{"id":1919444,"date":"2026-05-05T19:40:22","date_gmt":"2026-05-05T16:40:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1919444"},"modified":"2026-05-05T19:40:22","modified_gmt":"2026-05-05T16:40:22","slug":"i-thought-he-was-going-to-hit-me-openai-co-founder-says-of-musk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1919444","title":{"rendered":"‘I thought he was going to hit me’ OpenAI co-founder says of Musk"},"content":{"rendered":"

[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/news\/1024\/branded_news\/13b7\/live\/32cb10e0-48b7-11f1-90e6-350a323e11ac.jpg”]<\/p>\n

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\"ReutersReuters<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
GReg Brockman, president of OpenAI, at a federal courthouse in Oakland, California.<\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
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OpenAI president Greg Brockman has described a heated 2017 meeting with Elon Musk over the billionaire’s early attempt to control the artificial intelligence (AI) company.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Brockman, a co-founder of OpenAI and a defendant in Musk’s lawsuit attempting to undo its transition to a for-profit business, told a jury in Oakland federal court that when he rejected a proposal for Musk to have more say in the company, Musk’s mood abruptly changed.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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“I actually thought he was going to hit me,” Brockman said, referring to Musk.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The meeting ended shortly thereafter, Brockman said, with Musk announcing that he would start withholding funding from OpenAI, which he had been backing since its start in 2015.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Brockman’s testimony comes during the second week of a month-long trial between Musk and OpenAI’s key founder and chief executive Sam Altman.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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It is part of a bitter feud that has grown over the years since Musk left OpenAI, where he was among the initial co-founders, and has watched as the AI company became one of the most valuable tech enterprises in the world after its launch of ChatGPT.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Before Musk decided to exit OpenAI, Brockman described his attempts to gain more control over the company, an effort that included “buttering up” Brockman and another co-founder, Ilya Sutskever.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Lawyers for OpenAI showed text messages from August 2017 between Sutskever and Brockman that said: “Will a model 3 make you be willing to accept massively unfavourable terms?”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The crux of Brockman’s testimony so far has been that Musk was aware of plans to shift OpenAI to be more of a traditional for-profit business. When the company started, it was a non-profit, then it added a for-profit arm in order to raise billions of dollars in funding for investors, before deciding last year to make the for-profit part of the company the focus. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Brockman’s appearance in court is expected to be followed by former OpenAI board member Shivon Zilis, who is the mother of four of Musk’s children.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Brockman testified that Zilis informed him she had had twins, but that he only found out later from public reports that Musk was the father.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Brockman said when he spoke with Zilis after learning Musk had fathered her twins, “she said that it was via IVF and that it was entirely platonic with Elon.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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When asked about Zilis’ involvement with OpenAI for years after Musk had left the company, Brockman said: “We trusted her to keep the Elon conflict under control.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Zilis left the board in March 2023 as Musk was launching xAI, an AI company developing a chatbot that is a direct competitor to OpenAI’s ChatGPT.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n

[analyse_source url=”https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/articles\/cn7pg8ymgezo”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/news\/1024\/branded_news\/13b7\/live\/32cb10e0-48b7-11f1-90e6-350a323e11ac.jpg”] Reuters GReg Brockman, president of OpenAI, at a federal courthouse in Oakland, California. OpenAI president Greg Brockman has described a heated 2017 meeting with Elon Musk over the billionaire’s early attempt to control the artificial intelligence (AI) company. Brockman, a co-founder of OpenAI and a defendant in Musk’s lawsuit attempting to undo […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[35,226],"class_list":["post-1919444","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-bbc-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1919444","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1919444"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1919444\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1919444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1919444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1919444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}