greg brockman, president of openai, testified in federal court this tuesday and revealed that elon musk had publicly disparaged the predecessor model to chatgpt, calling it “very stupid” and even saying, “any kid on the internet could do better.” this remark was made about ten years ago, when brockman, along with openai executives sam altman and ilya sutskever, was engaged in a series of tense discussions with musk about the company’s future. brockman recalled that musk lacked patience with the early technology, which prompted the co-founders to worry about whether the billionaire was suited to run the company.
on the second day of the trial, brockman provided a detailed account of a pivotal meeting in 2017, during which openai was considering transitioning from a nonprofit organization to a for-profit structure in order to raise capital. musk supported this shift but demanded full control and wanted to serve as ceo. brockman, by contrast, favored altman for the role, arguing that musk “doesn’t understand ai.” brockman stated bluntly: “he knows about rockets and electric cars, but at the time he didn’t understand ai—and i don’t think he does now either.” according to brockman, musk claimed he needed $80 billion to build self-sustaining cities on mars, so he insisted on having complete control and deciding for himself when to step down.
during one particularly tense meeting, when the discussion turned to an equity structure that musk disliked, he angrily declared, “i refuse,” then promptly stood up and walked out. brockman briefly feared that musk might physically assault him, but instead musk simply took a painting of a tesla car that sutskever had drawn, stormed out in a huff, and announced that he would withhold further funding until the issue was resolved. brockman also disclosed that openai plans to invest $50 billion this year in computing power to support the development of ai software. this case has significant implications for openai, the developer of chatgpt, and the trial is still ongoing.
