Musk lost his case against Sam Altman on a technicality. The first round of Elon Musk vs Sam Altman has come to a close, with the jury deciding that thanks to the statute of limitations Musk's case was invalid. Musk has already announced his intention to appeal, with neither the judge or jury having made any findings about the substance of his allegations against Altman: the main thrust being that Musk was deceived into backing OpenAI as a not-for-profit company, before Altman and co. turned around several years later and made it very much for-profit. The trial saw a whole bunch of documents released, and I've read them all (OK, I might have skimmed some of the business registration ones: have you seen the length of those things?) And I hate to say it, because Musk is such a douchebag that this whole article could just be a list of reasons why he's a douchebag, but he really does seem to have a point. The picture that emerges from these exchanges shows Musk's early enthusiasm for OpenAI and the not-for-profit principles that initially defined the company, a lot of which comes down to his (sometimes histrionic) fears about AGI and in particular which company or individual might end up in control of an AGI. Musk is the type of man who will say one thing on Monday and another on Tuesday, but at least at the time he did seem committed and sincere about the not-for-profit mission and OpenAI being set up for the good of humanity. And Sam Altman absolutely leans into that and tells Musk repeatedly that this is what OpenAI is going to be. On 24 June 2015, Altman emails Musk, and writes: "This mission would be to create the first general AI and use it for individual empowerment, ie, the distributed version of the future that seems the safest. More generally, safety should be a first-class requirement." "The technology would be owned by the foundation and used 'for the good of the world', and in cases where it's not obvious how that should be applied the five of us [on