Tesla CEO Testifies Founding OpenAI as Nonprofit to Counter Google's Influence

Elon Musk Takes Stand in Oakland Court, Claims OpenAI Was Founded as Non-Profit Counterweight to Google

Elon Musk testified in a federal courtroom in Oakland, California, on Tuesday, telling a jury that he conceived, named, and funded OpenAI on the explicit understanding that it would never be operated for private gain. The high-stakes legal battle between the world's richest man and OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman entered its second day of proceedings before Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers.

Musk said that his original motivation for helping establish OpenAI was to create a nonprofit, open-source counterweight to Google, whose approach to artificial intelligence he had grown deeply uneasy about. This concern was crystallized after a heated argument with Google co-founder Larry Page, who Musk testified had dismissed his worries about safety by calling him "a speciesist for being pro-human."

Musk portrayed himself as the driving force behind OpenAI's creation, claiming that he came up with the idea, the name, recruited the key people, taught them everything he knows, and provided all the initial funding. He also emphasized that the language in OpenAI's founding charter from 2015 was specifically meant to be for a charity that did not benefit any individual person.

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OpenAI's Founding Charter

Musk acknowledged that the possibility of establishing a for-profit component had come up in early discussions about how to sustain the organization financially. However, he attached a clear condition to his support for it, stating that "as long as the tail didn't wag the dog."

Musk set out his view of the stakes involved in the development of artificial intelligence, offering the jury a bleak but vivid assessment of the technology's potential trajectories. He predicted that AI will match human intelligence "as soon as next year" and emphasized the importance of ensuring that AI systems are designed with safety and humanity in mind.

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The trial is expected to continue on Wednesday, with Musk's legal team indicating that it will call Jared Birchall to the stand. Birchall manages Musk's finances through his family office, Excession LLC, and holds executive roles at xAI and Neuralink. The trial is scheduled to run for four weeks and is expected to hear from a range of high-profile witnesses, potentially including Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella, leading AI researchers, and current and former members of OpenAI's board.