Musk v. Altman week 1: Elon Musk says he was duped, warns AI could kill us all, and admits that xAI distills OpenAI’s models

['In the first week of the highly anticipated trial between Elon Musk and OpenAI, Musk testified in a crisp black suit and tie, alleging that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and president Greg Brockman had deceived him into bankrolling the company. Along the way, he expressed concerns that AI could have catastrophic consequences and revealed that his own AI company, xAI, uses OpenAI\'s models to train its chatbot Grok. Musk\'s testimony in the federal courthouse in Oakland, California, was marked by moments of remorse and frustration.

He claimed that when he co-founded OpenAI in 2015 with Altman and Brockman, he was donating to a nonprofit developing AI for the benefit of humanity, not to enrich the executives. "I was a fool who provided them free funding to create a startup," Musk told the jury, adding that he gave them $38 million of essentially free funding, which they then used to create what would become an $800 billion company. The trial revolves around Musk\'s lawsuit against OpenAI, in which he is seeking to remove Altman and Brockman from their roles and unwind the restructuring that allowed OpenAI to operate a for-profit subsidiary.

Musk\'s lawyer, Steven Molo, argued that OpenAI could not be trusted to build AI safely, while OpenAI\'s lawyer, William Savitt, countered that Musk was "never committed to OpenAI being a nonprofit" and instead was suing to undermine his competitor. Musk described "three phases" in his views of OpenAI: initially, he was "enthusiastically supportive" of the company; then, he "started to lose confidence that they were telling me the truth"; and finally, he became convinced that they were "looting the nonprofit." He also admitted that xAI "partly" distills OpenAI\'s models, a technique that involves training a smaller AI model to mimic the behavior of larger, more capable models. The trial is expected to continue next week with testimony from Stuart Russell, a computer scientist at UC Berkeley, and Brockman, who has been taking notes during Musk\'s testimony.

The outcome of the trial could have significant implications for OpenAI\'s future, including its plans for an IPO at a valuation approaching $1 trillion.']