‘I Actually Thought He Was Going to Hit Me,’ OpenAI’s Greg Brockman Says of Elon Musk
Key takeaways
- The amateur artist presented Musk with a painting of a Tesla.
- But that night, Musk’s so-called chief of staff Shivon Zilis called Brockman and Sutskever “to say it’s not over,” Brockman testified. “There were discussions of futures that included us.”
- The story of the heated negotiations emerged as Brockman wrapped up his testimony on Tuesday.
Why this matters: a development in AI with implications for how people work, create, and decide.
Photo-Illustration: WIRED Staff; David Paul Morris/Getty Images Comment Loader Save Story Save this story Comment Loader Save Story Save this story In August 2017, Greg Brockman and Ilya Sutskever gathered at Elon Musk’s self-described “haunted mansion,” a 47-acre, $23 million estate in Hillsborough, south of San Francisco, to discuss the future of Open AI. Actor Amber Heard, Musk’s then-girlfriend, had served the group whiskey and then dashed off with a friend, Brockman, Open AI’s cofounder and president, testified in federal court during the trial for Musk v. Altman on Tuesday.
Ahead of the meeting, Musk gifted Brockman and Sutskever, OpenAI’s cofounder and former chief scientist, new Tesla Model 3 cars. “It felt like he was buttering us up,” Brockman said on the stand. “He wanted us to feel indebted to him in some way.” Sutskever tried to reciprocate for the occasion. The amateur artist presented Musk with a painting of a Tesla. Musk and the other cofounders wanted to establish a for-profit arm to entice investors to give them billions of dollars to pay for compute. But Musk also wanted control of the company, and Sutskever and Brockman objected to granting the Tesla CEO what they believed would be a “dictatorship” over the future of AI development. They proposed having shared control.
After several minutes of deliberation, Musk rejected their offer. “He stood up and stormed around the table,” Brockman recalled. “I actually thought he was going to hit me, physically attack me.” Musk grabbed the painting, said he would cut off his funding of the nonprofit until Brockman and Sutskever quit, and left the room, according to Brockman’s testimony. But that night, Musk’s so-called chief of staff Shivon Zilis called Brockman and Sutskever “to say it’s not over,” Brockman testified. “There were discussions of futures that included us.”