Volkswacht Bodensee - Don't 'loot a charity': Musk takes stand against OpenAI

The legal clash across the bay from San Francisco is widely seen as a battle of egos pitting the world's richest person against a startup Musk once backed and now trails in the booming AI sector.

At the heart of the case is Musk's accusation that Altman drove OpenAI to become a profit-seeking juggernaut looking to dethrone the likes of Google, Apple and Microsoft, and betraying its nonprofit mission.

"If a verdict comes up that effectively makes it okay to loot a charity, the entire foundation of charitable giving in America will be destroyed -- that's my concern," Musk said on the stand after being called as the trial's first witness.

Musk traced his interest in OpenAI to a belief that Google did not care about AI safety as it blazed ahead with the technology.

He told the court he backed the project in the spirit of it being a nonprofit endeavor that made the good of society the top priority, with any technology developed made open source.

"I didn't want to pave the road to hell with good intentions," Musk said of his vision for OpenAI. "I didn't want to fund OpenAI to make safe AI and then find out that it was actually making unsafe AI."

Musk also said he was instrumental in recruiting key hires, including Ilya Sutskver, a top AI engineer then at Google who went on to play a major role in driving new technology at the lab.

The world's richest man said he also made initial contact with AI chip maker Nvidia and tech giant Microsoft to provide crucial technology, opening doors that would not have been available to OpenAI's other co-founders, who were little known at the time.

- 'Anything to attack' -

Altman and Musk, along with a small group of others, co-founded OpenAI in 2015, promising a nonprofit lab whose technology "would belong to the world."

Musk, who will resume testimony Wednesday, invested at least $38 million before he left the project in 2018, and the OpenAI Foundation created its commercial subsidiary a year later.

Microsoft then began investing and increased its commitment to $13 billion, a stake now valued at approximately $135 billion.

William Savitt, the lead attorney for OpenAI, said in opening remarks that the company had no choice but to open up to outside investors given the high costs of AI and that, in any case, the OpenAI nonprofit arm "remains in control of the organization."

Savitt added that a bitter Musk "will do anything he can to attack OpenAI" out of regret for having left the project

Since his exit, OpenAI has become an AI superpower valued at $852 billion and is preparing for a high-profile IPO on the back of its ChatGPT chatbot, which took the world by storm in 2022.

Musk eventually set up his own lab, xAI, which he merged into SpaceX in February. SpaceX itself is valued at $1.25 trillion, and its IPO, expected in June, could become the biggest in history.

- 'Scam Altman' -

Moments ahead of opening statements, Musk and Altman, who both sat with their lawyers at the federal court in Oakland, were asked by Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers to keep social media posts to a minimum during the trial.

In a barrage of posts Monday amplified on the X platform he owns, Musk derisively called the OpenAI chief "Scam Altman."

Judge Gonzalez Rogers will decide by late May -- guided by the advisory jury's findings -- whether OpenAI broke a promise to Musk, or just smartly rode the technology to glory.

Along with calling for OpenAI to be forced to revert to a pure nonprofit, Musk's suit urges the ouster of co-founders Altman and Greg Brockman, the startup's president.

Musk, who has sought as much as $134 billion in damages, has renounced any personal benefit, pledging to redirect any award to the OpenAI nonprofit.

T.Zimmermann--VB