Elon Musk Takes the Stand at OpenAI Trial
LOS ANGELES—Tesla CEO Elon Musk took the stand Tuesday as the first witness in a high-stakes federal civil jury trial in Oakland, California, accusing OpenAI CEO Sam Altman of defrauding him and betraying the company’s founding mission: to operate as an open-source nonprofit dedicated to advancing artificial intelligence for the benefit of humanity. The lawsuit stems from a bitter feud between the two tech titans over the organization they co-founded in 2015, which has since become one of the world’s most valuable and powerful players in the global AI race “I think it’s not ok to steal a charity,” Musk told the court. A verdict in favor of the defendants, he ventured, would give license to “looting every charity in America.” Musk alleges Altman and others duped him into co-founding and funding OpenAI as an open-source nonprofit to counter the dangers of profit-driven AI advancement—then used its corporate conversion to illegally enrich themselves. Attorneys for OpenAI on Tuesday...
