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Elon Musk was missing from court when lawyers gave their closing arguments in his case against OpenAI and Sam Altman, and that alone became part of the story. His own lawyer, Steven Molo, had to speak to the jury without him there.
Steven opened by apologizing for Elon, saying, “He’s sorry he could not be here.” The problem is that Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers had already kept Elon on recall status. That meant the court still expected him to be ready if he needed to testify again.
Instead, Elon was in China with Trump on an official visit. That left his legal team to finish the case while the person who filed it was out of the country.
According to reports in NBC News, Elon Musk hadn’t obtained judicial permission prior to visiting the country under the conditions of being recalled to give testimony.
The trial has been about OpenAI’s early nonprofit setup, its later business structure, Elon’s donations, Sam’s role, and whether Elon waited too long before taking the fight to court. Tesla (TSLA) also came up because Sam said there had once been talks about Tesla absorbing OpenAI.
OpenAI attacks Elon’s timeline as the jury weighs whether he sued too late
The jury will have to decide if Elon Musk filed his lawsuit on time. According to OpenAI, no. It states that Elon can’t claim damages for what happened earlier than August 2021 due to the deadline to file claims expiring.
There is an accusation in breach of charitable trust and unjust enrichment in Elon’s lawsuit. A lot of evidence presented by Elon relates to events of OpenAI’s early stages.
This deadline was mentioned in a document filed by Judge Yvonne earlier this month. There is a high possibility that she would rule in favor of defendants if the jury determines Elon had filed his lawsuit out of the statute of limitations.
Sarah Eddy said in her speech in front of the jury that Elon’s version of events regarding OpenAI’s foundation and his following disagreements with other co-founders is false. Sarah said, “Mr. Molo says Sam Altman can’t be trusted.” Then she continued by saying, “It is Mr. Musk, rather, who contradicts all other witnesses.”
According to Sarah, Elon knew that it was possible for OpenAI to become a for-profit organization but stay true to its mission at the same time. Moreover, Elon couldn’t prove that his past donations included a lifetime control option. The idea here is that Elon believes that the jury should recognize the fact that his money set certain restrictions on OpenAI.
Moreover, Sarah referred to testimony when Elon spoke about leaving his kids to inherit ownership and control of OpenAI. Sarah said that “he wanted dominion over AGI.”
By AGI, she meant artificial general intelligence – advanced AI that could beat humans in almost anything. As far as Sarah understands, Elon wanted full control and maybe would have left it in the future, maybe not.
Sam says Elon slowed a Tesla and OpenAI meeting by showing memes on his phone
Sam also testified under oath, and one part of his testimony was pure courtroom chaos. He said there was once a serious meeting about whether Tesla could take over OpenAI. That mattered because Elon is accusing Sam of helping turn OpenAI away from its nonprofit roots. But Sam said the meeting did not stay serious for long because Elon spent a long time showing people memes on his phone.
Sam told the court there was a “LONG long period of time with Elon showing us memes on his phone.” The court reporter then asked him to repeat the phrase “MEMES ON HIS PHONE.”
However, this interesting fact occurred after Elon had already given rather crude testimony. The witness challenged several aspects of the questioning and considered one phrase “definitionally complex.”
Moreover, he denied an earlier statement that Tesla was building AGI, dismissed numbers about money he invested in OpenAI and stated that he “didn’t read the fine print” in the term sheet Sam provided him on converting OpenAI to a for-profit entity operated by a nonprofit.
Shivon Zilis, Elon’s former chief of staff who sat on the OpenAI board, was discussed during the hearing as well. The man had to explain that Shivon was also the mother of his children. Even Judge Yvonne told him to refrain from sharing anything about the case on X, and he complied.
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