X owner and Tesla CEO Elon Musk took the stand to testify against OpenAI CEO Sam Altman on Tuesday in his lawsuit against the ChatGPT parent company.
Musk, who helped co-found OpenAI with Altman and a group of tech industry leaders, is suing his former business partner and company, arguing that OpenAI has deviated from the humanitarian mission it was initially founded on. Musk has taken issue with the fact that Altman transitioned OpenAI away from its nonprofit model to a for-profit company, arguing that Altman prioritized monetary gain over the original beneficial mission.
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In his Tuesday testimony, Musk warned of the risks of a world in which artificial intelligence is not restrained by humans to work for the good of mankind.
“It could kill us all,” Musk said about AI in his testimony. “We don’t want to have a Terminator outcome. We want to be in a Gene Roddenberry outcome, like Star Trek. Not so much a James Cameron movie like Terminator.”
Musk told the courtroom that he has “extreme concerns” about AI and that the day when the technology could surpass human intelligence “is approaching fast.”
“I’ve had concerns about AI for a very long time,” Musk said.
Though the billionaire helped found OpenAI, he founded a new AI chatbot company of his own in 2023 tied to X called xAI. Musk’s Grok and ChatGPT are now top competitors in the AI chatbot space.
Musk’s lawsuit, filed in the District Court for the Northern District of California, asks the court to roll back OpenAI’s switch to a for-profit business model. The case has been assigned to Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, appointed by former President Barack Obama.
“Motivated by jealousy, regret for walking away from OpenAI and a desire to derail a competing AI company, Elon has spent years harassing OpenAI through baseless lawsuits and public attacks,” a current OpenAI-run webpage devoted to the topic of Musk reads.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we are here today because the defendants in this case stole a charity,” Musk’s lawyer, Steve Molo, said in the courtroom on Tuesday.
The judge in the case had reprimanded Musk earlier this week after he repeatedly posted about the case on social media.
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Musk also addressed Neuralink, which is running clinical trials to implant AI chips in the human brain, in his testimony. The company markets the chip as a way to “restore autonomy to those with unmet medical needs,” according to its website. Musk sees it as a way to use AI to benefit humanity.
“If we can achieve an AI-human symbiosis, we can achieve an AI that is better for humanity,” Musk said.
