Before the meeting, Musk gifted new Tesla Model 3 cars to Brockman and Sutskever, the co-founder and former chief scientist of OpenAI. “It felt like he was buttering us,” Brockman said on the stand. “He wanted us to feel grateful to him in some way.” Sutskever took this opportunity to take revenge. The amateur artist presented a painting of Tesla to Musk. Musk and other co-founders wanted to set up a for-profit arm to entice investors to commit billions of dollars to the calculations. But Musk also wanted control over the company, and Sutskever and Brockman objected to giving the Tesla CEO this power that they believed would amount to a “dictatorship” over the future of AI development. He proposed shared control.
After several minutes of deliberation, Musk rejected his offer. “He stood up and started pacing around the table,” Brockman recalled. “I really thought he was going to kill me, physically attack me.” Musk grabbed the painting, said he would stop funding the nonprofit until Brockman and Sutskever left, and, according to Brockman’s testimony, he left the room. But that night, Musk’s purported chief of staff Shivon Zilis called Brockman and Sutskever “to say it’s not over,” Brockman testified. “There were future discussions that included us.”
The story of the heated exchange emerged as Brockman’s testimony ended Tuesday. For OpenAI, the mansion incidents represent repeated examples of erratic behavior by Musk that they believe undermines his arguments about the company. Musk argues that nearly $38 million of his donation to OpenAI was misused by Brockman and others on their way to building the $852 billion enterprise now known for services like ChatGPIT and Codex. Brockman, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and OpenAI deny any wrongdoing, and the jury is also involved musk vs altman Discussions on an advisory decision may begin by next week.
After Tuesday’s testimony, OpenAI attorney William Savitt told reporters that what Brockman had learned in 2017 was how hard it can be to meet one’s heroes. Savitt said that Brockman admired and respected Musk’s business acumen, but that his desire for control was complete and worrisome. Musk’s lawyer Mark Toberoff told reporters the real concern was Brockman’s motivation for sharing control, saying his desire for wealth had faced scrutiny in court a day earlier.
For his part, Brockman offered another story on Tuesday, outlining why he thought Musk was not up to the task of controlling an AI company. Brockman recalls then-OpenAI researcher Alec Radford showing Musk an early version of an AI chatbot that didn’t generate responses he liked. “Musk kept saying this system is so stupid that a kid on the Internet could do a better job of it,” Brockman said. Radford was “completely crushed” and “discouraged”, Brockman said, so much so that he left the AI research field almost entirely. Brockman and Sutskever “spent a lot of time” restoring her confidence. In Brockman’s view, Musk’s inability to see the potential in the early technology – which ultimately became the basis of ChatGPT – made him unfit to control OpenAI. “You need to dream a little bit,” Brockman said. And Musk hasn’t shown he can do that.
boardroom fights
Brockman said Tuesday that he, Sutskever and Altman considered voting Musk off the OpenAI nonprofit board because talks with them about a for-profit sister company had lasted for months. They will meet again over whiskey at Musk’s mansion to discuss alternative funding options. There was agreement on what not to do, but little agreement on what to do instead. But Brockman and Sutskever made a decision to fire Musk that they felt was “wrong,” Brockman testified. Ultimately, Musk left OpenAI on his own after seeing it headed on a path to “certain failure,” according to an email written in early 2018.
Zilis, who was an advisor to both OpenAI and Musk at the time, gave them insight into the development of the AI enterprise in the coming years. “She was Elon’s proxy in some ways,” Brockman said, referring to her as “a friend” whom he first met in 2012 or 2013.
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