Elon Musk lost his bid to derail OpenAI. Few will feel sorry for him.

埃隆·马斯克试图阻止OpenAI的努力失败。很少有人会为他感到遗憾。

Unless you are a corporate chieftain or a venture capitalist, you might want to take a moment, however, to feel sorry for yourself. The juggernaut of artificial intelligence bearing down on the world is probably not your friend.

但如果你不是企业高管或风险投资家，你或许应该花点时间为自己感到遗憾。正在向全世界压来的这台人工智能巨无霸很可能并不是你的朋友。

If you are a clerk, a programmer, an administrator, a writer, an entry-level knowledge worker of any sort, you have already been warned that A.I. might replace you. Even if those worries prove overblown in the short term, the new technology could push down incomes.

如果你是一名文员、程序员、行政人员、作家，或任何初级知识工作者，你早已被警告说人工智能可能会取代你。即使这些担忧在短期内被证明言过其实，这项新技术也可能压低收入。

The speedy collapse of Mr. Musk’s legal case on Monday will not slow down the juggernaut. If anything, it will speed up. With rising emotions around the country, this could be a long, hot A.I. summer.

马斯克的诉讼在周一的迅速崩溃不会减缓这台巨无霸的前进速度。如果有什么影响的话，它只会加速。随着全国情绪不断高涨，这可能将是一个漫长而炎热的人工智能之夏。

A.I. critics dismissed the three-week trial in federal court in Oakland, Calif., as a power struggle between oligarchs that was of little concern to the masses. But it was also a rare glimpse into the seething maw of Silicon Valley as it makes a bid to transform, and possibly take over, the world.

人工智能批评者将这场在加州奥克兰联邦法院进行的为期三周的审判斥为寡头之间的权力斗争，与普通民众无关。但它也罕见地让我们一窥硅谷的血盆大口——它正试图改造世界，并可能接管世界。

OpenAI律师威廉·萨维特在周一胜诉后。

As the A.I. industry likes to remind us, the stakes could not be higher. “The worst-case situation,” Mr. Musk pointed out in his trial testimony, is one where A.I. will “kill us all.”

正如人工智能行业喜欢提醒我们的那样，此案至关重要。马斯克在庭审证词中指出，“最糟糕的情况”是人工智能会“杀死我们所有人”。

Mr. Musk was undoubtedly seeking to benefit Elon Musk in his pursuit of OpenAI, the leading A.I. company, and its chief executive, Sam Altman. Mr. Musk, 54, argued that OpenAI was trying to make as much money as possible from the beginning, a violation of its self-proclaimed mission as a charity putting humanity first.

马斯克无疑是在追求自身利益，他试图挑战领先的人工智能公司OpenAI及其首席执行官萨姆·奥尔特曼。54岁的马斯克辩称，OpenAI从一开始就试图尽可能多地赚钱，这违反了它自称的作为优先考虑人类的慈善机构的使命。

Was A.I. fundamentally a bait and switch? It’s a question that was emphatically worth asking. It would have been nice to have a court ruling that provided a definitive answer.

人工智能是否从根本上是在挂羊头卖狗肉？这是一个非常值得提出的问题。要是能从一份法庭裁决中得到明确答案就好了。

“The fundamental issue still stands,” said Oren Etzioni, a veteran A.I. researcher who was the founding chief executive of the Allen Institute for A.I., a nonprofit. “Can a nonprofit of any kind become a for-profit willy-nilly?”

“根本问题依然存在，”非营利机构艾伦人工智能研究所创始首席执行官、资深人工智能研究员奥伦·埃齐奥尼说。“一个非营利组织能否随意变成营利组织？”

The nine men and women of the jury did not consider the merits of Mr. Musk’s argument but decided the statute of limitations meant his lawsuit could not proceed.

陪审团的九名男女成员没有考虑马斯克的论述的价值，而是裁定诉讼时效已过，他的诉讼无法继续。

“The A.I. trial of the century ends with a whimper,” wrote Gary Marcus, a cognitive scientist who is a prominent critic of A.I. companies. “And so there are some things we will never know.”

“这场人工智能世纪审判就这样虎头蛇尾地结束了，”著名人工智能公司批评者、认知科学家加里·马库斯写道。“因此，有些事情我们永远不会知道了。”

Mr. Musk’s challenge to OpenAI ended, at least for the moment, rather differently than the recent court cases against social media. Losses in Los Angeles and New Mexico in the last few months, and the specter of more trials to come later this year, are putting that part of the tech industry on the defensive.

马斯克对OpenAI的挑战至少在目前结束了，其结局与最近针对社交媒体的法庭案件相当不同。过去几个月，洛杉矶和新墨西哥的败诉以及今年晚些时候更多审判的临近正让科技行业的这一部分处于守势。

Any reckoning against A.I. will have to come in another form at another time.

对人工智能的任何清算都只能在另一个时间以另一种形式出现。

Mr. Musk tried his best. If one of his goals was to humiliate Mr. Altman, 41, once a buddy and now a nemesis, he managed to accomplish a bit of that in the court of public opinion. These revelations go to the center of people’s biggest concerns about A.I.: Can it be trusted? And can the people in charge of it be trusted?

马斯克已尽了最大努力。如果他的目标之一是羞辱41岁的前好友、现死敌奥尔特曼，那么他在舆论法庭上确实取得了一点成果。这些揭露直指人们对人工智能的最大担忧：它可信吗？负责管理它的人可信吗？

奥尔特曼在加利福尼亚州奥克兰联邦法院出席了由马斯克对OpenAI提起的诉讼庭审。

No one at OpenAI ended up looking particularly good in the trial. Mr. Musk had accused Mr. Altman of “perfidy” and “deceit” and said OpenAI’s leadership “unjustly enriched” themselves “to the tune of billions of dollars.”

在这场审判中，OpenAI没有哪个人的形象显得特别光彩。马斯克曾指责奥尔特曼“背信弃义”和“欺诈”，并称OpenAI的领导层将“数十亿美元”中饱私囊。

“Our primary fiduciary duty is to humanity,” the OpenAI charter states. But if the company is acting in the people’s best interests, why is everyone who works there getting so rich? Greg Brockman, the president of OpenAI, confirmed his stake was now worth nearly $30 billion. Ilya Sutskever, an OpenAI co-founder who has since left, said he had a $7 billion stake.

OpenAI的章程宣称：“我们的首要信托责任是对全人类负责。”但如果该公司是在为公众的最大利益行事，为什么那里的每个员工都变得如此富有？OpenAI总裁格雷格·布罗克曼证实，他的股份现在价值接近300亿美元。已离职的OpenAI联合创始人伊利亚·苏茨克维尔表示，他拥有价值70亿美元的股份。

(As for Mr. Altman, he has repeatedly maintained he has no direct stake in OpenAI. “I’m doing this because I love it,” he told a Senate subcommittee in 2023. It emerged during the trial, however, that he has stakes worth $2 billion in companies that directly do business with OpenAI. He said he was recused from negotiating the deals.)

（至于奥尔特曼，他一再坚称自己没有直接持有OpenAI的股份。“我做这个是因为我热爱，”他在2023年对参议院小组委员会如是说。然而，庭审期间透露，他在与OpenAI有直接业务往来的公司中拥有价值20亿美元的股份。他辩称，在谈这些交易时他都主动回避了。）

And then there is the question of safety — especially important with a technology so potentially dangerous.

接着便是安全问题——对于一项具有如此潜在危险的技术来说，这尤为重要。

“Obviously we’d comply with/aggressively support all regulation,” Mr. Altman told Mr. Musk in 2015 in an email that became an exhibit in the trial. But OpenAI, like nearly every tech company, did not end up a fan of regulation at all.

“显然，我们会遵守并积极支持所有监管，”奥尔特曼在2015年给马斯克的一封邮件中写道，这封邮件后来成了庭审证物。但最终，OpenAI就像几乎所有的科技公司一样，根本不希望受到监管。

Ross Gerber, the chief executive of Gerber Kawasaki, a wealth and investment management firm in Santa Monica, Calif., that invested in Mr. Musk’s rocket company, SpaceX, said the lawsuit did not hurt Mr. Altman’s reputation or help Mr. Musk improve his public perception. “The good news is that people hate both of them,” Mr. Gerber said.

位于加州圣莫尼卡的财富与投资管理公司Gerber Kawasaki（该公司投资了马斯克的火箭公司SpaceX）的首席执行官罗斯·格伯表示，这场诉讼既没有损害奥尔特曼的声誉，也没能帮助马斯克改善公众对他的看法。“好消息是，这两个人都令人生厌，”格伯说。

“The public is already fearful of A.I.,” the investor added. “I don’t think they dispelled that in any way through this lawsuit.”

这位投资人补充道：“公众对AI已经心存恐惧。我不认为他们通过这场诉讼在任何程度上消除了这种恐惧。”

Out in the real world, that fear is rising almost by the day.

而在现实世界中，这种恐惧几乎与日俱增。

Many people seem to be uniting behind the idea that they don’t want power-hungry A.I. data centers in their community. Speakers who celebrate A.I. and expect their audiences to do so as well are getting a rude reception. And violence is beginning to flare: Last month, a man traveled to San Francisco to throw a Molotov cocktail at the Mr. Altman’s house. No one was hurt, and he was arrested.

许多人似乎正在达成一种共识，那就是他们不希望自己的社区里出现耗能巨大的AI数据中心。那些赞美AI并期待听众也随之喝彩的演讲者们正在遭遇粗暴的喝倒彩。暴力事件也开始显现：上个月，一名男子前往旧金山，向奥尔特曼的住宅投掷了汽油弹。所幸无人受伤，该男子已被逮捕。

(The New York Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft in 2023 for copyright infringement of news content related to A.I. systems. The two companies have denied those claims.)

（《纽约时报》于2023 年起诉OpenAI和微软，指控其在AI系统中侵犯了新闻内容的版权。两家公司均否认了这些指控。）

A.I. has pretty much a green light from Congress, the Trump administration, the courts and Wall Street. There is a scattering of opposition among state regulators and isolated lawmakers, but so far it hasn’t amounted to much. All of which leaves the increasing anger felt by those clerks, administrators, writers and other citizens with pretty much nowhere to go.

如今，AI几乎获得了国会、特朗普政府、法院以及华尔街的一致认可。虽然州级监管机构和个别议员中存在零星的反对声音，但到目前为止还没有掀起什么风浪。这一切使得那些文员、行政人员、作家和其他普通公民心中日益高涨的愤怒，几乎无处宣泄。

Wall Street expects smooth sailing from here. “OpenAI can shift its strategic focus to capitalizing on the A.I. Revolution taking place front and center given its strong market position in the space,” Dan Ives, an analyst, wrote after the verdict.

华尔街预计此后将是一帆风顺。分析师丹·艾夫斯在判决后写道：“鉴于OpenAI在该领域的强劲市场地位，它可以将战略重心转向利用正处于核心地位的AI革命来变现。”

OpenAI’s public offering, which may be somewhere in the neighborhood of $1 trillion, is expected as soon as later this year.

OpenAI的公开上市预计最早将于今年晚些时候进行，其估值可能在1万亿美元左右。

Mr. Musk did not get a win on Monday, but he still has his lawyers and his Ahab-like quest to sink the OpenAI whale. He wrote on X, “I will be filing an appeal with the Ninth Circuit, because creating a precedent to loot charities is incredibly destructive to charitable giving in America.”

虽然在周一没能拿到胜果，马斯克依然拥有强大的律师团队，并且依然像亚哈船长执迷于捕杀白鲸那样誓要击沉OpenAI。他在X上写道：“我将向第九巡回法院提起上诉，因为开创一个掠夺慈善机构的先例对美国的慈善捐赠事业有极大的毁灭性。”