Sam Altman testified in federal court as Elon Musk’s lawsuit challenges whether OpenAI abandoned its founding nonprofit mission for profit.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman took the witness stand Tuesday in federal court in Oakland, California, to defend his leadership and reject claims at the center of Elon Musk’s civil lawsuit against him and the ChatGPT maker.
The case turns on whether OpenAI strayed from the nonprofit mission it embraced at its founding and shifted toward a for-profit business in a way that betrayed Musk’s early role in the organization. Musk, an OpenAI co-founder who has since launched his own artificial intelligence company, is seeking Altman’s removal from company leadership and an unspecified sum to support OpenAI’s charitable arm.
Under questioning from a lawyer for Musk, Altman pushed back against testimony that portrayed him as dishonest. “I believe I am an honest and trustworthy businessperson,” he told the court.
OpenAI began as a nonprofit funded primarily by Musk and has since become one of the most valuable companies in artificial intelligence, with CBC reporting its current valuation at $852 billion US. The trial is unfolding as OpenAI, Musk’s AI company and rival Anthropic are all moving toward planned public offerings expected to draw intense investor attention.
Musk’s lawsuit accuses Altman and OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman of abandoning the company’s founding purpose as an altruistic steward of advanced AI and moving toward a moneymaking model behind Musk’s back. OpenAI has rejected Musk’s allegations, portraying the case as an attempt to damage its growth and aid Musk’s competing AI business.
Altman testified that Musk had supported discussions about a more traditional for-profit structure but wanted long-term control of the company. He said Musk sought more board seats, wanted to become chief executive and suggested OpenAI become a subsidiary of Tesla.
Altman also described discomfort among OpenAI’s founders over the idea of putting artificial general intelligence under one person’s control. He told jurors that when co-founders asked what would happen to OpenAI if Musk controlled it and died, Musk suggested control could pass to his children. Altman called the moment “particularly hair-raising.”
Artificial general intelligence, often called AGI, broadly refers to AI systems capable enough to outperform humans across many tasks. Altman said one reason OpenAI was created was the belief that such technology should not be controlled by a single individual.
The testimony also revisited a turbulent period in OpenAI’s recent history. Jurors have heard from former OpenAI board members involved in Altman’s brief 2023 ouster, as well as from co-founder Ilya Sutskever, who confirmed that he wrote a memo alleging a pattern of dishonesty and loss of trust before later supporting Altman’s return to the company.
Altman, in turn, testified that Musk left OpenAI in 2018 and stopped making quarterly donations, and that Musk later declined an opportunity to invest when OpenAI formed a for-profit subsidiary in 2019. Altman said Musk would no longer invest in startups he did not control.
The jury will ultimately decide the civil case, but the testimony has already put OpenAI’s governance, its founding mission and its competition with Musk at the center of a broader public fight over who should shape the future of powerful AI systems.
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