The Musk v. Altman trial is underway, and that means exhibits - the evidence to be presented in court - are being revealed piece by piece. So far, email exchanges, photos, and corporate documents are circulating from the earliest days of OpenAI, and from before the AI lab even had a name. Some high-level takeaways: Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang gave OpenAI an in-demand supercomputer, Musk largely drafted OpenAI's mission and heavily influenced its early structure, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman appeared to want to lean heavily on Y Combinator for early support, OpenAI president Greg Brockman and Ilya Sutskever worried about Musk's level of control over the company, and Musk highlighted the importance of a nonprofit with a mission of broadly beneficial AI.
Musk's buzzy lawsuit, which began its jury trial on Monday in a federal courtroom in California, names Altman, Brockman, and OpenAI investor Microsoft as defendants. The claims vary against each party and have included breaching OpenAI's charitable trust, fraud, and unjust enrichment. But ultimately, Musk's lawsuit boils down to whether or not OpenAI deviated from its founding mission of ensuring that artificial general intelligence - an often vaguely defined term that denotes AI systems that equal or surpass human intelligence - benefits all of humanity. It's the latest in a yearslong string of legal actions against OpenAI and its executives by Musk, who cofounded the AI lab alongside Altman and Brockman and was an early investor. (Musk also owns xAI, an AI lab that directly competes with OpenAI, and is owned by parent company SpaceX.)
Former OpenAI employees and people close to both companies have been watching this particular lawsuit with a close eye, since the outcome of a jury trial could have affected how OpenAI runs its business and controls its quickly advancing technology. Plus, OpenAI and SpaceX are both reportedly racing to go public this year, so they're more in the public eye than ever.
The lawsuit discovery process had already unearthed a lot of eyebrow-raising communications between AI industry executives, from emails between Altman and Sutskever to entries from Brockman's own diary. Even texts between Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Musk were made public. But that was all before the jury trial started - now, there's even more set to be revealed.
Here's an exhaustive list of all the exhibits that have been made public so far and the biggest takeaways from each one. Admittedly, not every item is necessarily interesting, so we've flagged the most important ones with an asterisk.
A June 2015 email exchange between Altman and Musk. Altman lays out a five-part plan involving an AI lab with a mission to "create the first general AI and use it for individual empowerment - ie, the distributed version of the future that seems the safest. More generally, safety should be a first-class requirement." He suggests starting with seven to 10 people and expanding from there, using an extra Y Combinator building in Mountain View. Governance-wise, Altman names five people to start: himself, Musk, Bill Gates, Pierre Omidyar, and Dustin Moskovitz. "The technology would be owned by the foundation and used 'for the good of the world,' and in cases where it's not obvious how that should be applied the 5 of us would decide," Altman writes. He adds that researchers would have "significant financial upside … uncorrelated to what they build, which should eliminate some of the conflict," and suggests paying them a "competitive salary" and awarding them equity in Y Combinator. He also says they should get someone to "run the team" but that person "probably shouldn't be on the governance board." Finally, Altman mentions a "regulation letter," implying the AI lab was going to call for AI regulation, and says he's happy to leave Musk off as a public signatory.
In an October 2015 email exchange, Altman suggests starting with a $100 million commitment by Musk and asks if he could donate an additional $30 million over the next five years. He says Bill Gates isn't yet committed but hopes to "have him locked down next week," adding that Mark Zuckerberg likely won't come through due to his own AI lab, Facebook AI Research (FAIR). He also suggests he and Musk start as the first two members of a Safety Board with the potential to add three other members over the following year, calling it the "'second key' for releasing anything that could be dangerous." Musk responds, "Let's discuss governance. This is critical. I don't want to fund something that goes in what turns out to be the wrong direction."
In a November 2015 exchange, Musk recounts a "great call with Greg [Brockman]" and says he's "super impressed with everyone so far." He suggests creating the lab as an "independent, pure play 501c3, but with a crystal clear focus on the positive advent of strong AI distributed widely to humanity," adding that it would "still aim to bring in revenue in excess of costs at some point, but positive net revenue would just flow to cash reserves." He offers "insane amounts of real world sensor data" from Tesla for the AI lab to use, mentioning the data is "several orders of magnitude greater than any other company." Musk's first stab at a name is "Freemind," as it "conveys the sense that we are trying to create digital intelligence that will be freely available to all - the opposite of Deepmind's one-ring-to-rule-them-all approach." Altman suggests "Axon" or something related to Alan Turing. Musk writes, "Something Turing-related that doesn't sound too ominous might be good. Want to avoid the Turing Test association though, as that sounds too much like we are replacing humans."
A December 2015 exchange between Altman and Musk drafts the opening paragraphs of OpenAI's mission and press release. Musk says the "whole point of this release is to attract top talent." The two go back and forth on wording, and the final product ends up not straying too much from Musk's original draft. Musk writes that "the outcome of this venture is uncertain and the pay is low compared to what others will offer, but we believe the goal and the structure are right." Altman writes that "because we don't have any financial obligations, we can focus on the maximal positive human impact and disseminating AI technology as broadly as possible."
OpenAI's official articles of incorporation, filed December 8th, 2015, state that the corporation "shall be a nonprofit corporation organized exclusively for charitable purposes" and that its purpose is "to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity, including by conducting and/or funding artificial intelligence research." The document continues, "The resulting technology will benefit the public and the corporation will seek to distribute it for the public benefit when applicable. The corporation is not organized for the private gain of any person."
An April 2016 email exchange between Musk and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang. Musk asks if the OpenAI team can buy an early unit of a supercomputer, making sure to highlight that "OpenAI is unaffiliated with Tesla. It is a non-profit funded by me and a few others with the goal of developing safe AGI (and hopefully not paving the road to hell with good intentions)." Huang responds that he "will make sure OpenAI gets one of the first ones." A photo shows Huang ostensibly dropping off said computer, with Musk standing nearby.
In an August 2017 email exchange between Musk and Shivon Zilis, Musk's chief of staff who eventually sat on OpenAI's board and with whom Musk would eventually share multiple children, Zilis writes a recap of her meeting with Brockman and Sutskever. She says they are fine with Musk spending less time and having less control, or more time and more control, but not less time and more control. They also hope to raise significantly more than $100 million to start, as they worry the data center alone would cost that much. The biggest point of tension seems to be on Musk's duration of control. Zilis writes, "*The* non-negotiable seems to be an ironclad agreement to not have any one person have absolute control of AGI if it's created … An ironclad 2-3yr minority control agreement, regardless of the fates of Greg / Sam / Ilya." Musk responds, "This is very annoying. Please encourage them to go start a company. I've had enough."
A September 2017 email to Musk from Jared Birchall, an adviser to Musk and manager of his family office, attaches a "more user friendly version of the cap table that Ilya and Greg are proposing." In it, Musk is reflected as having 51.20 percent equity, with Altman, Sutskever, and Brockman each having 1 percent.