OAKLAND, Calif. — OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman hit back at Elon Musk’s claims that he “stole” OpenAI when it was a charity and steered the company away from its non-profit mission – claiming that Musk himself was busy vying to control OpenAI in the first years after it was founded.
Taking the witness stand for the first time in the landmark trial over OpenAI’s future, Altman on Tuesday recounted one “hair raising” moment during OpenAI’s early days – when several OpenAI co-founders asked Musk what would happen to the company if Musk died and he had control of the company.
“Control of OpenAI should pass to my children,” was Musk’s response, Altman told the packed courtroom.
Altman said that anecdote and Musk’s seemingly lax views on AI safety made him “extremely uncomfortable.”
OpenAI lawyer William Savitt asked Altman directly not long after he took the stand how he feels about Musk’s accusation that he “stole a charity.”
“It feels difficult to even wrap my head around that framing,” said Altman, who appeared in Oakland federal court looking relaxed and wearing a dark suit and grey tie. “It does not fit with my conception of stealing a charity.”
Altman also took some politely worded digs at Musk – for instance, Altman described a “moral boost” at the company when Musk became less involved with OpenAI. Altman said Musk’s demands to know what workers were contributing to the company on a short term basis was out of step with the research they were pursuing.
The trial, in its third week, has featured a clash of tech titans that could alter the future of OpenAI and its leadership.
Musk is targeting Altman for removal from OpenAI in a federal lawsuit that claims the company violated its charitable mission. Musk is seeking $180 billion in damages from OpenAI and Microsoft, pledging to donate any proceeds from a court victory to OpenAI’s charitable arm. He is also asking the court to restore OpenAI’s nonprofit status and to remove Altman and Brockman from their roles.
The showdown has gripped Silicon Valley and beyond, with witness testimony at times displaying the personalities and inner workings of the upper echelons of the tech world.
The San Francisco-based maker of hit AI tool ChatGPT has raised hundreds of billions of dollars from large tech companies and investors and could hold a potential trillion-dollar IPO.
Altman used his testimony to highlight OpenAI’s current safety efforts, defend himself from the character attacks that former OpenAI head of technology Mira Murati lodged against him, as well as Helen Toner and Tasha McCauley.
For instance, Murati said in taped testimony played in court that Altman created an environment where OpenAI executives were pitted against each other, creating “chaos” in a way that “undermined” her ability to do her job.
“My concern was about Sam saying one thing to one person and completely the opposite to another person,” Murati said.
Musk’s lawsuit alleges Altman and OpenAI manipulated him into funding the nonprofit with $38 million, before it abandoned its charitable mission to benefit humanity and instead become a for-profit corporation that enriched Altman and others.
OpenAI has argued in court that Musk knew about and at times supported the for-profit plan. The company said Musk walked away from OpenAI after the other co-founders denied his proposals to have majority control.
Former OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever testified on Monday that he spent about a year gathering evidence for the company’s board demonstrating Altman’s “consistent pattern of lying.”
Musk in court said that he was a “fool” to trust Sam Altman with the future of OpenAI – “I was a fool who provided them free funding to create a startup,” Musk said. “I gave them $38 million of essentially free funding to create what would become an $800 billion company.”
