The direct examination is a way of telling a story through questions; it\u2019s important to make the narrative clear. For a suit that accuses Sam Altman of straying from OpenAI\u2019s mission, Musk spent a weird amount of time talking about himself, recounting his biography, and hyping up the various ventures he\u2019s undertaken that have nothing to do with OpenAI.<\/p>\n
\u201cI came up with the idea, the name, recruited the key people. taught them everything I know, provided all the initial funding. Besides that, nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n
For instance, he told jurors that he worked between \u201c80 to 100 hours a week,\u201d which was how he got so much done. It is unclear to me whether his prolific posting habits<\/a> count as part of the workweek. I hope the defense asks.<\/p>\n We did eventually get around to OpenAI, where Musk portrayed himself as the driving force. He\u2019d been worried about AI since childhood, and who had finally felt that someone needed to prevent Google from developing it. He testified that he became involved in AI safety because he had a conversation with Google\u2019s own Larry Page and asked, \u201cWhat if AI wipes out all the humans?\u201d Page essentially shrugged \u2014 as far as he was concerned, as long as the AI didn\u2019t also go extinct, things were all right. \u201cI said, \u2018That\u2019s insane,\u2019 and he called me a species-ist for being pro-human.\u201d So OpenAI, for Musk, was born specifically to keep Google from having too much power in AI. Petty! Musk also said that after he recruited Ilya Sutskever, then a research scientist at Google, to OpenAI that \u201cLarry Page refused to speak to me ever again.\u201d<\/p>\n What did Musk do at OpenAI? \u201cI came up with the idea, the name, recruited the key people. taught them everything I know, provided all the initial funding. Besides that, nothing.\u201d He paused for laughter, and one or two people obligingly chuckled. But most of the courtroom was silent. I thought he sounded petulant. \u201cI could have started it as a for-profit and I chose not to,\u201d Musk said.<\/p>\n It\u2019s hard to preempt the argument you are expecting without making it yourself <\/p>\n I do wonder how much of this the jury is following. We went very quickly through a lot of ideas, including \u201cartificial general intelligence,\u201d an imaginary thing<\/a> that many AI researchers are nonetheless afraid of. Musk defined this as being when a computer \u201cbecomes as smart as any human, arguably smarter than any human.\u201d (Large language models are not the same as intelligence<\/a>, and AGI has been defined downward<\/a> for quite some time. But whatever! This case is not about that!)<\/p>\n At another point, Musk was asked to explain who former OpenAI board member Shivon Zilis was. \u201cShivon was the, um, my chief of staff and, uh, you know,\u201d Musk said. One person in the gallery \u2014 presumably familiar with the fact that Zilis is the mother of a few of Musk\u2019s kids \u2014 burst out in loud laughter. But the jury looked puzzled.<\/p>\n During discussions of how best to get OpenAI the vast amounts of funding it would need for compute, there was indeed discussion of a for-profit arm of OpenAI with Musk. The strategy here, I think, was to make clear that Musk\u2019s intentions were very different than the for-profit that came to pass. (That\u2019s true! He did not get 55 percent equity in it, as one possible cap table suggested he should.) This all seemed pretty mushy, and we got bogged down in a discussion of what, in Musk\u2019s opinion, a reasonable equity split between founders and funders would be; it\u2019s hard to preempt the argument you are expecting without making it yourself.<\/p>\n This is also kind of a distraction from the core point of the trial: Did OpenAI betray its mission statement and fool Musk into making a charitable donation? I agreed to a for-profit model but not THAT for-profit model isn\u2019t a strong argument.<\/p>\n We\u2019ll be back with more Musk testimony and presumably his cross-examination. If there\u2019s a clearer story from the defense, this trial is effectively all over but the shouting. I\u2019ve seen a strong performance from Musk on the stand before. Today he just didn\u2019t seem dialed in. Maybe he\u2019s grumpy about this trial because he knows he\u2019s wasting his own time.<\/p>\n Follow topics and authors from this story to see more like this in your personalized homepage feed and to receive email updates.Elizabeth LopattoClose Elizabeth Lopatto<\/p>\n Posts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.<\/p>\n FollowFollow<\/p>\n See All by Elizabeth Lopatto<\/a><\/p>\n AIClose<\/p>\n AI<\/p>\n Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.<\/p>\n FollowFollow<\/p>\n See All AI<\/a><\/p>\n Elon MuskClose<\/p>\n Elon Musk<\/p>\n Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.<\/p>\n FollowFollow<\/p>\n See All Elon Musk<\/a><\/p>\n OpenAIClose<\/p>\n OpenAI<\/p>\n Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.<\/p>\n FollowFollow<\/p>\n![\"Elizabeth](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/ELIZABETH_LOPATTO.0.jpg\"\/)
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