Elon Musk tells the jury that all he wants to do is save humanity

On the stand, Elon Musk is positioning himself as a savior.

In the high-profile trial between him and his fellow OpenAI co-founder, now CEO, Sam Altman, Musk opened by going through his background. He went as far back as being raised in South Africa and arriving in Canada for college with “2,500 in Canadian travelers’ checks and a bag of clothes and books,” then spent an unusually long time talking about his past, from Zip2 to PayPal to the current, more familiar slate of companies he now runs.

Why is Musk giving the jury so much of his origin story? Though he may be, depending on the day, the world’s wealthiest individual, Musk suggested that all of his business ventures were concerned with the well-being of humanity. Rocket company SpaceX was founded as “Life insurance for life as we know it”; electric-car manufacturer Tesla was started because he thought continued reliance on fossil fuels “could be pretty bad for the environment and humanity as a whole.” (On the stand, he dubiously claimed that he founded Tesla.)

He said that he has been worried about AI in his college years, that it could be a “double-edged sword,” one that could “solve all the diseases and make everyone prosperous, or it could kill us all.” He suggested that AI had two outcomes: the utopian Star Trek one, or the dystopian Terminator one. He wants the future to be more like Gene Roddenberry’s and not like James Cameron’s. This was his intention in co-founding OpenAI.

Musk cast himself as a hero — the good guy who cares about humanity, suggesting that Altman is the opposite.

It could prove to be an effective strategy, especially when contrasted with Altman, whose background co-founding the long-forgotten social media app Loopt and his days as a partner at Y Combinator, might sound far less magnanimous.

Musk went as far as claiming that Altman was a thief. “It’s very simple: it’s not okay to steal a charity. That’s my view and moreover if the defendants are found not guilty, this case will become caselaw. It will become precedent and give precedent to looting every charity in America,” Musk said. “If the verdict comes out that makes it okay to loot a charity, the entire foundation of charitable giving in America will be destroyed.”

On the topic of charitable giving, Musk did not tell the jury that most of his foundation’s philanthropic donations have gone to interests closely or directly tied to his own.