Altman Makes Surprise Courtroom Appearance as Jury Pool Voices Distrust of AI and Musk

Sam Altman turned up in an Oakland federal courtroom on Monday, unannounced, as jury selection began in the lawsuit Elon Musk filed against him and OpenAI. The OpenAI CEO wore a dark suit and a white shirt. Musk was not there. Because this is a civil trial, neither party has to attend unless they are testifying, and until now both men have mostly left the fight to their lawyers, apart from the occasional jab online.

The case goes back to 2015, when OpenAI was founded. Musk sued two years ago, naming OpenAI, Altman and OpenAI president Greg Brockman. He alleges they deceived him into cofounding the company. He says he put tens of millions of dollars into what was meant to be a nonprofit building AI for the public's benefit, and that the mission was later abandoned, in part through the company's partnership with Microsoft. Microsoft is also a defendant. Musk is seeking more than $100 billion in damages and sweeping changes to the structure of the company, now valued at $850 billion and reportedly preparing for an initial public offering.

In court, US District Court Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers questioned prospective jurors, and several of them were candid about Musk. One man who works in construction, calls himself a "meme junky" and a "dying breed" for still subscribing to print newspapers, said Musk does not care about people, "just like our president," and thinks only about money. A prospective juror who works for the city of Oakland said he has a strong opinion of Musk and would do his best to be unbiased, though he had called Musk a "jerk" on his pre-trial questionnaire.

Musk's attorney, Steven Molo, asked the judge to dismiss two prospects in particular. One had written on her questionnaire that Musk is a "greedy, racist, homophobic piece of garbage." Another had called him a "world-class jerk." The judge acknowledged the problem bluntly: people don't like him, she told Musk's team, but that does not mean Americans can't have integrity for the judicial process.

AI drew its own skepticism. A registered nurse said she doesn't trust it and dislikes how it is used at work. Her employer uses AI tools to process patient records, and she still has to check them for errors, so it just gives her more work. A woman who works in a psychiatric patient care unit at Stanford said she rarely uses AI because she has to double-check everything and might as well do the work herself. She said she could keep an open mind, and she was ultimately seated on the jury. A genetics PhD student offered a different view: she subscribes to ChatGPT and uses it, along with Anthropic's Claude, to write code and emails.

Outside the courthouse, protesters gathered against AI. One person in a robot suit carried a sign reading "Altman's AI enslaver." A giant inflatable figure read "Elon sucks." Earlier in the day the two sides also sparred on Musk's X platform. Musk called Altman "Scam Altman," and OpenAI called the lawsuit a "baseless and jealous bid to derail a competitor."

By the end of Monday, nine jurors had been chosen. Opening arguments begin Tuesday, and the trial is expected to run for weeks. Musk, Altman and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella are all expected to testify.