I believe the Musk vs Altman case tells us all something important about the goals and tactics of tech billionaires, and especially those pushing A.I. at the moment, so I’m giving this one out for free. Consider becoming a paid subscriber to get this kind of analysis throughout the week.

I’ve been covering AI accountability since before most people knew they needed to. The Rip Current is where I do the reporting that doesn’t fit on television — the founding documents, the diary entries, the patterns behind what everyone else treats as a one-day story.

I spent two days inside the federal courthouse in Oakland, California, watching Elon Musk get examined and cross-examined in his lawsuit against Sam Altman and OpenAI. The case turns on a founding betrayal — Musk put in $38 million on the understanding that OpenAI would stay a nonprofit, and discovery documents suggest the conversion to for-profit was already being planned while he was still writing checks.

But this trial is about more than one lawsuit. Congress investigated AI and passed no regulations. The FTC looked at AI market concentration and retreated. The California AG signed off on OpenAI’s nonprofit conversion without a fight. The fastest-growing company in corporate history is now having its fate decided by nine jurors drawn from Oakland’s voter rolls — and that jury may be the only formal accountability mechanism the AI industry has ever faced.

In this video: what it was like to be in the room, what the Brockman diary entries actually show, what Musk’s attorneys are really arguing, and why this trial matters far beyond the $38 million at stake.

Further Reading

* Musk v. Altman, Case Filing Documents — Primary court filings including founding emails and Brockman diary entries entered into evidence

* Karim Nader’s reconsolidation research, McGill University — Original science on memory malleability and the reconsolidation process

* Elizabeth Loftus, “Creating False Memories,” Scientific American — Foundational work on memory distortion and false recall

* California AG’s approval of OpenAI’s nonprofit conversion — The regulatory moment that left no footprint

* OpenAI’s corporate restructuring announcement, 2024 — The company’s own characterization of the for-profit shift

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