In the summer of 2017, OpenAI built an artificial intelligence system that could play the popular video game Defense of the Ancients, known as Dota.
This AI system won an international Dota tournament in a stadium in Seattle with over 20,000 spectators, defeating many of the world’s best players. When OpenAI’s president, Greg Brockman, emailed Elon Musk about the win, the tech mogul was ecstatic. “It’s time to take the next step for OpenAI. This is a launch event,” said Mr. Musk, who has funded OpenAI.
The next day, Mr. Brockman met with Mr. Musk and his chief of staff, Shivon Zilis, and several others at a party house Mr. Musk recently bought south of the city. There, they began discussing ways to turn OpenAI into a profitable company, according to Mr. Brockman’s testimony and other evidence presented Tuesday in the blockbuster trial that pits Mr. Musk against the creator of ChatGPT.
Mr. Musk sued OpenAI, accusing Mr. Brockman and its CEO, Sam Altman, of violating the AI lab’s founding agreement by putting commercial profit over the public good. It is seeking $150 billion in damages and an injunction that would wind up the for-profit company that OpenAI created last year. It also wants an order to remove Mr. Altman from OpenAI’s board.
Mr Musk founded OpenAI as a non-profit organization in 2015 with Mr Brockman, Mr Altman and a group of AI researchers before leaving the organisation. Mr. Altman and the other founders then turned the AI lab into a for-profit company and began raising billions of dollars from tech giant Microsoft and other investors.
With these commercial efforts, Mr. Musk argues, OpenAI has abandoned its original mission as a non-profit organization. But during his second day of testimony, Mr. Brockman described how Mr. Musk spent several months in 2017 working with OpenAI’s other founders to turn the operation into a profitable company.
Under questioning from Sarah Eddy, one of OpenAI’s lawyers, Mr. Brockman read a 2017 text he sent to Ms. Zilis describing a meeting he had with Mr. Musk in July. “He said the nonprofit was definitely the right one in the beginning, it may not be the right one now,” the text said, referring to Mr. Musk.
Mr. Brockman also detailed a meeting in August 2017 when he and another OpenAI co-founder, Ilya Sutskever, discussed a possible for-profit company with Mr. Musk. Mr. Musk recently gave Tesla electric cars to other OpenAI founders. To show his gratitude, Dr. Sutskever to Mr. Musk the image of Tesla that he created.
During the meeting Mr. Brockman and Dr. Sutskever said they would not agree to give Mr. Musk full control over the proposed profit, Mr. Brockman said from the stand. Mr. Musk then paused for a few moments before standing up, walking around the table and walking toward Mr. Brockman.
“I thought he was going to hit me. I thought he was going to physically attack me,” Mr Brockman told the court.
Before leaving the room, Mr. Brockman said, Mr. Musk told them, “When are you going to fly out of OpenAI? I’m going to withhold funding until you decide what you’re going to do.”
As Mr. Musk’s general counsel, Steven Molo, opened another round of questions for Mr. Brockman, he showed an email from late 2017 in which Mr. Musk said he would “clearly have initial control” of the proposed for-profit company, “but that will change quickly.”
Mr. Molo then suggested to Mr. Brockman that he had no business sense to understand that Mr. Musk did not want full control of the company, a characterization Mr. Brockman rejected. The two wrestled for several minutes, with Mr. Molo raising his voice significantly and Mr. Brockman responding firmly but calmly.
As Mr. Brockman opened his testimony on Monday, Mr. Musk’s lawyers questioned his credibility and tried to show that he was driven by greed. He went on to say that he was primarily motivated by OpenAI’s original mission to build AI for the good of humanity.
After Mr. Brockman finished his testimony on Tuesday, Mr. Musk’s legal team showed part of a video of OpenAI’s deputy general counsel, Robert Wu, detailing the 2019 deal in which OpenAI created its first for-profit company. It was a “limited profit” company that limited the profits shared with its investors.
Mr. Wu said the non-profit organization OpenAI has transferred employees and intellectual property to a limited-profit company, retaining some of its own staff. He then explained that Microsoft had invested a total of $13 billion in the limited-profit company.
In the deposition, Mr. Wu also explained that the non-profit organization would not receive any funds from the company until Microsoft and other partners receive compensation in excess of $250 billion.
(The New York Times has sued OpenAI and Microsoft, alleging copyright infringement of news content related to AI systems. Both companies have denied the suit’s claims.)
