In a high‑stakes courtroom showdown, Elon Musk’s legal team called UC Berkeley professor Stuart Russell to testify that artificial intelligence poses serious safety threats. Russell, a longtime AI researcher and signatory of a 2023 open letter urging a six‑month research pause, warned jurors and Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers about cybersecurity vulnerabilities, misalignment risks, and the winner‑take‑all dynamics of a race toward artificial general intelligence. OpenAI’s attorneys pushed back, limiting his remarks and emphasizing that Russell was not evaluating the company’s internal safety policies. The testimony underscored a broader debate over profit‑driven AI development and the need for tighter regulation. Read more →

Amazon Web Services, Microsoft and NVIDIA have signed agreements to provide the U.S. Defense Department with artificial‑intelligence tools for use on classified networks, the Pentagon announced. The deals, which also include startup Reflection AI, join similar contracts already in place with xAI, OpenAI and Google. Anthropic remains the only major U.S. AI firm without a Pentagon agreement, after a dispute with the administration over safeguards on its Claude chatbot. The rapid expansion of AI in the military has sparked public backlash, as evidenced by a sharp rise in ChatGPT uninstall rates following OpenAI’s own deal. Read more →

The Department of Defense announced Friday that it has finalized classified‑use agreements with OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Nvidia, Elon Musk's xAI and the startup Reflection. The deals will let the Pentagon employ each company’s artificial‑intelligence tools in secure environments as it seeks to become an "AI‑first" fighting force. Anthropic, previously cleared for classified work, was left out after officials labeled its technology a supply‑chain risk and the company refused to relax red‑line restrictions on surveillance and autonomous weapons. Read more →

During the high‑profile OpenAI lawsuit, Elon Musk’s courtroom demeanor raised fresh doubts about his reliability as a witness. The Tesla and SpaceX founder repeatedly clashed with prosecutor Christopher Savitt, challenged simple yes‑or‑no questions, and dismissed inquiries about OpenAI’s safety protocols. His admission that he did not know what the company’s “safety cards” were, combined with a past remark calling the firm’s safety team “jackasses,” amplified the prosecutor’s push to question Musk’s credibility. Musk defended his outbursts as a management tactic, but the judge reminded the prosecution that extracting concise answers from him would remain a challenge. Read more →

In a California federal courtroom on Thursday, Elon Musk told a judge that his AI startup xAI employed OpenAI’s models to develop its own system, Grok, through a practice known as model distillation. Musk said the technique is common across the industry, answering “partially” when asked if xAI directly distilled OpenAI technology. The testimony highlights a growing debate over the legality and ethics of AI model sharing, with companies like OpenAI, Anthropic and Google warning of potential intellectual‑property violations. Read more →

Elon Musk took the stand Wednesday in a federal jury trial in California, accusing OpenAI co-founders Sam Altman and Greg Brockman of breaching the nonprofit's charter and enriching themselves at the expense of its mission. The lawsuit, which also names Microsoft and OpenAI as defendants, alleges fraud, unjust enrichment and a illegal shift to a for‑profit structure. Witnesses slated to appear include Microsoft chief Satya Nadella, CTO Kevin Scott and former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati, now heading Thinking Machines Lab. Musk seeks a court order to strip Altman and Brockman of authority and unwind OpenAI’s for‑profit conversion. Read more →

Google has entered a classified agreement with the U.S. Department of Defense that lets the Pentagon use the company’s artificial‑intelligence models for any lawful government purpose. The deal, reported by The Information, comes just a day after more than 560 Google engineers signed an open letter urging CEO Sundar Pichai to refuse such military contracts. Unlike an earlier Anthropic pact that barred mass surveillance and fully autonomous weapons, Google’s terms contain no ethical carve‑outs. The move adds the tech giant to a short list of AI firms supplying unrestricted AI capability to the U.S. military. Read more →

Elon Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman are set to appear in a high‑stakes trial that could reshape the future of the artificial‑intelligence nonprofit. Both founders face more than two hours of questioning, alongside a roster of Silicon Valley heavyweights that includes former OpenAI chief technology officer Mira Brockman, Microsoft chief Satya Nadella and Musk associate Shivon Zilis. The case, which pits Musk’s for‑profit AI venture against OpenAI’s nonprofit mission, also highlights growing competition from rivals such as Anthropic and Google. Read more →