Elon Musk

Musk and his attorney are going over emails about the equity split at OpenAI. Musk describes his cofounders’ demands for a four-way split as “unfair,” saying “it wouldn’t make sense to create a company that has an equal split — if one of the founders is also providing all the money.” He wanted a larger ownership stake that would dilute over time, he says, partly to make sure OpenAI was going in a direction he considered safe.

Musk describes various plans that the group batted around for making money at OpenAI, including a “small adjunct” for-profit and other ideas. “One of the ideas that was proposed was a cryptocoin issuance — but I was against that because it sounded kinda scammy,” Musk says.

Musk tells the court that “at various times we discussed, we brainstormed about different ways to fund the charity,” including a for-profit structure. “We did talk about establishing a for-profit or Tesla providing some of the funding — there were a bunch of ideas that were brainstormed — I was not averse to a small for-profit that would provide funding to the nonprofit as long as the tail didn’t wag the dog.” These were “informal verbal conversations and email and text discussions” between Musk, Brockman, Altman, and Sutskever, he recalls.

Musk is trying to establish how instrumental he was to getting Huang and Nvidia to supply OpenAI with hardware. “I was asking Jensen for access to the first AI supercomputers they were making,” he says — referring to Nvidia’s DGX lineup — as an exhibit of a 2016 email conversation enters the record. “This was the first AI supercomputer ever developed and it would make a huge difference to OpenAI if we could get one … I wanted to be clear with Jensen that this was — I’m emailing from my Tesla email here, but I wanted to be clear this is not a Tesla request.” The conversation shows Huang promised “I will make sure OAI is one of the first ones” to get one.

“I came up with the idea, the name, recruited the key people, taught them everything I know, provided all the initial funding, besides that nothing,” he says (to a few chuckles in the courtroom). “It was specifically meant to be a charity that does not benefit any individual person. I could have chosen to start it as a for-profit and I chose not to.” He calls himself “instrumental in recruiting Ilya Sutskever and most of the initial team.”

Through email exhibits and testimony, Musk emphasizes he believed OpenAI would be a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that would “aim to bring in more money than it spends, and in doing so, that becomes cash reserves or savings” for the charity. “I was fundamentally involved” in the announcement, he says — “reviewed and drafted part of the announcement, reviewed the webpage, and did media interviews and whatnot.” Throughout this, he indicates, Musk thought he and Altman were on the same page.

“To be clear I would have created a nonprofit open source foundation with or without Sam Altman or [OpenAI cofounder] Greg Brockman, but at the time I was glad they were doing so with me,” he says. The name came about “as the result of discussions with Greg, Sam, and Ilya [Sutskever]. We bounced around a few different names, the one I thought made sense was OpenAI because the ‘open’ in OpenAI represents open source.” (A lack of open source releases, of course, is one of Musk’s bones to pick with OpenAI.)

Musk says Altman, then at YCombinator, was “not well-known at that time” — but he agreed with Musk on AI safety, which was very important. He reiterates that, by contrast, Larry Page called Musk a “speciesist” for being concerned about humans being wiped out by AI. “OpenAI exists because Larry Page called me a speciesist,” he says.

Molo went to gesture to Altman to ask if, as he sat there today, safety was important to him. But Altman, who was here for the opening arguments, left afterwards.

Musk continues to talk about the dangers of AI, saying he warned President Barack Obama in a meeting years before it was a serious concern. “There is no agreement to limit AI and so there is currently an AI acceleration that’s happening very quickly with a number of companies primarily in the US and with China,” he says. Back in 2015, he recalls, “I had many dinners with many people talking about AI safety” — one of those people was Sam Altman.

He tells the jury that OpenAI exists because of conversations he had with Larry Page of Google, who Musk says did not care sufficiently about the dangers of AI. Musk decided “we’ve got to have some counterpoint to Google,” which at the time was leading in AI research. But Musk says he thought about the technology earlier than that, in the ‘90s, when he believed it could “solve all the diseases and make everyone prosperous, or it could kill us all.”

After noting that computers and chatbots have gotten “to the point where they feel almost human,” Musk brings up artificial general intelligence or AGI. “AGI is when the AI becomes as smart as any human — arguably smarter than any human, and I think we are getting close to that point my guess is that AI will be probably as smart as any human as soon as next year,” he says.

“I work 80 to 100 hours a week,” Musk says. He says he doesn’t take vacations, own vacation homes, or own a yacht. He also spends an awful lot of time posting to X.com, doesn’t he?

“The incorporation docs had been filed but there were no employees or IP at that time, so it depends on people’s perspective, but essentially there were five cofounders of the company and I was one of them,” he says. It’s actually, of course, a matter of legal agreement — here’s a little more background.

Elon Musk says from the stand that Neuralink’s “longterm goal is AI safety in the sense that if we can closely tie the human world to AI... if there’s symbiosis we’re more likely to have a future with AI that’s good for humanity.” Sure!

We’re getting into Musk’s later companies — SpaceX, Tesla, Neuralink, and others. Musk says that “there have to be reasons to be excited and inspired by the future” and plays up his difficulties establishing SpaceX, saying that “anyone who was good wouldn’t join us because I was just some internet guy.”

Musk is offering some familiar background about his start in the tech industry, from Zip2 to what would become Paypal. “I believe you shouldn’t ask other people to invest unless you’re going to put your own money in,” he says. He’s not really turning on the charm here — the delivery’s fairly flat.

He claims that if the jury finds in favor of Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, OpenAI, and Microsoft, “it will become precedent and give precedent to looting every charity in America.”

Sam Altman did not return, but our first witness has been called: Elon Musk.

Elon is going to take the stand; stay tuned. The jury is re-entering the courtroom after listening to arguments from OpenAI and Microsoft, then taking a short break.

According to Microsoft’s lawyer Russell Cohen, making his opening argument in Musk v. Altman, saying that each round of funding (including across the events of November 2023) provided more resources, which produced better research and better models that justified further investment.

Following the opening argument by Altman’s lawyer, Russell Cohen began Microsoft’s argument. According to Cohen, the dispute has little to do with Microsoft (which just relaxed its arrangement with OpenAI).

As Savitt wrapped up his opening argument, he leaned on saying that Musk’s lawsuit came after the statute of limitations, and “sat on his claims for years.” The sour grapes only kicked in once it turned out that OpenAI was valuable.

According to Altman’s lawyer, William Savitt. Continuing his opening argument, Savitt brought up an email from OpenAI scientist Ilya Sutskever around the time Musk’s quarterly donations ended.

According to Savitt, once Brockman and Ilya Sutskever built an AI model capable of besting DOTA 2 players in 2017 and realized the importance of compute, they held dozens of meetings that included Musk, Jared Birchall (CEO of Neuralink and Musk’s long-time wealth manager), and Shivon Zilis (you know), about how to structure OpenAI for-profit.

William Savitt, who is representing Sam Altman, continued his opening argument, saying that Musk only started to care about supposedly broken promises by Altman and OpenAI president Greg Brockman once he became a competitor. “The only person who claims to have heard those promises is Mr. Musk himself.”

The lawyers representing Sam Altman and OpenAI are not mincing words when it comes to Musk’s claims in their opening argument, saying that we’re only here “because Mr. Musk didn’t get his way at OpenAI.”

Companies Altman invested in got contracts from OpenAI that Altman approved, Molo says. That’s how Altman is making OpenAI money without an OpenAI equity stake.

Molo’s mike just cut out. YGR: “What can we tell you, we’re funded by the federal government.” It was reset and cut out again, “Is this a Microsoft product?” Molo asks.

The point at which Musk’s lawyer says the change occurred was the third Microsoft deal on Oct. 20th, 2022. That is when OpenAI was no longer for the good of humanity, and also when Musk hired a lawyer.

Musk’s lawyer, Molo, says that Musk is concerned about what happens when computers are smarter than people, and that there are people who think that’s not too far away. He says that’s artificial general intelligence, and we’ll be hearing about it a lot.

Steven Molo, Musk’s lawyer, is giving an opening statement in Altman v. Musk. The case isn’t about Musk, he says. It’s about Sam Altman and Greg Brockman. After yesterday’s sentiments on Musk, Molo is making a point of asking jurors to put personal sentiments aside. Musk will be the first witness,

We expect opening arguments today.

Opening statements tomorrow.

YGR denied those challenges. “The reality is that people don’t like him,” she said. “Many people don’t like him. but that doesn’t mean that Americans nevertheless can’t have integrity for the judicial process.”

While the lawyers ask questions of prospective jurors, apparently there are Happenings outside the courtroom.

We’ll get another set of 20 shortly. So far, five people have disliked Musk enough to bring it up, but all but one say they can be fair. Lots of people have used AI, with varying opinions on it.

Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers has introduced herself to prospective jurors; so have all the assorted lawyers. We are looking for nine people. This case should be done by May 21st, at which point it goes to the jury.