- Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers shut down Musk’s AI extinction testimony during day four of the OpenAI trial.
- Musk is suing over $38 million he donated to OpenAI’s nonprofit, now valued at $800 billion.
- The judge told Musk he’s “not a lawyer” after he made legal arguments about charity theft.
Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers drew a hard line against Elon Musk’s doomsday speculation on Thursday, telling the Tesla CEO to stop talking about robot apocalypse scenarios in her Oakland courtroom. Musk, who is suing OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman over $38 million in donations to the company’s nonprofit, repeatedly referenced AI “Terminator” scenarios while testifying about the risks of artificial intelligence. The trial over OpenAI’s for-profit conversion entered its fourth day with the judge making clear that existential threats to humanity would not be part of the jury’s deliberations.
Musk has long warned that AI could one day threaten humans, framing himself as a guardrail against dangerous technology. But Rogers told Musk’s lawyer she didn’t want talk of AI’s existential threat to seep into the trial, noting that “there are a number of people who do not want to put the future of humanity in Mr. Musk’s hands.” The judge also admonished Musk when he attempted to make legal arguments, reminding him that “you’re not a lawyer, Mr. Musk” after he repeated his favorite line about how “you just can’t steal from a charity.” Reported Business Insider.
Why the Judge Is Losing Patience
Judge Rogers has grown increasingly frustrated with Musk’s courtroom theatrics. On Thursday, she shut down his attempts to frame the case as a battle for humanity’s future, insisting the jury focus on the legal questions at hand: whether OpenAI violated its nonprofit mission and whether Musk is entitled to damages. The judge’s intervention came after Musk repeatedly referenced AI safety concerns and the potential for AI to become an existential threat, themes that have been central to his public persona but are legally irrelevant to the contract dispute at the heart of the trial. Musk previously admitted that xAI has “partly” distilled OpenAI’s technology—a process where one AI model is used to train another.
The trial centers on whether OpenAI’s for-profit conversion breached its original nonprofit charter. Musk claims he was a “fool” to trust Sam Altman with the future of OpenAI, saying the funding he provided was used to create an $800 billion company. OpenAI argues that Musk’s donations were always intended to support AI research and that the for-profit structure was necessary to attract the capital needed to build advanced AI systems. Noted CNBC, the trial has turned increasingly hostile as both sides trade accusations over who betrayed whom.
The case is Musk v. OpenAI et al., 3:24-cv-01456, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.