Elon Musk was back on the witness stand Wednesday in Oakland federal court, where proceedings turned feisty.
“You’re being misleading,” Musk said testily as he was cross-examined by OpenAI lead counsel William Savitt.
Both the lawyer and the federal judge, Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, urged Musk to answer simple questions directly.
“Your questions are definitionally complex,” he fired back at one point. “It’s a lie to say they’re simple.”
Later, he accused Savitt of asking “mostly unfair questions.”
The first day of the trial in Musk vs. Altman focused on the risks artificial intelligence poses to humanity and who should be trusted to control it. The second day of testimony fixated on the value of Musk’s donations to OpenAI and whether he’d been cheated out of enormous returns.
In more than five hours on the stand, Musk repeatedly argued that his OpenAI cofounders Sam Altman and Greg Brockman took $38 million in donations from him and “stole the charity” out from under him.
“Without me, OpenAI would not exist,” Musk testified. “I came up with the name. I came up with the idea.”
Musk was repeatedly chastised by the judge for talking too much in his responses. But the master showman and experienced court witness managed to produce some memorable moments as OpenAI’s lawyers sought to paint him as an avaricious liar.
When it comes to Musk, the truth can be hard to pin down, and OpenAI’s lawyers had their work cut out for them. At least three times Wednesday, they tried to catch Musk contradicting something he had told them during his deposition.
In one instance, Musk was asked whether, as he posted on X (opens in new tab) in March 2023, he contributed $100 million to OpenAI. On the stand, Musk said his “contributions far exceed $100 million.” But in his deposition, which was read into the court record, Musk said he had misspoken when he posted that. The true figure is closer to $38 million, Musk confirmed on the stand.
Musk testified that he had never proposed a merger between Tesla and OpenAI. But in his deposition, he acknowledged that he had “bounced the idea around.”
The strategy appeared to be an attempt by the defense to make Musk look untrustworthy, even as he made the case that he had the best interests of humanity at heart.
At various points during cross-examination, OpenAI’s legal team tried to diminish Musk’s contributions, fiscal and otherwise, to the success of OpenAI.
Savitt pointed out that Musk’s tally of donations includes free rent he provided to OpenAI in the Pioneer building in San Francisco — money that Musk would have paid anyway because he rented the space for one of his companies, Neuralink, for $3 million a year.
“$38 million is a lot of money,” Musk testified regarding his donations to OpenAI.
“That wasn’t my question,” OpenAI’s lawyer responded. “My simple question was, isn’t it right that you contributed $38 million to OpenAI?
“I contributed $38 million,” Musk replied.
“And a lot of that was rent?”
“Yes,” Musk said. “But paying rent is still money.” Musk went on to say he would have subleased the building to another company if not to OpenAI.
Musk has a net worth of $775.8 billion, according to Forbes.
One recurring character of the trial has been Shivon Zilis, who worked for OpenAI. Asked Tuesday who Zilis is, Musk said, “She is my chief of staff and, uh, yeah.”
Asked Wednesday to describe his relationship with Zilis, Musk was more revealing. “We live together,” he said. “And she’s the mother of four of my children.”
Musk has had 14 known children with four women.
OpenAI’s lawyers again picked up this line of questioning later Wednesday, when Musk clarified that Zilis’ title was not officially “chief of staff,” identifying her as a “senior adviser.”
Though he testified that Zilis remained at OpenAI after he had left the company, Musk said he did not recall her ever sharing confidential information about the business with him. Zilis, who now works at Neuralink, may be called to testify. Throughout Wednesday’s hearing, emails between Zilis and Musk discussing OpenAI’s business were read into the court record as Savitt sought to establish that Musk had ignored opportunities to play a role in the company’s development.
At one point during cross-examination, OpenAI’s counsel tried to prove that Musk had approved of the decision to make it a for-profit company, despite his lawsuit claiming the opposite.
In his questioning, the lawyer described that watching a 2017 video game competition won by an AI bot had driven Musk to the realization that OpenAI was at risk of being left behind by better capitalized organizations, like Google. He asked Musk whether he recalled that the Defense of the Ancients gaming tournament in question was around the same time as a wedding he attended in San Francisco, after which Musk asked Altman, Brockman, Zilis, and others to meet to discuss OpenAI’s “next step.”
Musk said he did remember, to which the lawyer replied, “And then there was a meeting at the haunted mansion?”
Musk confirmed this, which raises the question of what mansion (opens in new tab)? And who is haunting it?
The court did not learn much more about it, except that Musk does not recall if Zilis took notes at the haunted mansion meeting, nor if he urged those present to pivot to a for-profit structure.
Throughout the cross-examination, Musk was repeatedly asked to answer questions with a simple yes or no. At one point, his apparent frustration boiled over into longer sentences.
In discussing OpenAI’s structure, Musk said, “I think it’s fine to have a C-corp that supports a nonprofit, provided it’s simply supportive and doesn’t become the main thing. What’s an issue is that ‘OpenAI: the for-profit’ has become the main thing.”
Savitt responded, “My question had nothing to do with that, Mr. Musk. It was simply to confirm your understanding that OpenAI, when it was formed, was formed as a not-for-profit. … It’s a simple question.”
“Your questions are not simple; they are designed to trick me, essentially,” Musk fired back. The judge urged Musk to focus only on whether the statements being put to him were true or false.
He continued to push back, saying a yes or no question might be, “Have you stopped beating your wife?”
Musk’s testimony will continue Thursday.
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