Musk contradicted his own AGI tweets

Elon Musk’s OpenAI trial took a weirdly revealing turn this week. In federal court in Oakland on April 29, he said Tesla is not currently pursuing artificial general intelligence. But just weeks earlier, on March 4, he posted that Tesla would be one of the companies to make AGI and probably the first to do it in humanoid form. That mismatch landed in the middle of a case where his whole argument depends on persuading jurors that his version of OpenAI’s original mission is the one that counts. (techcrunch.com) ### What is this trial actually about? This is Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI, Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, and related entities over the company’s shift from its original nonprofit structure toward a much more commercial one. Musk’s basic claim is that OpenAI was founded to build AI for humanity rath(techcrunch.com) Musk backed for-profit ideas himself and is now waging a harassment campaign after leaving. The trial started this week in Oakland before Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers. (cnbc.com) ### Why did the AGI answer matter so much? Because it was not some side comment about future tech. It went straight to credibility. Musk has spent years talking publicly about AGI as both a civilizational breakthrough and a threat. He also ties Tesla, xAI, robotics, and real-world data together in his pub(cnbc.com)s obvious — either the tweet was hype, or the testimony was narrower than the public message suggested. Either way, the jury got a clean example of Musk saying different things in different rooms. (techcrunch.com) ### What was the tweet? On March 4, Musk wrote that “Tesla will be one of the companies to make AGI and probably the first to make it in humanoid/atom-shaping form.” That post linked Tesla’s Optimus robot effort to the AGI race very directly. It was not vague. It did not say xAI only. It named Tesla. That is why the courtroom answer hit so hard. (teslarati.com) ### How did OpenAI’s lawyer use it? The strategy seems pretty simple — show the jury that Musk’s current story is tidier than the historical record. Cross-examination also pushed on older emails and discussions showing Musk had explored for-profit structures for OpenAI as early as 2016 and 2017, including id(teslarati.com)paint him less as a betrayed founder and more as a founder who liked commercialization when he might control it. (techcrunch.com) ### Why is Tesla even part of this? Because Musk’s companies blur together in public. Tesla is a car company, but also an AI company in his telling. xAI is his dedicated AI lab. Optimus is his robotics bet. And he often talks as if those pieces feed each other — data, compute, autonomy, robots. Tha(techcrunch.com), though, those distinctions suddenly matter a lot. (teslarati.com) ### Does this decide the case? No — but it shapes how jurors hear everything else. Trials like this are partly about documents and structure, but they are also about whether the witness sounds consistent when pressed. If jurors decide Musk is stretching terms depending on the audience, that hurts more than o(teslarati.com)nding purpose. (techcrunch.com) ### So what’s the real takeaway? The most important thing here is not whether Tesla is secretly building AGI. It’s that Musk’s public mythology ran into the precision of courtroom language — and lost. In a trial about promises, governance, and motive, that kind of contradiction is exactly the sort of thing the other side wants the jury to remember. (techcrunch.com)