Elon Musk’s Only Expert Witness Fears an AGI Arms Race

In a bid to shut down OpenAI's for-profit AI business, Elon Musk's attorneys are emphasizing the organization's original mission as a charity focused on AI safety. To support their argument, they called their only expert witness, Stuart Russell, a University of California, Berkeley computer science professor with decades of experience in AI research. Russell's testimony aimed to provide background on AI and highlight the dangers associated with its development.

Russell, who co-signed an open letter in March 2023 calling for a six-month pause in AI research, outlined various risks associated with AI, including cybersecurity threats, misalignment, and the winner-take-all nature of developing Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). He emphasized the tension between pursuing AGI and ensuring safety. Although Russell's concerns about the existential threats of unconstrained AI were not fully aired in open court, his warnings about the arms-race dynamic created by frontier labs competing to reach AGI first have been well-documented.

Musk, too, has expressed concerns about AI safety, having signed the same letter calling for a pause in research, even as he launched his own for-profit AI lab, xAI. This contradiction has not gone unnoticed. OpenAI's attorneys focused their cross-examination on establishing that Russell was not directly evaluating the organization's corporate structure or specific safety policies.

The trial raises important questions about the relationship between corporate greed and AI safety concerns. Many of OpenAI's founders have warned about AI risks while also emphasizing the benefits and seeking to build AI as quickly as possible, with plans for AI-focused for-profit enterprises. The organization's growth and need for more compute spend ultimately led to the involvement of for-profit investors, creating an arms race that has torn the team apart and brought us to this lawsuit.

This dynamic is already playing out at a national level, with Senator Bernie Sanders pushing for a law imposing a moratorium on data center construction, citing AI fears expressed by Musk, Sam Altman, Geoffrey Hinton, and others. The case now hinges on whether the court will take part of Altman and Musk's arguments seriously while discounting other parts that are less useful for their legal argument. As the trial continues, it remains to be seen how much weight will be given to the testimony of Russell and the warnings from OpenAI's founders about AI risks.

One thing is clear, however: the development of AGI has become a high-stakes game with significant implications for safety, regulation, and the future of AI research.