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A few months Before Elon Musk left the board of directors of OpenAI in February 2018, he tried to recruit Sam Altman to join “the most advanced AI lab” inside Tesla. Musk went on to offer the OpenAI CEO a Tesla board seat, according to emails and testimony that was presented in federal court on Wednesday during the Musk v. Altman a case. The emails were shown to the court during the trial Shivon Zilisa former OpenAI advisor and board member who is also the mother of Musk’s four children.
Musk’s key point in the case is that Altman is the president of OpenAI Greg Brockman he hacked the nonprofit, using Musk’s $38 million investment to build a private equity firm worth more than $800 billion today. On Wednesday, Musk’s lawyers showed videos of the former OpenAI CTO Mira Murat and former OpenAI board member Helen Toner, to echo Altman’s concerns history about fraud.
Legal group OpenAI has responded to Musk’s claims by questioning his true intentions, saying the Tesla CEO has had “sour grapes” since his death. failed to take control of OpenAI in 2017. He has started a competitive, for-profit AI lab. OpenAI’s lawyers used Zilis’ questions on Wednesday to present evidence about Musk’s plans to disrupt OpenAI, and tried to say that Zilis was privy to the plans. In this context, one of Zilis’ most important roles at OpenAI was acting as a conduit between Musk and Altman.
In words since February 2018 showed as evidence, Zilis – consultant of OpenAI, and head of Neuralink and Tesla – asked Altman, “Do you think through the B Corp part of Tesla?”
“There was evidence that, for a number of reasons, Mr. Musk decided he wanted to join Sam Altman on the board and he made the decision,” OpenAI attorney William Savitt said outside court Wednesday. “It was part of Mr. Musk’s efforts to destroy OpenAI and inject it into Tesla…
In email to Tesla’s VP of communications, Sarah O’Brien, since November 2017, Zilis shared the FAQ page related to the event Tesla plans to hold at the NeurIPS AI conference. “The purpose of this event is to share that Tesla is building a world-leading AI lab (?) that will rival Google/DeepMind and Facebook AI Research,” the written FAQ read. The document continues, “Tesla’s biggest problem is that when people think of Elon and AI, they think of OpenAI.”
Another section of the FAQ titled “Who?” it names several Tesla executives who were set to lead the team, including Musk and Andrej Karpathy, a former OpenAI researcher. Altman’s name is written next to Musk’s with two question marks next to it.
The FAQ contains notes including that Altman may be in charge of the NeurIPS event, which “could be a force for Sam to do at TeslaAI.” Another post says “Tesla’s AI strategy has yet to be revealed and some may be proprietary.”
Zilis testified Wednesday that Altman was unable to join Tesla, and the AI lab and NeurIPS launch event never materialized. He also testified that Musk contacted Karpathy about writing for Tesla. Savitt told reporters that Zilis’ testimony against Karpathy “is in direct contrast to what Mr. Musk told the jury a few days ago.” Earlier in the trial, Musk testified that Karpathy left OpenAI of his own free will.
