Elon Musk had a bad week in court

Elon Musk spent three days on the witness stand in the trial he himself insisted on bringing against OpenAI, and by nearly every account visible from the courtroom, it went badly. The jury pool in Oakland had already made their feelings clear in questionnaires — one called Musk "a greedy racist homophobic piece of garbage," another called him "a world-class jerk" — and Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers had to remind everyone that Americans can still have integrity for the judicial process even if they dislike the plaintiff. Then Musk started testifying.

The trial: Musk on the stand

Musk was called as the first witness in his own case, which argues that OpenAI betrayed its nonprofit mission by becoming a for-profit company and that he was pushed out after funding the project. Under direct examination from his own lawyer, he was flat. Under cross-examination from OpenAI's counsel, he became combative and evasive. He accused the lawyer of asking "questions that were designed to trick me" and said things like "you're mostly doing unfair questions." He refused to acknowledge the nature of linear time when asked about the sequence of his board membership. At one point, OpenAI's lawyer produced a four-page term sheet outlining the for-profit structure Musk had been sent in 2018; Musk admitted he had only read the highlighted warning box at the top. The lawyer noted that Musk had not