Following high-profile testimony from Tesla boss, Elon Musk last week, one of OpenAI’s co-founders testified in the California lawsuit brought by the world’s richest man against the creators of ChatGPT.
Musk’s lawyers called Greg Brockman to the stand in an effort to show the jury that OpenAI’s founders manipulated their original benefactor to transform a philanthropic mission into a money-making enterprise worth hundreds of billions of dollars.
Musk is seeking to force his rivals to revert to a purely nonprofit foundation. The outcome of the case could shape the future of OpenAI, the fast-rising generative AI giant now valued at over $850 billion and preparing for an IPO.
OpenAI CEO and co-founder, Sam Altman, who in 10 years has gone from being Musk’s protege to a bitter rival, is not expected to take the stand until this, starting from May 11. Brockman last week Monday sat in the witness chair at the Oakland courthouse near San Francisco, with Altman looking on.
From the outset, Musk’s attorney, Steven Molo, got the visibly tense 38-year-old engineer to acknowledge that he holds a stake in OpenAI now valued at $30 billion, without having invested anything himself. Molo brandished a 2015 email in which the OpenAI cofounder had pledged to donate $100,000 to help attract other Silicon Valley donors.
“I did not end up donating, that’s true,” Brockman conceded. AI “is going to be the most important technological shift in human history… This is really about humanity as a whole,” Brockman told the court, insisting that OpenAI’s commercial pivot remained faithful to its original philanthropic mission.
He argued that the company had not plundered the nonprofit foundation to which OpenAI is still attached. “We have created the most well-resourced nonprofit in history, with over $150 billion worth of equity value,” he said. Over three days of testimony last week, Musk portrayed himself as a selfless early supporter of OpenAI, saying he contributed $38 million between 2016 and 2020 before being sidelined.
The head of SpaceX and Tesla argued that he wanted to counterbalance Google’s dominance and ensure that transformative AI technology remains free from profit-driven pressures.
OpenAI’s legal team asked the judge late Sunday to allow Brockman to show the jury a message allegedly sent by Musk on the eve of the trial, following a failed proposal to settle the case outside of court.
According to the request, Musk said: “By the end of this week, you and Sam will be the most hated men in America. If you insist, so it will be.” The judge denied the request, ruling that the issue should have been raised while Musk was still on the stand.
