Documents Unsealed in Musk v. Altman OpenAI Founding Lawsuit

The trial in Elon Musk's lawsuit against OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, OpenAI president Greg Brockman, and Microsoft began on Monday in a federal courtroom in California. The lawsuit accuses the defendants of breaching the company's charitable trust, fraud, and unjust enrichment.

It focuses on whether OpenAI has deviated from its mission to ensure artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity. Musk co-founded OpenAI with Altman and Brockman and was an early investor. He also owns xAI, an AI company that competes with OpenAI and is owned by SpaceX.

The discovery process has revealed communications between AI executives, including emails between Altman and Ilya Sutskever, entries from Brockman's diary, and texts between Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Musk.

Key Exhibits from Early Communications Exhibit No.

5 is a June 2015 email exchange between Altman and Musk. Altman outlined a five-part plan for an AI lab aimed at creating general AI for individual empowerment and safety. He proposed starting with seven to 10 people in a Y Combinator building in Mountain View, with governance by five individuals: himself, Musk, Bill Gates, Pierre Omidyar, and Dustin Moskovitz.

Altman stated the technology would be owned by a foundation and used for the good of the world, with decisions by the five if needed. He suggested competitive salaries and equity in Y Combinator for researchers, and asked about Musk's involvement level.

“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.”

Exhibit No. 7 is an October 2015 email exchange where Altman suggested Musk commit $100 million initially and $30 million over five years. He mentioned hopes for Bill Gates' commitment and doubts about Mark Zuckerberg due to Facebook AI Research. Musk responded by emphasizing the need to discuss governance.

Additional Details on Structure and Resources Exhibit No.

12 is a November 2015 email exchange where Musk recounted a call with Greg Brockman and praised the team. He suggested forming the lab as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit focused on positive strong AI distributed to humanity. Musk proposed employee compensation with cash salaries and bonuses, and options to convert to Y Combinator or SpaceX stock.

Musk offered sensor data from Tesla for the lab, noting it was several orders of magnitude greater than other companies. He suggested the name "Freemind" to contrast with Deepmind's approach. Musk stated he would dedicate time to the project despite impacts on SpaceX and Tesla.

Other takeaways from exhibits include Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang providing OpenAI with a supercomputer, Musk drafting much of OpenAI's mission and influencing its structure, Altman seeking Y Combinator support, and concerns from Brockman and Sutskever about Musk's control.

Musk emphasized a nonprofit focused on broadly beneficial AI.

The trial follows previous legal actions by Musk against OpenAI and its executives. Former OpenAI employees and individuals close to the companies are monitoring the case. OpenAI and SpaceX are both planning to go public this year. The outcome could influence OpenAI's business operations and technology control.

Additional exhibits are expected as the trial continues. The Verge reported these details based on publicly released court documents.