Greg Brockman, president of OpenAI, was back on the witness stand today and sought to reframe diary entries that Elon Musk’s lawyers had used the previous day to portray him as a calculating opportunist. In his defence, Brockman said the journal wasn’t neatly written—it was more like raw, unfiltered thoughts written as they came to mind. Because of that, the notes could be messy and even contradict each other at times.
The journal entry about “Ilya feeling like we morally should not be kicking Elon out, and should be trying to make the non-profit work” as well as “it’d be wrong to steal the non-profit from him,” Brockman clarified, was directly connected to their choice not to remove Musk from the board. In essence, they believed keeping him was the right decision for the organisation’s mission, even though on a personal level the situation felt uncomfortable and conflicted.
“Look, he knows rockets. He knows electric cars. He did not and does not know AI. And Ilya and I did not believe he would spend the time to get good at it,” Brockman said.
Brockman also tried to explain other entries from the journal, such as “making the money for us sounds great and all,” saying it was about unsuccessful fundraising, but the court to decide what is true.
“It’s very painful” to see the journal in this case, Brockman said. These were “very deeply personal writings that were never meant for the world to see, but there’s nothing there I’m ashamed of,” he added.
“I truly thought he was going to physically attack me,” Brockman said
During his testimony, Brockman also described a tense and confrontational moment between him and Musk. He said Musk was so angry during a meeting that he genuinely feared Musk might physically attack him.