일론 머스크와 오픈AI 간의 소송 2주차에서 오픈AI는 머스크가 과거 비영리 전환을 반대하고 오히려 영리 부문 설립과 절대적인 지배권을 요구했다고 반박했습니다. 또한 머스크의 전 연인이자 전 이사회 멤버인 시본 질리스는 머스크가 샘 알트만을 테슬라 AI 연구소로 스카우트하려 했다고 증언했습니다. 이번 재판의 결과는 오픈AI의 기업공개(IPO)와 머스크의 xAI가 속한 스페이스X의 상장 계획에도 지대한 영향을 미칠 전망입니다.
번역된 본문
세계적인 이목을 끌고 있는 일론 머스크와 오픈AI 간의 소송 2주차가 진행되는 가운데, 머스크가 이 소송을 제기하게 된 진짜 동기가 조명받고 있다. 지난주 머스크는 증인석에 서서 오픈AI의 샘 알트만 CEO와 그렉 브록맨总裁(President)가 자신을 속여 회사에 3,800만 달러를 기부하게 만들었다고 주장했다. 그는 두 사람이 인류의 이익을 위해 AI를 개발하는 비영리 단체로 유지하기로 약속했음에도 불구하고, 나중에는 마이크로소프트로부터 수십억 달러의 투자를 받고 영리 자회사를 운영하기 위해 회사를 구조조정했다고 주장했다. 그러나 이번 주 브록맨은 자신의 입장을 반박하며, 머스크가 오히려 오픈AI에 영리 부서 설립을 강요했으며 이에 대한 '절대적인 통제권'을 확보하기 위해 치열하게 싸웠다고 말했다. 오픈AI는 머스크가 자신의 뜻대로 되지 않자 소송을 제기했으며, 현재 자신의 AI 회사인 xAI의 경쟁사를 무너뜨리려 하고 있다고 맞섰다.
머스크의 아이 넷의 어머니이자 오픈AI의 전 이사회 멤버인 시본 질리스 역시 증언에 나서, 머스크가 오픈CEO 샘 알트만을 자신의 전기차 회사인 테슬라의 새로운 AI 연구소 총괄로 영입하려 했다고 밝혔다. 머스크는 2015년 알트만, 브록맨 등과 함께 오픈AI를 공동 설립했으나 2018년 퇴사했다. 이제 그는 법원에 알트만과 브록맨을 직위에서 해임할 것을 요구하는 동시에, 오픈AI가 작년에 단행한 영리 자회사의 공익기업(Public Benefit Corporation) 전환 조치를 원상복구시켜 달라고 청구했다. 또한 오픈AI와 투자사인 마이크로소프트를 상대로 최대 1,340억 달러(약 18조 원)의 손해배상을 요구하고 있다. 이번 재판의 결과는 약 1조 달러(약 1,350조 원)의 기업가치로 IPO를 향해 질주 중인 오픈AI의 행보를 뒤집을 수도 있다. 한편, 머스크가 2023년 설립한 xAI는 현재 그의 우주선 기업 스페이스X의 산하 부서가 되었으며, 이들 합병 법인 역시 오는 6월을 목표로 1조 7,500억 달러(약 2,350조 원)의 기업가치로 상장할 것으로 예상된다.
월요일, 브록맨은 파란색 정장과 넥타이를 차려입고 아내 애나 브록만과 손을 잡고 법정에 들어섰다. 증인석에 선 그는 오픈AI의 초기 시절을 회상할 때 차분하고 심지어 쾌활한 모습이었다. 하지만 머스크의 변호사인 스티븐 몰로의 거친 심문이 이어지자 점점 흥분하기 시작했다. 알트만은 침묵하며 이를 지켜봤고, 뒤에 앉은 아내 애나는 불안한 듯 몸을 계속 움직였다. 법원 밖에서는 AI 개발 경쟁에 반대하는 시위대가 기자회견을 벌이는 변호사들의 목소리를 덮으며 찬송가를 불렀다. 브록만에 따르면 재판이 시작되기 이틀 전, 머스크는 그에게 메시지를 보내 합의에 관심이 있는지 물었다. 브록만이 양측이 모두 청구를 취하하자고 제안하자 머스크는 다음과 같이 답장했다. "이번 주가 끝나기 전에, 당신과 샘은 미국에서 가장 혐오받는 남자들이 될 것이다. 당신이 고집한다면, 그렇게 될 것이다."
테슬라 그림을 들고 성난 채 퇴장한 머스크
지난주 머스크는 안전한 AI 개발이라는 오픈AI의 비영리 미션을 구하기 위해 소송을 제기했다고 증언했지만, 마이크로소프트의 적절한 투자를 받아 이익 상한(이익 제한) 기업이 되는 것은 열려 있다고 밝혔다. 그러나 이번 주 브록만은 배심원들에게 머스크는 오픈AI를 비영리로 유지하는 데 진심이 아니었다고 말했다. 2017년 여름, 오픈AI가 개발한 AI 모델이 '도타 2(Dota 2)'라는 비디오 게임에서 세계 최고의 플레이어들을 물리친 후, 머스크는 샌프란시스코 인근의 자신의 '유령의 저택'에서 모임을 가졌다. 브록만은 집이 색종이와 컵으로 어지럽혀져 있었고, 당시 머스크의 여자친구였던 배우 엠버 허드가 위스키를 따라주었다고 회상했다. 브록만은 배심원들에게 몇 주 전만 해도 오픈AI가 대중적인 큰 성과를 거둔다면 '영리 기업을 만들 때'라고 말했던 머스크가 이메일에서 "오픈AI의 다음 단계를 밟을 시간이다. 이것이 계기가 될 것이다"라고 적었다고 전했다.
브록만의 증언에 따르면, 이후 약 6주 동안 머스크와 다른 공동 창립자들은 대부분의 인지적 작업에서 인간과 경쟁할 수 있는 강력한 AI인 범용 인공지능(AGI)을 구축하기에 충분한 자본을 모금하기 위해 영리 법인을 설립하는 것에 대해 격렬한 논의를 나눴다. 브록만은 머스크가 해당 법인의 과반수 지분과 이사회 구성원 과반수를 선출할 권리를 원했다고 말했다. 또한 그는 머스크가 그 법인의 CEO가 되고 싶어 했다고 증언했다. 브록만은 2017년 8월, 자신과 다른 공동 창립자들이 모였다고 증언했다.
In the second week of the landmark trial between Elon Musk and OpenAI, Musk’s motivations for bringing the suit were under scrutiny. Last week, Musk took the stand, alleging that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and president Greg Brockman had deceived him into donating $38 million to the company. He claimed that they’d promised to maintain it as a nonprofit dedicated to developing AI for the benefit of humanity, only to later accept billions of dollars of investment from Microsoft and restructure the company to operate a for-profit subsidiary. This week, Brockman fired back with his side of the story, arguing that Musk had actually pushed for OpenAI to create a for-profit arm and fought a bitter battle to have “absolute control” over it. OpenAI has argued that Musk is suing because he didn’t get his way and is now trying to undermine a competitor to his own AI company, xAI. Shivon Zilis, a former OpenAI board member and the mother of four of Musk’s children, also testified, revealing that Musk tried to recruit OpenAI CEO Sam Altman to lead a new AI lab at his electric-car company, Tesla. Musk cofounded OpenAI in 2015 with Altman, Brockman, and others but left in 2018. Now, he’s asking the court to remove Altman and Brockman from their roles and to unwind the restructuring OpenAI undertook last year, which converted its for-profit subsidiary into a public benefit corporation. He is also seeking as much as $134 billion in damages from OpenAI and Microsoft, OpenAI’s investor. The outcome of the trial could upend OpenAI’s race toward an IPO at a valuation approaching $1 trillion. Meanwhile, xAI, which Musk founded in 2023, is now a division of his rocket company, SpaceX; the combined companies are also expected to go public as early as June, at a target valuation of $1.75 trillion . On Monday, Brockman walked into the courtroom in a blue suit and tie, holding hands with his wife, Anna Brockman. On the stand, he was serene, even chipper, as he recalled OpenAI’s early days. But he grew agitated under impassioned questioning from Elon Musk’s lawyer, Steven Molo. Altman listened in silence, while Anna Brockman sat behind him, fidgeting. Outside the courthouse, protesters rallying against the AI race sang hymns over the voices of lawyers giving press conferences. Two days before trial began, according to Brockman, Musk messaged him to ask if he would be interested in settling. When Brockman suggested that both sides drop their claims, Musk texted back: “By the end of this week, you and Sam will be the most hated men in America. If you insist, so it will be.” Musk stormed out with a Tesla painting Last week, Musk testified that he’s suing to save OpenAI’s nonprofit mission to develop AI safely, but he said he was open to seeing OpenAI become a capped-profit company with moderate investments from Microsoft . This week, Brockman told the jury that Musk was never truly committed to keeping OpenAI a nonprofit. In the summer of 2017, when an AI model that OpenAI built beat the world’s best players in a video game called Dota 2 , Musk hosted a gathering at his “Haunted Mansion” near San Francisco. The house was splattered with confetti and cups, Brockman recalled, and the actress Amber Heard, who was Musk’s girlfriend at the time, served whiskey. “Time to make the next step for OpenAI. This is the triggering event,” Musk wrote in an email—having said weeks earlier that if OpenAI made a major public achievement, it would be “time to create a for-profit,” Brockman told the jury. Over the next six weeks, Brockman said, Musk and the other cofounders had intense discussions about creating a for-profit entity to raise enough capital to build artificial general intelligence—powerful AI that can compete with humans on most cognitive tasks. Musk wanted to have majority equity in the entity and the right to choose a majority of the board members. He also wanted to be its CEO, said Brockman. Brockman testified that in August 2017, he and other cofounders gathered to hash out the terms of the for-profit structure. Ilya Sutskever, OpenAI’s chief scientist at the time, arrived bearing a painting of a Tesla as a “token of goodwill” in return for the actual Teslas Musk had given them days earlier. “It felt a little bit like [Musk] was buttering us up, right,that he wanted us to feel indebted to him,” Brockman told the jury. When Brockman and Sutskever proposed that they all have equal shares of equity, said Brockman, Musk fell silent and finally said, “I decline.” Musk then stood up and “stormed around the table,” he said. “I actually thought he was going to hit me.” Musk grabbed the painting and walked out. Brockman said that afterwards he struggled to decide whether to continue building OpenAI with Musk or break away. “There was a fork in the road,” he said. “Do we accept Elon’s terms? Or do we reject the terms, he quits to create his own, and then we create our own?” “The one thing we could not accept was to hand him unilateral, absolute control, potentially, over the AGI,” Brockman told the jury. What was Brockman thinking? In his theatrical baritone, Molo argued that Brockman was motivated by greed rather than a commitment to OpenAI’s nonprofit mission to develop AI that benefits humanity. He noted that while Brockman never invested money in the company, he now owns a stake worth close to $30 billion. “Solving for the mission has always been my primary motivation,” Brockman said, pushing back on Molo’s characterization of him. “It remains so today.” Molo pulled up Brockman’s electronic journal on a screen in the courtroom, trying to show the jury what Brockman was really thinking behind the scenes. In 2017, while negotiating with Musk about the future of OpenAI, Brockman wrote about wanting to become a billionaire: “Financially what will take me to $1B?” “Why didn’t you take the $29 billion and donate it to the nonprofit that you had a fiduciary duty to, for the good of humanity?” Molo asked Brockman, raising his voice to dramatize moral indignation. Molo then pulled up a journal entry Brockman had written in November 2017, while he was torn over whether to turn OpenAI into a for-profit without Musk: “it’d be wrong to steal the nonprofit from him. to convert to a b-corp without him. that’d be pretty morally bankrupt.” Brockman and Musk had previously considered creating a b-corp, which is a for-profit company that pursues a social mission. Brockman explained, “I meant it would actually serve the mission, but it’d be hard to look at yourself in the mirror.” Molo also tried to undermine Brockman’s credibility by revealing that he holds a stake in multiple companies with business ties to OpenAI, including the AI company Cerebras, the cloud provider CoreWeave, and the nuclear fusion startup Helion Energy. Altman has tried to steer OpenAI into deals with companies that he invests in, including Helion and the rocket maker Stoke Space, drawing scrutiny over potential conflicts of interest. Former OpenAI chief technology officer Mira Murati and former OpenAI board member Helen Toner both appeared in video depositions. They addressed the brief firing of Altman in 2023, saying that they could not trust him because of his alleged history of lying . Murati’s text messages with Altman from that time, which were introduced as evidence, revealed his desperate attempts to understand what was happening and regain control. Musk plotted a rival AI lab at Tesla After Brockman’s two days of testimony, Shivon Zilis, who left OpenAI’s board in 2023, took the stand in a black jacket and black jeans, appearing composed but with a flicker of nerves. OpenAI’s lawyer Sarah Eddy asked her in a deceptively soothing voice whether she acted as a conduit for Musk as he tried to poach OpenAI’s cofounders to work at a new AI lab within Tesla. Eddy argued that Musk is suing OpenAI only to undermine a competitor in the AI race. Zilis said she met Musk while working at OpenAI as an informal advisor in 2016, and that they