OpenAI President Gregory Brockman and his wife Anna Brockman depart court – Copyright GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA\/AFP Benjamin Fanjoy<\/p>\n
OpenAI President Greg Brockman told a California jury Tuesday that Elon Musk physically threatened him during a 2017 confrontation, testifying that the billionaire stormed out after he was refused absolute control of the artificial intelligence company.<\/p>\n
\u201cI actually thought he was going to hit me,\u201d Brockman said.<\/p>\n
The testimony came on the second day of Brockman\u2019s appearance at the trial of Musk\u2019s lawsuit against OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman, in which the Tesla and SpaceX founder accuses the company of betraying its original nonprofit mission.<\/p>\n
According to Musk, the company pivoted to a for-profit structure and misappropriated his $38 million founding donation to build a company now valued at more than $850 billion.<\/p>\n
OpenAI counters that Musk left voluntarily after failing to seize majority control and has since become the company\u2019s direct competitor through his own AI venture, xAI.<\/p>\n
Under cross-examination by OpenAI attorney Sarah Eddy, Brockman sought to reframe diary entries that Musk\u2019s lawyers had used the previous day to portray him as a calculating opportunist.<\/p>\n
One November 2017 entry read: \u201cIt\u2019d be wrong to steal the non-profit from him\u2026 That\u2019d be pretty morally bankrupt.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s very painful, very deeply personal writings that were never meant for the world to see, but there\u2019s nothing in there I\u2019m ashamed of,\u201d\u00a0Brockman said in court.<\/p>\n
Brockman also testified that when Musk announced his departure from OpenAI in February 2018, he told staff he intended to pursue AI development inside Tesla without regard for safety.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf the sheep are dictating safety and the wolves are not, then there\u2019s no purpose,\u201d Brockman said Musk allegedly told employees at the time.<\/p>\n
OpenAI\u2019s legal team argues the timeline proves Musk was fully aware of the company\u2019s commercial pivot \u2014 and that his 2024 lawsuit, filed after he launched rival lab xAI, is meritless.<\/p>\n
Brockman said that OpenAI now spends $50 billion a year on computing power \u2014 compared to just $30 million in 2017 \u2014 showing how expensive the technology has become and why a charity-style organization could never have footed the bill.<\/p>\n
Brockman acknowledged Monday that his stake in OpenAI is valued at $30 billion.<\/p>\n
Altman is expected to testify as early as next week.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"OpenAI President Gregory Brockman and his wife Anna Brockman depart court – Copyright GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA\/AFP Benjamin…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":28943,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[24,781,12737,156,2899],"class_list":{"0":"post-28942","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-xai","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-tech","10":"tag-trial","11":"tag-us","12":"tag-xai"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28942","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28942"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28942\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28943"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}