Elon Musk appears in court at start of case that could reshape AI’s future

Mr Musk filed the lawsuit against Mr Altman and Mr Brockman along with Microsoft over its investments in OpenAI in 2024.

“Fundamentally, I think they’re going to try to make this lawsuit … very complicated, but it’s actually very simple,” Mr Musk said. “Which is that it’s not OK to steal a charity.”

The trial is scheduled to take three weeks.

Opening arguments began with Mr Musk’s lawyer, Steven Molo, who quoted OpenAI’s mission statement when it was created as a non-profit for the benefit of humanity as a whole, and not constrained by the need to generate financial enrichment for anyone.

Mr Altman and his top lieutenant Mr Brockman, aided by Microsoft, “stole a charity”, Mr Molo said, “a charity whose mission was the safe, open development of artificial intelligence”.

In the civil lawsuit, Mr Musk accuses Mr Altman and Mr Brockman of double-crossing him by straying from the San Francisco company’s founding mission to be a steward of a revolutionary technology.

He is seeking damages and to fund the altruistic efforts of OpenAI’s charitable arm and Mr Altman’s removal from OpenAI’s board.

OpenAI has brushed off Mr Musk’s allegations as an unfounded case of sour grapes aimed at undercutting its rapid growth and bolstering Mr Musk’s own xAI, which he launched in 2023 as a competitor.

In his opening statement, OpenAI lawyer William Savitt told jurors “we are here because Mr Musk didn’t get his way with OpenAI”.

Mr Savitt said Mr Musk used his promises to provide funding to bully OpenAI founding members and tried to take control of OpenAI and merge it with Tesla.

In fact, he said Mr Musk wanted to form a for-profit company and own more than 50% of it. In the middle of discussions about OpenAI’s future, he added, Mr Musk pulled the plug on five million dollars (£3.7 million) in quarterly donations he was making.

There is no record, Mr Savitt said, of promises made to Mr Musk that OpenAI was going to remain a non-profit forever, or open-source everything. What Mr Musk ultimately cared about, he said, was not OpenAI’s non-profit status but winning the AI race with Google.

Mr Molo said the case is not about Mr Musk, but rather Mr Altman, Mr Brockman and Microsoft.

By 2017, about two years after OpenAI’s founding, it became clear that OpenAI would need more money, and Mr Molo said the founders eventually settled on the idea of creating a for-profit arm of OpenAI that would support the non-profit.

Terms were capped for investors so they “couldn’t make infinite profit”.

“There is nothing wrong with a non-profit having a for-profit subsidiary, but (it) has to advance the mission,” Mr Molo said.

Microsoft initially invested two billion dollars (£1.4 billion) in OpenAI. Then, in 2022, news spread that OpenAI had done a deal with Microsoft and “this was a horse of a completely different colour”, he said.

It was a “gamechanger”, Mr Molo said, that violated “every commitment” OpenAI made not just to Mr Musk but to the world.

It was no longer open source, it became a for-profit company for the benefit of the defendants and Microsoft was going to have control, through licensing, of much of its intellectual property, Mr Molo said.

After opening arguments wrap up, Mr Musk’s side is expected to present a tale chock full of alleged betrayal, deceit and ambition that caused OpenAI to pivot from its founding mission as an altruistic start-up to a capitalistic venture now valued at 852 billion dollars (£629 billion).

Mr Musk is the world’s richest person with an estimated fortune of 778 billion dollars (£574 billion).

His lawyer starting off asking about his life story. This included details about his move, at 17, from South Africa to Canada where for a time Mr Musk said he worked as a lumberjack among other odd jobs, then to the US.

He recounted the slew of companies he founded and runs, including SpaceX, Tesla, The Boring Company, Neuralink and others.

Asked how he has time for everything, Mr Musk said he works 80 to 100 hours a week, does not take holidays and owns no holiday homes or yachts.

Mr Molo also asked Mr Musk about his views on AI.

Comparing it to having a “very smart child”, Mr Musk said when the child grows up “you can’t control that child”, but you can instil values such as honesty, integrity and being good.

Mr Musk recounted his version of OpenAI’s founding, which he said essentially happened because of a discussion he had with Google co-founder Larry Page, who called him a “species-ist” for elevating the survival of humanity over that of AI.

The kinship between Mr Musk and Mr Altman was forged in 2015 when they agreed to build AI in a more responsible and safer way than the profit-driven companies controlled by Google’s Mr Page and Sergey Brin and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, according to evidence submitted ahead of the trial.

At that time, Mr Musk said, Google had all the money, all the computers and all the talent for AI. “There was no counterbalance.”

Mr Musk recalled there was discussion early on about alternative sources for funding OpenAI beyond donations, and he was not opposed to it having a for-profit arm, but “the tail shouldn’t wag the dog”.

There would be a profit limit, and once artificial general intelligence, or AGI, was “figured out”, the for-profit would cease to exist, he said.

Mr Musk is expected to continue giving evidence on Wednesday.

Mr Altman, OpenAI’s chief executive, is also expected to give evidence, along with Microsoft chief Satya Nadella, one of the technology leaders who helped fund the late 2022 release of ChatGPT, the chatbot that unleashed the current AI boom that has propelled the stock market to record heights.

Mr Altman’s court appearance likely made him unavailable to attend an Amazon event across San Francisco Bay on Tuesday at which both companies announced an expanded partnership.

“I wish I could be there with you in person today,” Mr Altman told attendees of Amazon’s event in San Francisco via a pre-recorded video message. “My schedule got taken away from me today.