How Elon Musk Squeezed OpenAI: They ‘Are Gonna Want to Kill Me’

埃隆·马斯克如何施压 OpenAI：“他们会想杀了我”

Elon Musk returned to the witness stand on Wednesday to continue telling his side of the story in his legal battle against OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman. Under cross-examination from OpenAI’s lawyers, Musk was pressed on all the ways he tried to squeeze the organization over a 2017 power struggle that he ultimately lost. Around this time, Musk tried to hire away OpenAI researchers and stopped sending it funding he had previously promised, according to emails presented as evidence in the case.

周三，埃隆·马斯克（Elon Musk）重返证人席，继续讲述他在针对 OpenAI 及其首席执行官萨姆·奥特曼（Sam Altman）的法律诉讼中自己的立场。在 OpenAI 律师的盘问下，马斯克被追问他在 2017 年那场最终以失败告终的权力斗争中，曾采取哪些手段向该组织施压。根据庭审中作为证据提交的电子邮件显示，在那段时间前后，马斯克曾试图挖走 OpenAI 的研究人员，并停止了此前承诺的资金支持。

As the cross-examination began, tension rippled through the courtroom. Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers started the day by reprimanding someone in the gallery for taking a picture of Musk. OpenAI’s president and cofounder, Greg Brockman, sat behind his lawyers with a yellow legal pad in his lap, giving Musk a cold stare as he testified. Musk grew visibly frustrated on the witness stand, pausing frequently to tell OpenAI’s lawyer, William Savitt, that he saw his questions as misleading. Meanwhile, Savitt’s cross-examination was derailed by objections, technical issues, and Musk continuously claiming he doesn’t recall key details of OpenAI’s history.

盘问开始时，法庭内气氛紧张。伊冯·冈萨雷斯·罗杰斯（Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers）法官在开庭时训斥了旁听席上一名拍摄马斯克照片的人。OpenAI 总裁兼联合创始人格雷格·布罗克曼（Greg Brockman）坐在律师身后，膝盖上放着一个黄色法律记事本，在马斯克作证时冷冷地盯着他。马斯克在证人席上表现得明显烦躁，频繁停顿并告诉 OpenAI 的律师威廉·萨维特（William Savitt），他认为对方的问题具有误导性。与此同时，萨维特的盘问过程因反对意见、技术问题以及马斯克不断声称自己不记得 OpenAI 历史的关键细节而受阻。

Savitt showed the courtroom emails from September 2017 between Musk, Altman, Brockman, and researcher Ilya Sutskever discussing the formation of what would become OpenAI’s for-profit arm. In the thread, Musk demanded the right to choose four members of its board of directors, giving him more voting power than his cofounders, who would be left with three in total. “I would unequivocally have initial control of the company, but this will change quickly,” said Musk in one message. Sutskever wrote back rejecting the idea because he said he feared it would give Musk too much power.

萨维特向法庭展示了 2017 年 9 月马斯克、奥特曼、布罗克曼和研究员伊利亚·苏茨克维（Ilya Sutskever）之间讨论成立 OpenAI 营利性部门的电子邮件。在邮件往来中，马斯克要求拥有选择四名董事会成员的权利，这使他比总共只有三个名额的联合创始人们拥有更大的投票权。马斯克在一条信息中写道：“我将明确拥有公司的初始控制权，但这很快就会改变。”苏茨克维回信拒绝了这一提议，理由是他担心这会赋予马斯克过大的权力。

Months before these negotiations started, Musk had halted payments to OpenAI, which was particularly difficult for the organization because he was then its main source of funding. Since 2016, Musk had been sending $5 million payments to OpenAI quarterly as part of a broader $1 billion pledge he made at the organization’s launch. But in the spring of 2017, he stopped sending the money. In another email from August 2017, the head of Musk’s family office, Jared Birchall, asked Musk if he should continue withholding it. Musk responded simply, “Yes.”

在这些谈判开始前的几个月里，马斯克已经停止了对 OpenAI 的付款，这对该组织来说尤为困难，因为当时他是其主要的资金来源。自 2016 年以来，作为该组织成立时承诺的 10 亿美元捐款的一部分，马斯克一直按季度向 OpenAI 支付 500 万美元。但在 2017 年春季，他停止了汇款。在 2017 年 8 月的另一封电子邮件中，马斯克家族办公室负责人贾里德·伯查尔（Jared Birchall）询问马斯克是否应继续扣留资金。马斯克简单地回答：“是的。”

In October 2017, shortly after Musk lost the power struggle, emails show that he held discussions with executives at Tesla and Neuralink, his brain-computer interface company, about hiring OpenAI employees. At the time, Musk was still a board member of OpenAI.

2017 年 10 月，在马斯克输掉权力斗争后不久，电子邮件显示他与特斯拉以及他旗下的脑机接口公司 Neuralink 的高管进行了讨论，商议聘用 OpenAI 的员工。当时，马斯克仍是 OpenAI 的董事会成员。

Musk sent an email to one Tesla vice president about hiring an early OpenAI researcher, Andrej Karpathy. “Just talked to Andrej and he accepted as joining as director of Tesla Vision,” Musk wrote. “Andrej is arguably the #2 guy in the world in computer vision…The openai guys are gonna want to kill me, but it had to be done.”

马斯克给一位特斯拉副总裁发了一封关于聘用 OpenAI 早期研究员安德烈·卡帕西（Andrej Karpathy）的邮件。马斯克写道：“刚和安德烈谈过，他接受了加入特斯拉担任视觉总监的邀请。安德烈可以说是世界上计算机视觉领域的二号人物……OpenAI 的那些人会想杀了我，但这件事必须得做。”

On the stand, Musk argued that Karpathy was already interested in leaving OpenAI when he tried to recruit him to Tesla. “Andrej had made his decision. If he’s going to leave OpenAI, he might as well work at Tesla,” Musk said.

在证人席上，马斯克辩称，当他试图招募卡帕西到特斯拉时，卡帕西已经有了离开 OpenAI 的想法。“安德烈已经做出了决定。如果他要离开 OpenAI，那他不如来特斯拉工作，”马斯克说。

That same month, Musk also wrote to Ben Rapoport, a cofounder of Neuralink. “Hire independently or directly from OpenAI,” said Musk. “I have no problem if you pitch people at OpenAI to work at Neuralink.”

同月，马斯克还写信给 Neuralink 的联合创始人本·拉波波特（Ben Rapoport）。马斯克说：“独立招聘或直接从 OpenAI 挖人。如果你去游说 OpenAI 的人来 Neuralink 工作，我没有任何问题。”

When pressed about this by Savitt, Musk argued that it would have been illegal for him not to allow Tesla and Neuralink to hire from OpenAI. “It’s illegal to restrict employment. It would be illegal to say you can’t employ people from OpenAI. You can’t have some cabal that stops people from working at the company they want to work at,” Musk said.

当萨维特就此事进行追问时，马斯克辩称，如果不允许特斯拉和 Neuralink 从 OpenAI 招聘员工，那才是违法的。“限制就业是违法的。说不能聘用 OpenAI 的人是违法的。你不能搞什么阴谋集团来阻止人们在他们想去的公司工作，”马斯克说。

In February 2018, Musk sent the following text message to then-OpenAI board member, Shivon Zillis, who is the mother of four of Musk’s children and an executive at Neuralink. ”We are going to actively try to move three or four people from OpenAI to Tesla. More than that will join over time, but we won’t actively recruit them.” In the same thread, Zillis asked whether she should maintain good relations with OpenAI while she was still on the board, or slowly distance herself. He told her to stay “close and friendly.”

2018 年 2 月，马斯克向时任 OpenAI 董事会成员的希冯·齐利斯（Shivon Zillis）发送了以下短信。齐利斯是马斯克四个孩子的母亲，也是 Neuralink 的高管。“我们将积极尝试从 OpenAI 挖走三四个人。随着时间的推移，会有更多人加入，但我们不会主动招募他们。”在同一对话中，齐利斯询问在担任董事会成员期间，她是应该与 OpenAI 保持良好关系，还是慢慢疏远。马斯克告诉她要保持“亲近和友好”。

Tomorrow, we will look more closely at Zillis and how she shaped OpenAI’s trajectory. Musk’s cross-examination will also continue. Then, Birchall and OpenAI’s Brockman are expected to be called as witnesses.

明天，我们将更深入地探讨齐利斯以及她如何塑造了 OpenAI 的发展轨迹。马斯克的盘问也将继续。届时，预计伯查尔和 OpenAI 的布罗克曼将被传唤为证人。

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