The last stragglers testified on Wednesday in Musk v. Altman test. The witnesses made several waves, aside from revealing that Microsoft has spent over $100 billion to date on its collaboration with OpenAI. Instead of focusing on that, I wanted to offer an truthful observation that my colleague Maxwell Zeff and I can’t stop talking about after almost three weeks of watching the trial.
The courtroom is littered with butt cushions.
Several tough wooden benches on the right side of U.S. Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers’ courtroom are reserved for lawyers, executives and other members of the OpenAI and Microsoft defense. About 10 people, including OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and general counsel Che Chang, used the broad black pillows – the softest of them from the Purple brand; $120 from Target – which saves their asses from sitting for hours. Some pillows have rounded corners, others are square. On Wednesday, Chang even put one behind his back, a less common but not unprecedented move in the courtroom.
OpenAI CEO Greg Brockman and his wife, Anna, observed much of the process, and both made recurrent employ of the pristine white cushions. Judging by the tags poking out of the seams, the pillows appear to be from sleep products brand Coop, which sells two-packs of alternative down pillows for $35.
On Wednesday, an OpenAI security guard carried a purple bag with a pillow into the courtroom for each of the Brockmans. Anna gave her husband a minute to suffer in oblivion without pillows, then discreetly handed him one and then placed her own. I felt sorry for OpenAI’s chief futurist, Joshua Achiam, who later took Brockman’s place but wasn’t left with any of the cushions. (Achiam ended up buying one of the more standard black pillows.)
OpenAI did not immediately respond to WIRED’s request for comment.
One longtime tech lawyer told WIRED that using pillows isn’t exactly “customary,” but noted that it’s “not completely out of line.” Personally, he said, he had never seen lawyers employ pillows during trials, but then again, he had “never been involved in a trial that lasted as many days as that one.”
The main litigants in this case sit on relatively luxurious leather chairs, although several of them do show signs of fraying, so perhaps the padding isn’t as solid as it appears.
My last time in this courtroom for hours was in 2021, when I covered portions of the Epic Games v. Apple lawsuit. However, capacity was confined at the time due to Covid concerns, so I had plenty of room to stretch out. This time the courtroom was almost full – about 150 people, including benches for a maximum of 90 people.
I was thinking about bringing my own cushion about an hour after the first day of court in behind schedule April because, well, these benches are very uncomfortable. But I didn’t want to seem tender. None of the other two dozen regularly present reporters – including one pregnant woman – seemed, at least initially, to have brought pillows. So I made it through six days, with my buttocks and back hurting by the minute.
Last week, after a particularly brutal morning, I finally decided to get aid. I couldn’t find a well-padded seat cushion designed for stadium stands, so I settled on the “cooling” cushion distributed at steaming, sizzling outdoor venues during the Tokyo Olympics. About two seconds after first using it on Wednesday morning, I decided it was counterproductive. It was too tiny and too slim to provide any relief. My back was especially stressed as I furiously wrote notes on a musk-inspired Jackass trophy that apparently once had its own pillow.
After four hours, I completely gave up on the pillow. However, I noticed that one Novel York Times reporter eventually relented, and the courtroom artist – who has a particularly colorful cushion – stayed on the cushions. Perhaps I’ll find a better remedy next week when Gonzalez Rogers hears arguments about potential penalties.
Maxwell Zeff contributed to this report.
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