The tech trial of the year, Musk v. Altman, was ultimately a fight for control. Elon Musk argued that Sam Altman, with whom he helped found the now-massive company OpenAI, should not direct the future of artificial intelligence. Altman’s lawyers, in turn, poked at Musk’s own credibility. A jury came to a verdict on Monday after just two hours of deliberation, dismissing Musk’s claims due to the statute of limitations.
In a strictly legal sense, three weeks of testimony added up to nothing. But the trial offered a more damning broader takeaway: Almost nobody in this saga seems worth trusting. Some of the most powerful people in tech seem temperamentally incapable of dealing with each other honestly. And if that is true, it raises a bigger question: Why are they in control of a trillion-dollar industry that is set to upend people’s lives?
The Founding of OpenAI: A Noble Mission Turned Sour
OpenAI was, in the testimony of both Musk and Altman, founded to stop powerful AI from being owned and advanced by the wrong people. The organization was established in 2015 as a nonprofit with the goal of ensuring that artificial general intelligence (AGI) would benefit all of humanity. At the time, the founding team deeply feared Google DeepMind and its leader, Demis Hassabis. In 2015, Altman said he had been mulling over whether anything could “stop humanity from developing AI” — and after concluding it was impossible, he wanted “someone other than google to do it first.”
Fellow cofounders Greg Brockman and Ilya Sutskever so strongly opposed one-person control that they seemed willing to torpedo a lucrative deal that could — in their words — give Musk an “AI dictatorship.” In a part of the same email addressed to Altman, Brockman and Sutskever questioned his motivations, writing, “We haven’t been able to fully trust your judgments throughout this process … Is AGI truly your primary motivation? How does it connect to your political goals?”
These concerns would be quickly borne out. A central focus of the trial was “the blip,” a five-day period in November 2023 when OpenAI’s board removed Altman as CEO. Sutskever had spent more than a year architecting his ouster, assembling a 52-page memo alleging “a consistent pattern of lying, undermining his execs, and pitting his execs against one another.” The implications were broader than executive infighting, potentially impacting the public rollout of AI systems. Then-CTO Mira Murati, for instance, testified in court that Altman told her OpenAI’s legal team had okayed skipping a safety review for one of its models — a statement, she said, that turned out to be false.
The Trial: A Parade of Untrustworthy Executives
In closing arguments, Musk attorney Steven Molo hammered home the long list of people who had testified under oath that Altman was, in one way or another, a liar — all of whom Altman had worked with for years. “The defendants absolutely need you to believe Sam Altman,” Molo told the jury. “If you cannot trust him, if you don’t believe him, they cannot win. It’s that simple.”
But during court proceedings, Musk — who now leads competing lab xAI, under his space company SpaceX — did not come off any better. Joshua Achiam, now OpenAI’s chief futurist, testified that Musk’s race against Google led him to take an “obviously unsafe and reckless” approach to achieving AGI. When he and others raised concerns, he says, Musk argued that OpenAI’s for-profit makeover created incentives to disregard safety, but his own xAI is for-profit and has, at best, a haphazard approach to safety. And in the name of making sure OpenAI remained open, Musk was obsessive in his need for control over it. In closing arguments, Sarah Eddy, one of OpenAI’s attorneys, told the jury that Musk “wanted dominion over AGI.”
As one X user put it, “if untrustworthiness had mass, putting Musk and Altman too close to one another would collapse the courtroom and all of earth into a black hole.”
OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment. On X, Musk posted a statement saying he would be filing an appeal.
Beyond Musk and Altman: A Culture of Deception
It is not just Musk and Altman, either. Trial evidence suggested Murati helped get Altman removed, then switched sides to support his reinstatement while appearing “totally uninterested” in disclosing the role she had played. Shivon Zilis, a close Musk associate who served on OpenAI’s board, asked Musk if he would “prefer I stay close and friendly to OpenAI to keep info flowing” during his departure — avoiding revealing that she had two children with him at the time. Brockman’s diary entries played a key role in Musk’s case; at one point, he admitted Musk could “correctly” claim “we weren’t honest with him” if OpenAI made a for-profit shift without his involvement.
These revelations paint a picture of an industry where loyalty is fleeting, personal relationships are weaponized, and transparency is a foreign concept. The trial gave each man an opportunity to sling dirt at the other and, in theory, establish himself as the more scrupulous guardian of AI. But a more obvious takeaway is that several of the AI industry’s household names are at best naive — and, at worst, hypocrites with little regard for the consequences of their actions.
Public Sentiment: Trust at an All-Time Low
Public sentiment about AI is at an all-time low. In a Pew Research survey from last summer, half of US adults said the “increased use of AI in daily life makes them feel more concerned than excited” — and only 10 percent said they felt more excited than concerned. Many of these concerns are related to job loss, but protests are also surging against mass data center construction across the country. Some resistance has turned potentially violent, with individuals allegedly attempting to attack Altman’s home on two occasions. And many tech CEOs themselves maintain that they have bunkers or other doomsday-prepping plans for if things go horribly wrong.
These companies push public messaging that AI empowers its users. But a 2025 Pew Research study found that nearly 60 percent of US adults feel they have little to no control over how AI is used in their lives. In the US, the prospect of meaningful government regulation — which could at least offer some level of external oversight — remains shaky. And now, it is clearer than ever how far the AI world’s biggest players will go to maintain control.
Historical Context: The Founding Ethos vs. Reality
The original vision for OpenAI was rooted in altruism. Musk, Altman, and others wanted to create a counterweight to Google’s dominance in AI research. They believed that by keeping the organization nonprofit and open, they could ensure that AGI would be developed safely and for the common good. However, as the costs of AI research skyrocketed, the organization transitioned to a “capped-profit” model in 2019, allowing it to raise billions from Microsoft and other investors.
This shift sowed the seeds of distrust. Musk, who had invested heavily in the early days, felt betrayed. He left OpenAI’s board in 2018 and later founded xAI to pursue his own vision. Meanwhile, Altman became the public face of OpenAI, championing a mission that seemed increasingly at odds with the company’s profit-driven trajectory. The trial exposed the deep rifts between the founders and the compromises made along the way.
The Wider Implications for AI Governance
Beyond the personal drama, the trial highlights a fundamental problem: The people who are shaping the future of AI are unaccountable and often duplicitous. If the developers of the most transformative technology since the internet cannot be trusted, how can society safely integrate AI into critical infrastructure, healthcare, education, and governance? The case has sparked renewed calls for regulation, but the US government has been slow to act. The European Union’s AI Act is a step forward, but enforcement remains a challenge.
Moreover, the trial revealed that even internal safeguards are often ignored. The testimony about skipped safety reviews is particularly alarming. If a company as high-profile as OpenAI can bypass its own protocols, what are smaller, less scrutinized startups doing? The race to deploy AI has created a dangerous environment where speed is prioritized over safety, and whistleblowers are often silenced or sidelined.
The Musk v. Altman trial may have ended with a legal verdict, but the moral verdict is far more damning. It is a wake-up call for anyone who believes that the tech industry can police itself. The public, policymakers, and the broader global community must demand transparency, accountability, and a genuine commitment to safety from those who hold the keys to AGI. Until that happens, AI will remain in the hands of the wrong people.
Source: The Verge News