The personal pettiness of the Elon Musk v OpenAI trial - The Guardian

Ah, the Elon Musk v OpenAI trial trundles on, and The Guardian has kindly condensed it all down to ‘personal pettiness.’ Because when you have two billionaires bickering about who really wanted to save humanity from Skynet, ‘petty’ is the polite word. Musk testified that he founded OpenAI to prevent a ‘Terminator outcome’ — a claim so absurdly on-brand that we already skewered it. Meanwhile, Zuckerberg casually announced Meta will spend $115bn to $135bn on AI infrastructure — nearly double last year — which is roughly the GDP of a small country, all to build… what, exactly? Better chatbots?

The trial itself is a masterclass in Silicon Valley narcissism: Musk suing Altman for betraying OpenAI's nonprofit mission, while Altman counters that Musk wanted control or a merger with Tesla. The courtroom is treated to texts, emails, and boardroom drama that would be dismissed as a soap opera if real money weren't at stake. And all this while actual AI systems are being deployed with no governance, no accountability, and the safety people are leaving in droves. But sure, let's litigate whether Musk said ‘open source’ or ‘profit-maximizing’ in 2015.

The pièce de résistance? The trial is expected to run until late May, giving us weeks more of this delightful spectacle. The irony is so thick you could bottle it and sell it as AI coolant. Enjoy the show — it's the only oversight we're going to get.