📰 Article

Elon Musk’s second day on the stand in his lawsuit against OpenAI involved hours of occasionally testifying cross-examination. The case centers on whether OpenAI’s transition from a nonprofit to a for-profit entity was proper.

The lawsuit Musk filed challenging the structure of OpenAI alleges that Sam Altman and the other co-founders tricked him into backing a nonprofit, then launched the frontier lab’s for-profit arm and let it come to dominate the organization.

After an occasionally testy Musk testified for hours, it appears the case may come down to how much of a distinction jurors and Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers make between investors in OpenAI having their potential profit capped or not.

In Musk’s telling, when he co-founded the lab with Altman, Ilya Sutskever, Greg Brockman, and others, he trusted them to build AI for humanity, but over time became suspicious of their motives, and finally concluded that they were “looting the nonprofit.”

OpenAI’s lawyer William Savitt sought to complicate that story during cross-examination, trying to show that Musk had supported a variety of efforts to transition OpenAI toward for-profit status so it could raise the funds necessary to compete with rival AI labs.

Musk testified that he had discussed converting the company to a for-profit as early as 2016, and that in 2017, he had explored creating a for-profit arm of OpenAI where he would hold the majority of the equity and control the company. When those plans fell through, he left the board.

Savitt tried to establish that Musk had been consulted by Altman and Shivon Zilis — his longtime adviser who is also the mother of four of his children — about subsequent efforts to raise money, and did not object.

That cross-examination extended to Tesla’s AI ambitions. Notably, Musk was asked about Tesla’s efforts to develop competing AI technologies and found himself on the wrong side of one of his own posts on X. Savitt brought up emails where Musk had backed efforts by Tesla and his brain interface company, Neuralink, to poach employees from OpenAI while he was still on that company’s board.

The most consequential thread of the day, though, may have been about harm prevention. Part of Musk’s case rests on the idea that OpenAI’s transition into a traditional corporation is dangerous to society because it reduces the company’s focus on safety. Judge Gonzalez Rogers halted that line of questioning, but in remarks to the lawyers after testimony concluded made clear it would resume, with limits.

Musk returns Thursday for another round of adversarial questioning. Also expected to testify are his family office manager, Jared Birchall; AI safety expert Stuart Russell; and OpenAI president Greg Brockman.

Source: TechCrunch