Musk’s AI empire is unraveling — the trial is just the beginning

On March 4, 2026, Elon Musk posted on X that “Tesla will be one of the companies to make AGI and probably the first to make it in humanoid/atom-shaping form.” Less than eight weeks later, under oath in an Oakland federal courtroom, he was asked whether Tesla has any concrete plans to pursue AGI. His answer: “No.”

That single contradiction — between what Musk tells his millions of followers and what he admits when he’s facing perjury charges — captures the story of his decade-long obsession with artificial intelligence better than any timeline ever could. But here’s a timeline anyway, because the trial of Musk v. Altman is now exposing, under oath, what many of us have long suspected: Musk’s AI ambitions were never about safety, open access, or benefiting humanity. They were about control.

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