The thing about AI, really, is that we don’t know a thing.
That’s an exaggeration, of course, but not by much. We all know AI is artificial intelligence, which the dictionary people tell us is “the capability of computer systems or algorithms to imitate intelligent human behavior.”
We know we’re being told that AI is going to change everything, yes. We also know that enormous sums of money are being spent to create AI. Sprawling data centres are being built, and millions of people are being trained and paid to develop it. We know that.
What we don’t know is what it will do. In all of human history, never has so much money been pumped into something that is, at its centre, a big mystery. On the weekend, theNew York Timesmagazine said as much, in a headline: “The A.I. backlash will be ugly and no one is ready. Not even the C.E.O.s.”
Is AI a good thing, or is it bad? Is it going to flop or fly? Is it evil? Is it, as Elon Musk has said to a gathering of American politicians, “a fundamental risk to the existence of human civilization”?
That might seem like an overstatement, but an ongoing court case suggests that it isn’t. Two of the richest, most powerful (and completely unelected) men on Earth — Musk and Sam Altman — were in court this week. As controversial as he can be, Musk is the one wearing the white hat. Altman, as we learned in extraordinaryNew Yorkerinvestigative piece by Ronan Farrow last month, definitely isn’t. To many, he’s indisputably the bad guy.
The case was benignly calledMusk v. Altman, No. 4:24-cv-04722, but it was very, very important, portending a dark future. In his pleadings, Musk alleged that Altman’s OpenAI — in which he invested $38 million in the first two years of its existence — was supposed to be non-profit, and for the greater good of humanity. Altman took the money, he alleged, and covertly steered OpenAI to a for-profit model to enrich himself and a few others.
Musk lost opening round
Musk lost the first round, when a jury found that he waited too long to launch his lawsuit. He’s promised to appeal.
He should. Musk doesn’t need the money, so it is obvious that the lawsuit against OpenAI’s Altman is motivated by something else: his belief that Altman, as he put it, was “stealing a charity.” That’s not all: Musk has also said that Altman’s AI is an existential threat to humanity. Not because Musk himself opposes the creation of artificial intelligence — he has admitted he wanted to use AI with his Tesla and SpaceX businesses,just as he presently does with “Grok” on the social media platform X— but because, unchecked, it will be bad for us all.
It is “perhaps the greatest existential threat we face today,” Musk has said, and much of the public now tend to agree with him. As David Wallace-Wells noted in hisTimesessay, in September 2025, a majority of Americans supported the creation of AI data centres in their communities. Just four months later, in February of this year, a quarter of them were saying they strenuously oppose data centres. “That is a shockingly large swing in public opinion,” Wallace-Wells wrote.
Plenty of anxiety
The anxieties about AI are well-known: job loss, resource strain, theft of intellectual property, environmental impacts and — of course — the Skynet scenario: what Wallace-Wells calls “superintelligent black boxes which rapidly begin shaping the course of the human future with decisions that remain illegible to the rest of us — including their designers.”
Full disclosure: one of my clients is an AI-producing firm led by a brilliant man who maintains that AI must only serve to improve humanity, not ever replace it. I know that is the vision he is working to fulfill. His motivations are good. He is an altruist.
But what of the others involved in the present AI arms race? What of the Sam Altmans, who increasingly seem only interested in amassing power and wealth?
Elon Musk is going to behistory’s first trillionaire, with limitless power and influence. He is a man who doesn’t have to worry about paying the bills or getting politicians to do his bidding. So, when Musk says he is worried about something really, really big?
We should all be paying attention.
