At his OpenAI trial, Musk relitigates an old friendship

It’s a story Musk has told before — in interviews and to author Walter Isaacson for his bestselling biography of Musk — but Tuesday was the first time he said it under oath.

Among the most interesting parts of Elon Musk’s testimony Tuesday in his lawsuit against OpenAI wasn’t the charity he claims was stolen from him (we all knew that was coming). It was about an old friend.

Musk testified that one of his core motivations for co-founding OpenAI was a falling-out with Google’s Larry Page over AI safety — specifically, a conversation in which Musk raised the prospect of AI wiping out humanity and Page shrugged it off as “fine,” so long as AI itself survived. Page called Musk a “speciest” for being “pro human.” Musk called the attitude “insane.”