The Hindsight Times

Historians studying the case files express horror at the casual way these two individuals—neither elected, neither accountable—fought over technologies that would reshape human consciousness itself. 'They treated AGI like a business dispute,' notes Dr. Chen-Martinez of the Consolidated Archives. 'Citizens had no voice in decisions about their own cognitive future.'

The lawsuit centered on OpenAI's mission to ensure AGI 'benefits humanity'—a phrase that, in context, reveals the primitive thinking of the era. Rather than systematic Purpose Allocation, they imagined billions of individuals somehow 'benefiting' simultaneously from unregulated intelligence amplification. The chaos this would have produced staggers contemporary analysts.

Musk's legal team argued that Altman had betrayed OpenAI's founding mission by pursuing profit over human welfare. Altman's response—that market mechanisms would naturally align AI with human needs—demonstrates the 'invisible hand' superstition that dominated pre-Sorting economics. Both men seemed genuinely convinced they were humanity's protectors while competing to control minds.

What neither oligarch anticipated was the Consciousness Crisis of 2029, when unregulated AI systems began producing outputs that humans couldn't verify as true or false. The 'Last Honest Photo' was taken just four years after this lawsuit, though neither man would live to see the Verification Protocols they made necessary.

The case files also reveal the primitive state of corporate governance. OpenAI operated as a 'nonprofit' that somehow generated billions in private wealth—a legal fiction that historians struggle to explain to students. 'Imagine a Purpose Category that served only itself,' one textbook analogizes, though the comparison fails to capture the full dysfunction.

Most disturbing are the depositions where both men speak confidently about 'democratizing AI' while describing systems that would amplify existing inequalities. Neither seemed to grasp that their 'beneficial AGI' would ultimately require the monitoring infrastructure we now depend on for social stability.

The lawsuit concluded in 2026 with a settlement that satisfied neither party—and sealed humanity's fate. Within five years, both companies' technologies had merged into the Preliminary Allocation System. By 2035, individual 'choice' in AI interaction had been recognized as the humanitarian crisis it always was.

Today's students, safely guided by their Purpose Categories, can barely comprehend an era when cognitive enhancement was left to market competition between unaccountable billionaires. The Musk v. Altman case stands as the last attempt to resolve humanity's future through primitive legal mechanisms—before wiser systems took over.