oakland, California, according to Wired. Nine jurors will deliver an advisory verdict to guide Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, who will make the final decision on the case.
According to MIT Technology Review, Elon Musk is suing OpenAI, alleging that CEO Sam Altman and president Greg Brockman deceived him into bankrolling the company by promising to maintain it as a nonprofit dedicated to developing AI that benefits humanity, only to later restructure the company to operate a for-profit subsidiary. Musk cofounded OpenAI with Altman and others in 2015 but left in 2018 after a power struggle, according to the publication.
Musk is seeking as much as $134 billion in damages from OpenAI and Microsoft, and is asking the court to remove Altman and Brockman from their roles and restore OpenAI as a nonprofit, according to MIT Technology Review. The publication reports that Musk has asked the court to award any damages to OpenAI’s nonprofit rather than to him personally.
According to Wired, several potential jurors expressed negative opinions about Musk during questioning, but only one was excused on that basis. Judge Gonzalez Rogers told the courtroom that “many people don’t like him,” but believed Americans with negative feelings about Musk could still decide the case fairly, according to Wired.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and president Greg Brockman were spotted in the security line at the courthouse Monday morning, but Musk was not present, Wired reported.