What does Elon Musk think about OpenAI?
On February 29, Elon Musk sued OpenAI and its CEO, Sam Altman. The main accusation was that the company violated its founding agreement with Musk, one of the AI firm's co-founders, by forming a partnership with Microsoft and acting as its "closed-source de facto subsidiary" in order to maximise profits. According to the billionaire, this violates the commitment to operate as a nonprofit and keep the project open-source.
The lawsuit was filed in a San Francisco court, and the initial hearing has yet to take place. Meanwhile, OpenAI responded to the allegations on Wednesday by publishing an extensive post containing email correspondence with Musk dating back to 2015, stating that it would move to "dismiss all of Elon's claims".
Musk allegedly wanted OpenAI to merge with Tesla or take full control of the company himself.
OpenAI Fires Back!!!
"We couldn't agree to terms on a for-profit with Elon because we felt it was against the mission for any individual to have absolute control over OpenAI," stated the post, which was written by OpenAI co-founders Greg Brockman, Ilya Sutskever, John Schulman, Sam Altman, and Wojciech Zaremba. According to the post, the billionaire wanted OpenAI to "attach to Tesla as its cash cow" based on email interactions. If true, this contradicts Musk's stated intention to keep the AI firm non-profit.
According to The Verge, based on court filings, a founder's agreement is neither a contract nor a binding agreement that can be breached. As a result, Musk's allegations against OpenAI may be invalid.
"We're sad that it's come to this with someone whom we've deeply admired—someone who inspired us to aim higher, then told us we would fail, started a competitor, and then sued us when we started making meaningful progress towards OpenAI's mission without him," the company said in a statement.
OpenAI's retaliation demonstrates that the rivalry between the two parties is not a new one. It dates as far back as 2015. We lay down the entire timeline of this epic AI-focused rivalry.
Elon Musk vs OpenAI: Timeline of the decade-long rivalry
Those who follow Musk on X or are active participants in tech-related controversies are familiar with the antics of the world's second richest person. The Tesla CEO is known for his unfiltered social media posts, interviews, and rash decisions. From purchasing X after making a social media post to rebranding the entire platform in a week, and from responding to an antisemitic post to hurling expletives at Disney CEO Bob Iger for boycotting advertising on the platform (among many others) and blaming them for the platform's demise, the list is lengthy.
However, these antics are not new. Musk co-founded OpenAI in 2015 with Altman, President and Chairman Greg Brockman, and several others. According to TechCrunch, Musk was also the largest investor in the company, which focuses on artificial intelligence development. However, to everyone's surprise, the billionaire resigned from his board position in 2018. The reason for Musk's resignation varies depending on whom you ask. The X owner cited "a potential future conflict [of interest]" in his role as Tesla's CEO, citing the electric vehicle giant's development of AI for self-driving cars. According to a Semafor report citing unnamed sources, Altman believed that the billionaire felt OpenAI had fallen behind other players such as Google, and instead proposed taking over the company himself, which was promptly rejected by the board and resulted in his departure. OpenAI has confirmed this.
However, the exit was only the beginning. Just a year later, OpenAI announced that it was forming a for-profit entity to meet its ambitious goals and pay its dues. The same year, Microsoft invested $1 billion in the AI firm following a multi-year partnership. It was also the same year that GPT-2 was announced, which created a lot of buzz online.
The events were interesting because the company was not only moving in the opposite direction of Musk's philosophy, but it also experienced unprecedented success — both financially and technologically — which the billionaire reportedly did not believe was possible.
OpenAI Launch ChatGPT
However, neither party addressed the issue again until 2022. OpenAI launched ChatGPT, the AI-powered chatbot that many believe started the AI arms race, in November 2022. Musk soon broke the silence. In response to a post in which a user asked the chatbot to write a tweet in his style, he claimed that OpenAI had access to the X database for training before shutting it down. This was also the first time Musk had publicly stated, "OpenAI was founded as open-source and non-profit." "Neither is still true."
The billionaire didn't stop there. Throughout 2023, he repeatedly criticised the company. In February, Musk claimed that OpenAI was created to be open-source, which is why he named it OpenAI. He went on to say, "But now it has become a closed-source, maximum-profit company effectively controlled by Microsoft."
In March 2023, he commented, "I'm still confused as to how a non-profit to which I donated ~$100M somehow became a $30 billion market cap for-profit." "If this is legal, why isn't everyone doing it?" Interestingly, the allegations in these three posts correspond to the main allegations in the lawsuit.
The Latest in Elon Musk vs Sam Altman
In an unexpected turn of events, tech mogul Elon Musk has filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and its CEO, Sam Altman, accusing the AI startup of breaching contractual agreements established during Musk's involvement in the company's formation in 2015. Musk claims that OpenAI has strayed from its original nonprofit mission, putting profit ahead of the advancement of humanity through artificial intelligence.
The lawsuit will also signal the start of the climax of the Elon Musk vs OpenAI saga, which has been building for nearly a decade. To the casual observer, it appears to be a corporate feud between two stakeholders, but a closer look reveals that it is much more than that.
In an unusual twist, Musk has proposed a novel solution to the legal dispute. He stated on social media platform X that he would drop the lawsuit if OpenAI agreed to change its name to "ClosedAI." The eccentric entrepreneur emphasised the importance of aligning OpenAI's name with its true business objectives. "Change your name to ClosedAI, and I will drop the lawsuit," Musk said, implying that OpenAI must be honest about its goals.
Musk, an OpenAI co-founder who stepped down from the board in 2018, claims that the Microsoft-backed company's profit-driven focus violates the original agreement. Musk's lawyers argue that OpenAI's pursuit of financial gains contradicts the organization's founding principles. Musk added a touch of humour to his stance by changing a picture of Sam Altman wearing an ID card. He changed the information on the card to read "ClosedAI" instead of "OpenAI," but kept the logo the same.
OpenAI responded to Musk's legal action by disclosing a series of private emails exchanged with him on March 6. The company expressed disappointment in Musk, claiming that he had inspired them to aim higher but then turned adversarial by launching a competitor and later filing a lawsuit as OpenAI moved forward with its mission without his involvement. The company stated in its blog post that it has not deviated from its mission and that it intends to dismiss all of Musk's claims. It stated that its technology is widely available and improves people's lives, while the company remains committed to the safety of its products.
"We're sad that it's come to this with someone whom we've deeply admired—someone who inspired us to aim higher, then told us we would fail, started a competitor, and then sued us when we started making meaningful progress towards OpenAI's mission without him," the company stated in a blog post. On one side is the serial entrepreneur known for repeated success and a strong (sometimes dogmatic) philosophical take on technology, while on the other is the organisation hailed as a pioneer of generative AI technology, which may be on the verge of developing artificial general intelligence. Whatever the outcome of the lawsuit, it has the potential to change the course of Open Sourced AI, Closed Source AI, and the Generative AI landscape.
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