A few months Before Elon Musk left the OpenAI board in February 2018, he attempted to recruit Sam Altman to join a “world-class AI lab” within Tesla. Musk went so far as to offer the OpenAI CEO a seat on Tesla’s board, according to emails and testimony presented in Federal Court on Wednesday during the Musk vs. Altman trial. The emails were shown to a jury during cross-examination of Shivon Zilisa former OpenAI advisor and board member, who is also the mother of Musk’s four children.
Musk’s main argument in this lawsuit is that Altman and OpenAI Chairman Greg Brockman effectively stole from a nonprofit, using the $38 million Musk invested to create a private company now worth more than $800 billion. On Wednesday, Musk’s lawyers showed video depositions of the former OpenAI CTO. Mira Murati and former OpenAI board member Helen Toner to raise concerns about Altman’s project. alleged history of deception.
OpenAI’s legal team responded to Musk’s claims by questioning his true motives, arguing that the Tesla CEO had “sour grapes” since he failed to take control from OpenAI in 2017. He has since launched a rival for-profit AI lab. OpenAI’s lawyers used cross-examination of Zilis on Wednesday to adduce evidence about Musk’s alleged plans to overthrow OpenAI, and attempted to suggest that Zilis was aware of those plans. Regarding this matter, one of Zilis’ most important roles at OpenAI was to act as an intermediary between Musk and Altman.
In a text from February 2018 presented as evidence, Zilis – then an advisor to OpenAI, as well as an executive at Neuralink and Tesla – asked Altman: “Have you considered a B Corp subsidiary of Tesla?”
“There was documentary evidence that, on several occasions, Mr. Musk had considered seeking to join Sam Altman on the board and had proposed that option,” OpenAI lawyer William Savitt said outside the courthouse on Wednesday. “This was part of Mr. Musk’s efforts to corrupt OpenAI and absorb it into Tesla… he was trying to convince Altman to abandon the mission and become part of Tesla.”
In an email to Tesla’s vice president of communications, Sarah O’Brien, from November 2017, Zilis shared a draft of an FAQ page about an event Tesla planned to host 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,” reads the written FAQ. The document continues: “One of the major problems for Tesla is that when people think of Elon and AI, they think of OpenAI. »
Another part of the FAQ titled “Who?” ” lists several Tesla executives who were to lead the unit, including Musk and Andrej Karpathy, a former OpenAI researcher. Altman’s name is listed next to Musk’s with two question marks next to it.
The FAQ comes with notes including that Altman could be a moderator of the NeurIPS event, which “could be a function forcing Sam to engage in TeslaAI.” Another note said that “Tesla AI’s strategy had not yet been defined and some of it could be deeply proprietary.”
Zilis testified Wednesday that Altman never ended up joining Tesla and that the AI lab and NeurIPS launch event never came to fruition. She also testified that Musk contacted Karpathy to recruit him to Tesla. Savitt told reporters that Zilis’ testimony about Karpathy is “directly contrary to what Mr. Musk told the jury just a few days ago.” Earlier in this lawsuit, Musk said Karpathy left OpenAI of his own accord.
In SMS from June 2017Zilis responded “Fuck yeahhhhhhh” when Tesla colleagues told him that Karpathy had signed an official offer. Another employee asked if OpenAI would be angry about Karpathy’s hiring, followed by a smiley emoticon. Zilis said it was a good question, but said she had “talked to Greg [Brockman] today and he clearly had no idea…”
It was already known that Musk wanted to merge OpenAI with Tesla, but evidence presented on Wednesday revealed new details about the plans. In an email to another Tesla employee in October 2017, Zilis said OpenAI’s co-founders had not “internalized the benefits of burying this in Tesla for a stealth advantage.” When OpenAI’s lawyers asked Zilis if “bury” meant Tesla planned to close the sources of its AI, she said no. “It’s just a small fish in a big pond,” Zilis said.
In another e-mail From Zilis to Musk In February 2018, the same month Musk left the OpenAI board, Zilis shared several scenarios on how to create an effective counterbalance to Google DeepMind, which Musk considered a major threat. One scenario was to have Altman run a Tesla AI lab. Another scenario read: “Find a way to get Demis. Seriously,” referring to Google DeepMind leader Demis Hassabis. “Maybe he’s coming to Tesla somehow or DeepMind is being spun off,” Zilis wrote.
Nearly two years later, in January 2020, Zilis was appointed to the OpenAI board of directors. During her tenure as a board member, Zilis testified that she had become pregnant with Musk’s children through IVF, but did not disclose this to other board members due to a confidentiality agreement she had signed with Musk. When Business Insider contacted her in 2022, informing her of her intention to break a story About the children later that day, Zilis said she called her father, then Altman.
But Zilis continued to serve on OpenAI’s board of directors until February 2023, months before Musk announced the launch of his rival AI lab, xAI. Zilis said she resigned after learning of Musk’s efforts, allegedly through a call from Altman. However, texts revealed in the case suggest that Zilis already knew about xAI before the call.
“I have to resign [from the] openai table by the way. [Musk’s] this effort became well known,” Zilis told a friend on the day of Altman’s call. “When the father of your babies launches a competitive effort and recruits outside openai, there is nothing that can be done.”
On Thursday, Musk’s lawyers are expected to call Rosie Campbell, a former OpenAI employee and chief executive of Eleos AI, an AI awareness nonprofit, as a witness. They should also call David Schizer, a former dean of Columbia Law School who specializes in nonprofit law.
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