OpenAIs Brockman details wild meeting with Elon Musk — I thought he was going to physically attack me | Latest Tech News

OAKLAND, Calif. — OpenAI’s president Greg Brockman detailed a wild meeting in 2017 with Elon Musk in which the co-founders tussled over possession stakes in the company – at one level claiming that he feared Musk “was going to physically attack me.”

Testifying on Tuesday in the second week of the bombshell trial over the future of OpenAI, Brockman claimed Musk confirmed up to meet him along with other OpenAI top brass to negotiate their equity stakes in the for revenue company that would ultimately launch ChatGPT.

In the center of talks, Brockman said Musk personally gifted free Teslas to him, Ilya Sutskever and others — a transfer Brockman noticed as Musk “buttering us up” and to make the co-founders really feel “indebted to him in some way.” Likewise, Sutskever had given Musk a portray of a Tesla car, Brockman said.

OpenAI President Greg Brockman testified in Oakland federal court. REUTERS

But when the OpenAI co-founders rebuffed Musk’s demand for a majority stake in the company — with Musk claiming he needed $80 billion to create a metropolis on Mars — Musk went ballistic, according to Brockman.

“Something really shifted in him,” Brockman said of Musk. “He became angry and he went off from there.” 

“He stood up and he stormed around the table,” Brockman continued. “I was sitting in front of the painting and I actually thought he was going to hit me. I truly thought he was going to physically attack me. Instead, he just grabbed the painting and started to storm out of the room.”

Musk then demanded to know when the group would depart OpenAI — and declared that he’d withhold funding until they did.

Musk rejected Brockman’s proposals for equal possession stakes among the founders and his argument that no one individual ought to control such highly effective AI, according to Brockman.

“He said he had experienced what it was like to not have control and he didn’t like it,” Brockman said Elon had told him. Brockman added: “He said he needed the money for Mars. He said he needed $80 billion to create a city there.”

Oakland federal courthouse. AP

The fiery meeting was just one tumultuous second from the August and September period detailed by Brockman on Tuesday in Oakland federal court. Just weeks earlier, Musk had invited the crew to what he called a “haunted mansion” that he had just lately purchased close to San Francisco. 

Brockman said that when he, Sutskever and Altman arrived at the mansion that it was “clear there was a party there the night before,” littered with “confetti and cups.” Musk’s girlfriend at the time, Amber Heard, was also there, Brockman said, and Musk invited her to be a part of them but Heard declined, saying she needed to hang around with a girlfriend who was there. 

Whiskey was served, Brockman testified, and the OpenAI group mentioned a for-profit entity and the dialog was “celebratory.” 

“We had an actual line of sight to achieving the mission,” Brockman said. 

OpenAI President Greg Brockman in entrance of the Oakland federal courthouse. Getty Images

Musk’s lawsuit, which alleges that Brockman, Altman and OpenAI have violated the company’s charitable mission, is asking for $150 billion in damages and a court order that would take away Altman from the OpenAI board of administrators. He also desires an order unraveling the for-profit company construction that the company adopted last yr.

Brockman, who wore a black go well with and blue tie, appeared more snug than the prior day when he was grilled by Musk’s lawyer over diary entries from practically a decade in the past in which Brockman fantasized about turning into a billionaire — even as the then-nonprofit charity bought thousands and thousands in donations from Musk.

The defendants have sought to show in court that Musk was included in and supported discussions for a for-profit enterprise and that Musk’s go well with quantities to “sour grapes.”

Brockman bought grilled by Musk’s lawyer on Monday over embarrassing diary entries. 

“Financially what will take me to $1B?” Brockman wrote in the digital journal in 2017, referring to the concept of changing OpenAI to a for-profit entity.

“We’ve been thinking that maybe we should just flip to a for profit,” Brockman allegedly wrote. “Making the money for us sounds great and all.”

Brockman, at occasions visibly tense and uncomfortable on Monday, repeatedly insisted that his push to shift OpenAI to a for-profit entity was always meant to serve the mission and that any personal financial motivations had been secondary. 

“Solving for the mission has always been my primary motivation,” Brockman said. “It remains so today.”

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