OpenAI Trial: Sam Altman Claims Musk Wanted Company Control Passed To His Children

Amid

the high-stakes courtroom drama, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has testified that Elon Musk caused “huge damage” to the company’s culture of AI. He made these comments in a federal court in Oakland, California, as part of Musk's ongoing lawsuit against OpenAI. The Tesla CEO alleged that OpenAI drifted away from its original mission of being a nonprofit organisation and moved toward the profit-led structure.

Here’s What Altman Said

During his testimony, the OpenAI CEO mentioned that Musk pushed the leadership of OpenAI to aggressively evaluate researchers to remove underperformers, as per The Verge. He suggested that the xAI chief asked the OpenAI president Greg Brockman and co-founder Ilya Sutskever to rank the workforce based on achievements and "take a chainsaw through a bunch.”Altman asserted that this sort of approach did not fit the requirements of a research-led AI startup. He said, “I don’t think Mr. Musk understood how to run a good research lab.” The OpenAI CEO also stressed that Musk’s departure actually improved the atmosphere inside the company. “It was a morale boost in some ways,” added Altman. He added that employees felt they no longer had to “work this way anymore.” He highlighted how Musk tried to gain greater control over the company. Altman noted that Musk wanted more autonomy inside the startup and discussed various ideas, including becoming the chief executive and tried to pressure the board. Moreover, he wanted to turn OpenAI into a subsidiary of Tesla, added Altman.

According to BBC, Altman revealed, “A particularly hair-raising moment was when my cofounders asked, ‘If you have control, what happens when you die?’ He said something like ‘maybe it should pass to my children.” This lawsuit has not entered its third week and includes testimonies from various influential figures in the tech industry. These include Greg Brockman, Shovon Zilis, Satya Nadella and former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati.