{"id":22138,"date":"2026-05-01T22:31:39","date_gmt":"2026-05-01T22:31:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/01\/musk-v-altman-week-1-musk-says-he-was-duped-warns-ai-could-kill-us-all-and-admits-that-xai-distills-openais-models\/"},"modified":"2026-05-01T22:31:39","modified_gmt":"2026-05-01T22:31:39","slug":"musk-v-altman-week-1-musk-says-he-was-duped-warns-ai-could-kill-us-all-and-admits-that-xai-distills-openais-models","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/01\/musk-v-altman-week-1-musk-says-he-was-duped-warns-ai-could-kill-us-all-and-admits-that-xai-distills-openais-models\/","title":{"rendered":"Musk v. Altman week 1: Elon Musk says he was duped, warns AI could kill us all, and admits that xAI distills OpenAI\u2019s models"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

In the first week of the landmark trial between Elon Musk and OpenAI, Musk took the stand in a crisp black suit and tie and argued that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and president Greg Brockman had deceived him into bankrolling the company. Along the way, he warned\u00a0 that AI could destroy us all and sat through revelations that he had poached OpenAI employees for his own companies. He even confessed, to some audible gasps in the courtroom, that his own AI company, xAI, which makes the chatbot Grok, uses OpenAI\u2019s models to train its own.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The federal courthouse in Oakland, California, was packed with armies of lawyers carrying boxes of exhibits, journalists typing away at their laptops, and a handful of concerned OpenAI employees. Outside, protesters lined the streets, carrying signs<\/a> urging people to quit ChatGPT, boycott Tesla, or both. Musk looked calm and comfortable, slipping in the occasional quip in his distinct South African accent. But he also was full of remorse.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI was a fool who provided them free funding to create a startup,\u201d Musk told the jury. He said when he cofounded OpenAI in 2015 with Altman and Brockman, he was donating to a nonprofit developing AI for the benefit of humanity, not to make the executives rich. \u201cI gave them $38 million of essentially free funding, which they then used to create what would become an $800 billion company,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Musk is asking the court to remove Altman and Brockman from their roles and to unwind the restructuring<\/a> that allowed OpenAI to operate a for-profit subsidiary. The outcome of the trial could upend OpenAI\u2019s race toward an IPO at a valuation approaching $1 trillion. Meanwhile, xAI is expected to go public as a part of Musk\u2019s rocket company SpaceX as early as June, at a target valuation of $1.75 trillion<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This week\u2019s testimony revolved around a central question of the trial: why Musk is suing OpenAI. Musk argued he was trying to save OpenAI\u2019s mission to develop AI safely by restoring the company to its original nonprofit structure. OpenAI\u2019s lawyer, William Savitt, who once represented Musk and his electric-car company Tesla, countered that Musk was \u201cnever committed to OpenAI being a nonprofit\u201d and instead was suing to undermine his competitor.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Who is the steward of AI safety?<\/strong><\/h3>\n

During his direct examination early in the week, Musk painted himself as a longtime advocate of AI safety. He said he cofounded OpenAI to create a \u201ccounterbalance to Google,\u201d which was leading the AI race at the time. He said that when he asked Google cofounder Larry Page what happens if AI tries to wipe out humanity, Page told him, \u201cThat will be fine as long as artificial intelligence survives.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe worst-case scenario is a Terminator<\/em> situation where AI kills us all,\u201d Musk later told the jury.<\/p>\n

Savitt stood at the lectern and argued that Musk was not a \u201cpaladin of safety and regulation.\u201d As he cross-examined Musk in his sharp, surgical cadence, Savitt pointed out that xAI sued the state of Colorado in April over an AI law designed to prevent algorithmic discrimination.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Musk\u2019s lawyer, Steven Molo, sprang to his feet to object. He asked the judge if he, too, could weigh in on ChatGPT\u2019s safety record.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The lawyers then entered a heated debate about who was the true guardian of AI safety.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The sparring continued the next morning. \u201cWe all could die as a result of artificial intelligence!\u201d said Molo, suggesting that OpenAI could not be trusted to build AI safely.<\/p>\n

\u201cDespite these risks, your client is creating a company that\u2019s in the exact space,\u201d Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers said sternly, referring to xAI. \u201cI suspect there\u2019s plenty of people who don\u2019t want to put the future of humanity in Mr. Musk\u2019s hands.\u201d<\/p>\n

When the lawyers began talking over each other, the judge snapped. \u201cThis is not a trial on whether or not artificial intelligence has damaged humanity,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

When did Musk think he was being duped?<\/strong><\/h3>\n

As Savitt continued to cross-examine Musk, he pressed on the idea that Musk had never been committed to keeping OpenAI a nonprofit. He also claimed that Musk waited too long to sue OpenAI, filing after the statute of limitations ran out.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Musk explained why he sued in 2024 rather than earlier, describing \u201cthree phases\u201d in his views of OpenAI. In phase one, he was \u201centhusiastically supportive\u201d of the company.\u201d In phase two, \u201cI started to lose confidence that they were telling me the truth,\u201d he said. In phase three, \u201cI\u2019m sure they\u2019re looting the nonprofit.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

In 2017, Musk and other OpenAI cofounders discussed creating a for-profit subsidiary to raise enough capital to build artificial general intelligence\u2014powerful AI that can compete with humans on most cognitive tasks. Musk wanted a majority interest in the subsidiary and the right to choose a majority of the board members. He also pitched having Tesla acquire OpenAI. (He left OpenAI in 2018.)<\/p>\n

\u201cI was not opposed to there being a small for-profit that provides funding to the nonprofit,\u201d he told the jury, \u201cas long as the tail didn\u2019t wag the dog.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

But it was only in late 2022, Musk testified, that he \u201clost trust in Altman\u201d and his commitment to keeping the company a nonprofit. The key moment came, he said, when he learned that Microsoft would invest $10 billion in OpenAI.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cI texted Sam Altman, \u2018What the hell is going on? This is a bait and switch,\u2019\u201d he told the jury. Microsoft would give $10 billion only if it expected \u201ca very big financial return,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Is Musk just trying to kill competition?<\/strong><\/h3>\n

But Savitt argued that Musk was really suing to undermine OpenAI as a competitor to his empire of tech companies. While he was on the board of OpenAI, Musk was also running Tesla and his brain-implant company, Neuralink. He founded xAI in 2023.<\/p>\n

Savitt pulled up an email that Musk had sent to a Tesla vice president in 2017 after hiring Andrej Karpathy, a founding member of OpenAI, to work at Tesla.\u201cThe OpenAI guys are gonna want to kill me. But it had to be done,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n

When asked about it, Musk was flustered. He claimed Karpathy had already decided to leave OpenAI when he recruited him to work at Tesla. \u201cI believe it\u2019s a free world,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Savitt pulled up another email that Musk sent to a cofounder at Neuralink in 2017. He wrote that they could \u201chire independently or directly from OpenAI.\u201d When pressed about it, he sounded frazzled. \u201cIt\u2019s a free country,\u201d he said. \u201cI can\u2019t restrict their ability to hire people from other companies.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Savitt also pointed out that Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink, and X were socially beneficial for-profit companies, like OpenAI. He stressed that xAI was also a closed-source, for-profit company.<\/p>\n

But Musk claimed that xAI was not a real competitor to OpenAI. \u201cWe\u2019re not currently tracking to reach AGI first,\u201d he told the jury.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In fact, Musk admitted that xAI uses OpenAI\u2019s technology. In response to Savitt\u2019s relentless questioning, he said xAI \u201cpartly\u201d distills OpenAI\u2019s models. Some people in the courtroom gasped.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Distillation is a technique where a smaller, more efficient AI model is trained to mimic the behavior of larger, more capable models, so it can run faster and more cheaply while performing nearly as well. But OpenAI and others have pushed back against the practice. In February, OpenAI accused<\/a> its competitors, including the Chinese AI company DeepSeek, of distilling its AI models to gain an edge. In August 2025, Wired<\/em> reported that Anthropic had blocked<\/a> OpenAI\u2019s access to Claude for violating the company\u2019s terms of service, which prohibit, among other things, reverse-engineering its services and building competing products.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is standard practice to use other AIs to validate your AI,\u201d argued Musk.<\/p>\n

Next week, Stuart Russell, a computer scientist at UC Berkeley, will testify about AI safety. Brockman, who has been taking notes during Musk\u2019s testimony, will also testify.<\/p>\n

This story is part of <\/em>MIT Technology Review\u2019s ongoing coverage of the <\/em>Musk v. Altman trial. Follow<\/em> @techreview<\/em><\/a> or <\/em>@michelletomkim<\/em><\/a> on X for up-to-the-minute reporting.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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