During the trial between Elon Musk and OpenAI in a federal court in the United States, new details emerged about the dispute between the entrepreneur and the company. Documents presented to the court revealed that as early as 2017, Musk was considering involving OpenAI co-founder Sam Altman in the creation of a separate artificial intelligence laboratory based at Tesla.
This is reported by Finway
Correspondence and Plans for AI Development at Tesla
During the hearing, jurors were shown correspondence between Shivon Zilis — a former advisor at OpenAI, and an employee of Tesla and Neuralink — and Sam Altman. Zilis reached out to Altman asking if he would be open to the idea of creating a Tesla subsidiary with B Corp certification for the development of artificial intelligence. Additionally, OpenAI reported that Musk offered Altman a position on Tesla’s board of directors and planned to establish a separate division for AI development within the automaker’s facilities.
Among the figures mentioned in the case are Andrei Karpathy, who later joined Musk’s company, and Demis Hassabis. According to the defendant’s attorney, William Savitt, these actions were an attempt to “undermine OpenAI and absorb it into Tesla.”
Documents from Tesla prepared for the 2017 NeurIPS conference discussed the intention to create a “world-leading artificial intelligence laboratory” that could compete with Google DeepMind and Facebook AI Research. In the section dedicated to potential project leaders, Altman’s name was marked with question marks, indicating uncertainty about his involvement.
Allegations of Attempting to Control OpenAI
The legal team at OpenAI insists that Elon Musk sought to take control of the organization. The company emphasized that after his failure, Musk founded his own startup xAI, which is now a competitor to OpenAI in the artificial intelligence market.
During the court proceedings, the role of Andrei Karpathy, a former OpenAI researcher who was the subject of discussions about moving to Tesla as early as 2017, was also discussed. This, according to OpenAI’s lawyers, contradicts Musk’s previous statements about Karpathy’s voluntary departure from the ChatGPT development team.
“According to OpenAI, Musk offered the company’s CEO a position on Tesla’s board of directors. He also intended to open a special division for AI development within the automaker’s facilities.”
Particular attention in court was given to Shivon Zilis, who reported that she left the board of directors at OpenAI in 2023 after learning about the launch of the xAI startup. At the same time, court materials suggest that she may have been aware of Musk’s project even before its official announcement.
Previously, Elon Musk had spoken about the risks of a “Terminator” scenario and discussed the goal of creating OpenAI, emphasizing the need for safe development of artificial intelligence.