Here’s Elon Musk’s donkey award

Yesterday, in Musk v. Altmanbefore the jury arrived, Sam Altman’s team passed around what looked – from a distance – like a Little League Cup. It wasn’t. Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers asked the lawyers to read the inscription aloud to the press: “Never stop being an idiot.” It’s a souvenir that OpenAI employees bought for research scientist Josh Achiam, who testified yesterday.

How exactly did this come in? Trial on non-profit contract law? Allegedly, when Elon Musk was leaving OpenAI, he talked about wanting to compete with Google. Achayam, who has worked in AI safety, wondered if this was really a good idea. Musk called him a donkey. Years later, Musk portrays his lawsuit as an attempt to avoid AI causing serious harm — something that Altman’s team suggests was not high on his list of concerns at the time.

During his direct testimony, Musk denied the incident occurred, saying he may have said something like “Don’t be an idiot.”

YGR decided that jurors wouldn’t get to see the trophy unless Musk’s team gave OpenAI a reason to present it, so they only heard about it. But now you can see it for yourself.

Correction May 14: The researcher is Josh Achiam, not Achiam.