Elon Musk vs. Sam Altman / OpenAI Lawsuit
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Overview
Elon Musk's OpenAI Lawsuit refers to entrepreneur Elon Musk suing OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman over the issue of the company's status as a nonprofit. According to Musk, OpenAI has strayed from its original mission of developing safe and responsible AI in order to pursue profits. In the lawsuit, Musk alleges that OpenAI has become a "de facto subsidiary of Microsoft," and this is a breach of contract. Musk notably participated in the founding of OpenAI as a nonprofit before leaving in 2018. After the lawsuit was filed in early 2024, it garnered prominent discourse online.
Background
OpenAI was incorporated in 2015 as a non-profit company. According to Elon Musk's lawsuit and his previous public statements, OpenAI was formed in partnership between Musk, Sam Altman and others who were concerned about the development of an artificial general intelligence (AGI) and the problems it might pose for humanity.[1] The spur for founding OpenAI was Google's work on AI, which Musk saw as motivated by profit and potentially dangerous. The founders planned to create an open-source, not-for-profit AI, and Musk donated significant amounts of money.[2]
In 2018, according to reporting from Semafor, Musk left OpenAI following a rift with Altman and others. Musk believed the company was falling behind Google and he wanted to take it over entirely and run it himself. Others refused, and Musk left.[3]
In 2020, OpenAI entered into a partnership with Microsoft. After the release of ChatGPT in 2022, OpenAI became increasingly prominent and valuable. Sam Altman was briefly fired as CEO of OpenAI in 2023.
While the reason given for Altman's firing was a lack of communication with the board, many speculated that the real reason might have to do either with the rapid development of the technology, the company's non-profit status or the company's ties to Microsoft. Altman was rehired five days later after numerous employees protested.
Developments
Musk Files Lawsuit
Elon Musk filed the lawsuit against Sam Altman and OpenAI on February 29th, 2024, in California state court. The lawsuit alleges breach of contract and unfair business practices, with the intention of eventually holding a trial by jury. The lawsuit also has a series of exhibits attached, including a 2015 email from Altman to Musk laying out goals for the company as a nonprofit.
Additionally, Musk alleges that GPT-4 or other projects in development by OpenAI might already be a type of AGI, and therefore should be open-sourced according to the company's charter documents. He asks for a judicial determination on whether these models are AGI or not.[1]
OpenAI Response
On March 5th, 2024, OpenAI put out a statement in the form of a blog post describing its relationship with Elon Musk.[6] In the blog post, which was followed by a series of excerpted emails between company leaders, OpenAI stated that "we intend to move to dismiss all of Elonβs claims" and argue the lawsuit is without merit.
According to OpenAI, Musk and the other founders agreed to take the company down the for-profit route in 2017, but Musk demanded full control of the for-profit company. The others refused "because we felt it was against the mission for any individual to have absolute control over OpenAI." Musk then left OpenAI. The founders had settled on the for-profit idea originally because they wanted to raise more money for the company, a goal which Musk appears to express support for in emails released by OpenAI (seen below).
According to OpenAI, Musk also agreed that as the company produced increasingly advanced AIs, it made sense to be less open about progress and technology. Musk said "Yup" to this claim in an email attached to the blog post (seen below).
Musk Meme Responses
In response to a March 5th X post by OpenAI announcing the blogpost (which was later pinned to their profile) Musk replied "change your name." Both the reply and the original post received over 11,000 likes in less than 24 hours (seen below).[10]
![X OpenAl @OpenAI - 19h We are dedicated to the OpenAl mission and have pursued it every step of the way. We're sharing some facts about our relationship with Elon, and we intend to move to dismiss all of his claims. OpenAl and Elon Musk From openai.com 1.3K Elon Musk @elonmusk 936 X OpenAl 2.9K Change your name 1:27 AM Mar 6, 2024 Β· 1.2M Views 1.1K 11K 11K β2.7M ε£δΌ Subscribe 328 β] δΌ](https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/002/770/118/97e.png "Change Your Name")
Musk went on to share a series of memes to his platform, X, poking fun at OpenAI and referring to it as "ClosedAI." For example, the meme seen below received 158,000 likes in five hours on March 5th and referenced a post made by Altman showing an OpenAI guest badge during the brief period when he was fired as CEO.
Online Reactions
Online, posters reacted to the 2024 lawsuit in a variety of ways. Some expressed doubt about Elon Musk's motives, like X user @Kei0x (seen below) whose March 1st, 2024, post about the topic received over 3,900 likes on X in six hours.[4]
The development also saw considerable conversation on Reddit, with several posts in the /r/openai subreddit on March 1st, including one (seen below) by Redditor /u/assymmetry1 that joked that ChatGPT "passed the bar exam for situations just like this," receiving over 300 upvotes and 230 comments in seven hours.[5] Many commenters also wondered about information that the lawsuit might reveal to the public about OpenAI's technological progress.
Memes About OpenAI's Corporate Structure
The lawsuit's first page revealed OpenAI's arcane corporate structure, with several entities named "OpenAI" tied together legally in various ways. Online, posters poked fun at this complexity, including @yacineMTB (seen below left) who received over 5,000 likes on in five days on March 1st. @netcapgirl received over 1,200 likes on the same day for making the post (seen below right) about the same topic.[9]
Related Events
Firing of Sam Altman
Firing of Sam Altman from OpenAI, also known as Sam Altman Ousted From OpenAI, refers to the dismissal of former OpenAI CEO Sam Altman on November 17th, 2023, that led to a spurt of memes and speculation about the internal workings of the company behind ChatGPT in the latter half of 2023. Altman was fired from his position while Greg Brockman was released as the chairman of the board of directors. AI and tech enthusiasts on X and Reddit, among other sites, shared memes and discourse about Altman's controversial firing, which was reportedly due to him withholding information from the board.
External References
[1] Courthouse News β Musk vs. Altman
[2] New York Times β Elon Musk Sues OpenAI and Sam Altman for Violating the Companyβs Principles
[3] Semafor β The secret history of Elon Musk, Sam Altman, and OpenAI
[6] OpenAI β OpenAI and Elon Musk
[8] X β @yacineMTB
[9] X β @netcapgirl
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![X OpenAl @OpenAI - 19h We are dedicated to the OpenAl mission and have pursued it every step of the way. We're sharing some facts about our relationship with Elon, and we intend to move to dismiss all of his claims. OpenAl and Elon Musk From openai.com 1.3K Elon Musk @elonmusk 936 X OpenAl 2.9K Change your name 1:27 AM Mar 6, 2024 Β· 1.2M Views 1.1K 11K 11K β2.7M ε£δΌ Subscribe 328 β] δΌ](https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/list/002/770/118/97e.png "Change Your Name")
![Pietro Schirano @skirano 17h I used Claude 3 to unredact this part from the OpenAl emails. What's wild is that they used a "per word" redaction, meaning each redaction length is proportional to the length of the words, so assuming context and word length, this is Claude's guess using the page source: Musk < tskever< Itman < Dec 26, 2018 at 12:07 PM eel I should reiterate ility assessment of OpenAl being relevant to DeepMind/Google dramatic change in execution and resources is 0%. Not 1%. I wish it were >, Greg Brockman < g several hundred million won't be enough. This needs billions per year ly or forget it. tely, humanity's future is in the hands of re doing a lot more than this. e I'm wrong. 102 285 Sam Altman <redacted>, Demis Hassabis <redacted> e: Wed, Dec 26, 2018 at 12:07 PM ject: I feel I should reiterate probability assessment of OpenAI being relevant to DeepMind/Google without a matic change in execution and resources is 0%. Not 1%. I wish it were otherwise. en raising several hundred million won't be enough. This needs billions per year mediately or forget it. fortunately, humanity's future is in the hands of Google. lieve DeepMind alone is spending north of $100M per year. d they are doing a lot more than this. ey are building huge clusters and have a clear path to universal AI that can adapt to any blem and crush humans at every intellectual task while running on cheap hardware. ally hope I'm wrong. n : te: "Demis Hassabis" is likely the redacted name in the "CC" field based on the length I the fact that he is the co-founder and CEO of DeepMind, which is mentioned several es in the email. e other guesses are based on the context and word lengths, but there's no way to be tain without seeing the original unredacted text. This illustrates the problem with the action method used - even with the text blacked out, the word lengths provide stantial clues about the redacted content. 1.8K β513K Copy Retry ( β]](https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/list/002/770/113/a54.png "Claude On Emails")
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