Elon Musk is back Continue telling on the Wednesday witness stand his side of the story in his legal battle OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and the company’s lawyers. Musk’s actions were questioned by OpenAI lawyers during Musk’s cross-examination. He was asked about all of the ways that Musk tried to pressure the organization in a power struggle he lost last year. Musk had, at this point, tried to lure OpenAI researchers away and stopped funding the organization he’d promised. Emails presented in court as evidence show that Musk did both.
The tension in the courtroom increased as the cross-examination started. Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers began the day with a reprimand to someone who took a photograph of Musk. Greg Brockman sat in front of his lawyers, holding a yellow pad, and giving Musk an icy stare while he was testifying. Musk became visibly frustrated while testifying, stopping frequently to inform OpenAI’s attorney, William Savitt that his questions were misleading. Savitt’s cross-examination of Musk was derailed by technical problems, objections and Musk’s constant claim that he can’t remember key OpenAI history details.
Savitt demonstrated the courtroom emails from September 2017 Musk, Altman Brockman and Ilya Suksever discussed the creation of OpenAI’s profit-making arm. Musk asked for the ability to select four board members, which would give him more power over his cofounders who only have three votes. “I would unequivocally have initial control of the company, but this will change quickly,” Musk wrote in an email. Sutskever rejected the idea, saying he was afraid it would grant Musk too much control.
Musk stopped payments to OpenAI months before these talks began. This was difficult for OpenAI because Musk was its only source of funding at the time. Musk has been paying OpenAI $5 million per quarter since 2016, as part of his $1 billion commitment he made when the organization was launched. He stopped sending it in spring 2017. Jared Birchall asked Musk in an email sent to him by the family office head, Musk, if Musk should keep withholding money. Musk replied simply. “Yes.”
Musk’s emails from October 2017 show that, shortly after he lost his power struggle, he had discussions about hiring OpenAI workers with Tesla executives and Neuralink (his brain-computer interface firm). Musk, at the time was still an OpenAI board member.
Musk sent a message to Andrej Karapathy, an OpenAI researcher who was a Tesla vice-president about the hiring of Andrej. “Just talked to Andrej and he accepted as joining as director of Tesla Vision,” Musk writes. “Andrej is arguably the #2 guy in the world in computer vision…The openai guys are gonna want to kill me, but it had to be done.”
Musk claimed on the witness stand that Karpathy already wanted to leave OpenAI, when Musk recruited him for Tesla. “Andrej had made his decision. If he’s going to leave OpenAI, he might as well work at Tesla,” Musk says
Musk sent a letter to Ben Rapoport that same month. Rapoport was a Neuralink founder. “Hire independently or directly from OpenAI,” Musk said: “I have no problem if you pitch people at OpenAI to work at Neuralink.”
Musk said that when Savitt pressed him about it, it would be illegal for Musk to deny Tesla and Neuralink the opportunity to hire OpenAI. “It’s illegal to restrict employment. It would be illegal to say you can’t employ people from OpenAI. You can’t have some cabal that stops people from working at the company they want to work at,” Musk says
