It is the battle of the billionaires as two of the most powerful heavyweights in the tech industry will step into the ring on Monday 27 April in Oakland, California, when Elon Musk’s lawsuit against Sam Altman goes to trial.

The stakes for the future of the AI industry could not be higher. Musk, the founder of Tesla, Inc., SpaceX and xAI, among others, is suing Altman, the CEO of OpenAI (the company that created and operates ChatGPT), and associates over claims that OpenAI abandoned its initial non-profit mission. Musk further claims to have been deceived by Altman into donating $44 million to the company more than a decade ago, saying that OpenAI has fundamentally shifted its goals and principles towards a focus on financial gains after signing a licensing agreement with Microsoft.

Musk, a co-founder of OpenAI, wants Altman to be removed from his role as CEO and is asking for damages in excess of $100 billion to be paid to OpenAI’s charitable arm.

It is also a battle of egos. In one corner you have Musk, known to be irritable, impetuous and even vindictive, and in the other there is Altman, ambitious, cunning and not always renowned as a transparent operator.

Now, nine jurors will decide the outcome of a case that will, at most, determine who controls the future of AI and, at the very least, have massive repercussions for the most disruptive technology since the advent of the nuclear bomb.

It is a case of rare complexity and high stakes for an industry still in its infancy, but Prof. Anné Verhoef, director of the North-West University’s (NWU) AI Hub, warns that the real intentions behind the suit might be hidden beneath the jingoistic surface.

“The future control of AI is about money and power. ChatGPT could enter the social media space like X and become a sales platform like Amazon if it fully embraces profitability. This poses a threat to Musk’s AI platform, Grok, as each platform distributes its own ideologies. Musk, for example, is politically conservative and opposed to political correctness,” Verhoef explains, noting that the lawsuit may be driven as much by strategic rivalry as by principle, with tensions rooted in OpenAI’s shift from a collaborative non-profit model to a commercially driven partnership with Microsoft, while Musk simultaneously seeks to protect and strengthen the position of his own AI venture, xAI.

“This is not simply a disagreement between two individuals. It reflects a much deeper struggle over who governs AI development and who benefits from it. We are now in what can only be described as an ‘AI war’. Companies like Google, Meta and others are competing aggressively.”

More than a personal feud being played out in the public domain, what will commence on 27 April will tip the scales of power not just between Musk and Altman.

“It is about control. Control of technology that will shape economies, societies and even political systems for years to come,” says Prof. Verhoef.

It is a statement that does not bode well for either the advocates or detractors of AI. Because, although the outcome of the case will be decided by nine randomly selected individuals, the jury is already out on what the future of this technology and the masters who own it holds. If intervention is not imminent, we are all at risk of becoming bystanders in a power struggle with dangerous implications.