Hello and welcome to Eye on AI…In this edition: Sparks fly as Musk and Brockman testify in battle over OpenAI’s restructuring…the White House does a 180 degree U-turn on AI regulation and may begin reviewing AI models prior to release…OpenAI and Anthropic both target PE-backed companies with new joint ventures…a breakthrough in a foundation model for robotics…AI scientists may still be a ways off.
People in Silicon Valley and far beyond have been enthralled by the drama playing out in a courtroom in Oakland, California, where a jury is currently hearing testimony in Elon Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI cofounders Sam Altman and Greg Brockman. The judge and jurors in the case (the jury’s verdict is merely advisory) will need to decide whether Altman’s and Brockman’s communications with Musk around the formation of OpenAI established a formal “charitable trust” and whether Altman and Brockman subsequently violated that trust when they restructured OpenAI so that its non-profit board no longer had sole control over its for-profit arm. They will also have to decide on Musk’s allegations that Altman and Brockman unjustly enriched themselves as OpenAI re-oriented from a research-oriented lab to being primarily a commercial entity.
Most legal analysts say Musk’s case is weak and that he’s likely to lose. In fact, I’m surprised the case has even come to trial. I thought that Musk would opt to settle at the last minute. I had long-assumed that this was one of those legal cases where the lawsuit itself was the whole point, not whether Musk ultimately prevailed. I thought his intention was two-fold: 1) to sow enough investor doubt about the viability of OpenAI’s new for-profit company structure to make it harder for OpenAI to raise further investment and possibly go for an IPO and 2) to use the discovery process to surface lots of embarrassing emails, internal documents, and details about Altman, Brockman, and the constant drama at OpenAI that would tarnish the reputation of his former cofounders.
The email was a spectacular moment in a trial that has, so far, resulted in few bombshell revelations on the witness stand. That’s because much of the sensational stuff has already been disclosed in the documents that surfaced through the pre-trial discovery process. Hearing those details repeated on the stand doesn’t change the public narrative much.
Still, it’s far from certain Musk will prevail, either legally, or in shifting public opinion against his one-time-cofounders-turned-bitter-rivals, Brockman and Altman. In many ways, the trial is a distraction, generating much more heat than it is shedding light on the bigger concerns about who controls AI and the risks the technology presents. While the Musk-OpenAI courtroom showdown has been billed as the first great technology trial of the AI era, a legal showdown that matters far more will take place two weeks from now in a courtroom in Washington, D.C. That’s when a federal appeals court panel will hear arguments in Anthropic’s challenge to the ‘supply chain risk’ designation the Trump Administration slapped on it for refusing to agree to its specified contract terms for providing its AI models to the U.S. military. That’s a case with huge implications not just for Anthropic and the fate of the AI industry, but also for the balance of power between the state and industry more generally.
Even as that case moves forward, the ground is shifting in D.C. Anthropic’s Mythos model, with its powerful cyber capabilities, combined with growing public fears about AI technology, seem to have convinced the Trump administration to perform a head-spinning U-turn: moving from a highly-laissez faire approach to AI to a mandate that the government receive early access to AI models and essentially license their release to the wider public. (More on that in the news section below.) This policy reversal may not have the drama of a trial, but it matters far more for the shape of AI development.
Ok, with that, here’s this week’s AI news.
