Behold, the Elon Musk jackass trophy

Yesterday, in Musk v. Altmanbefore the judges came in, Sam Altman’s team passed what looked – from a distance – like a minor league trophy. It wasn’t like that. Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers told the lawyers to read the statement aloud to reporters: “Don’t stop being a jackass.” As a reminder, OpenAI staff bought research scientist Josh Ackiam, who testified yesterday.

How did this come about? a case involving the law of a non-profit association? Of course, after Elon Musk left OpenAI, he talked about wanting to run ahead of Google. Achiam, who works on AI security, asked if this was a good idea. Musk called him a jackass. Years later, Musk presents his case as an attempt to prevent AI from causing serious harm — something that, Altman’s team points out, was not prominent in his list of past challenges.

In his direct testimony, Musk denied the incident, saying he may have said something like, “Don’t be a jackass.”

YGR ruled that the jury would not see the trophy unless Musk’s team gave OpenAI a reason to notify them, so they only heard about it. But now you see for yourself.