Chief executive officer of global artificial intelligence (AI) company, OpenAI, Sam Altman has told a federal court trying his case with billionaire entrepreneur, Elon Musk, that the Tesla chief was demanding a 90 percent stake in the company.
Altman made the confession while testifying in the trial brought by Musk on May 12 before a federal courthouse in Oakland, California. Altman has rejected claims from Musk that he betrayed the artificial intelligence company’s original vision.
Musk, the world’s wealthiest man, sued Altman and OpenAI president, Greg Brockman, on the basis that they “stole a charity” by shifting the purpose for the establishment of the company. Musk alleged that OpenAI’s leader persuaded him to invest $38billion, based on a goal of improving humanity, only to see the company pivot to a forprofit venture in 2019.
On the witness stand last week, Altman instead framed Musk as a competitor obsessed with exercising control over OpenAI. “It does not fit with my conception of the words ‘stealing a charity’ to look at what has actually happened here,” Altman told the court.
The two men have long had an acrimonious relationship, driven in part by differing views about artificial intelligence. Musk currently runs his own AI chatbot, Grok, which has been accused of perpetuating right-wing conspiracy theories and offensive materials. He is seeking $150billion in damages from OpenAI and Microsoft, one of its principal investors.
Altman’s testimony comes more than two weeks into the trial, which has seen him and Musk square off against each other. In his testimony, Altman argued that Musk knew of the plans to develop OpenAI into a for-profit enterprise when he invested, and he asserted that Musk even petitioned to have a majority stake in the company.
“An early number that Mr Musk threw out was that he should have 90 percent of the equity to start,” Altman told the jury. “It then softened, but it always was a majority.” The outcome of the trial could determine the future of OpenAI, its leadership, and products like ChatGPT.
As part of his lawsuit, Musk is pushing for the removal of Altman and Brockman. The trial comes as OpenAI prepares for a potential initial public offering that could see it valued at $1 trillion, a historically large sum.
During earlier testimony, Musk portrayed Altman as a liar who could not be trusted with the development of the technology. “If you have someone who is not trustworthy in charge of AI, I think that’s a very big danger for the whole world,” Musk said.
Musk’s lawyer, Steven Molo, also sought to undermine Altman’s reliability during questioning on Tuesday. “Have you misled people when you do business?” Molo asked Altman.
