OpenAI hits back at Elon Musk's lawsuit in court filing
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Elon Musk has sued OpenAI over its planned for-profit restructuring, but Musk's own emails show he wanted OpenAI to have a for-profit component and wanted to own and run it himself, OpenAI argues in a new court filing Friday.
Why it matters: Musk helped found OpenAI in 2015 but has since become a bitter opponent and critic of the ChatGPT maker.
The big picture: Friday's filing is the latest salvo in a high profile legal battle pitting the AI revolution's standard-bearing company against president-elect Trump's closest tech adviser. Musk is also the founder of xAI, an OpenAI rival.
- The current suit, filed in August, is the successor to a similar previous suit Musk filed in March and then withdrew in June.
- His new suit seeks to block OpenAI and its CEO, Sam Altman, from proceeding with a plan that would effectively transform the firm, which is now controlled by a nonprofit organization, into a more traditional corporation.
- In the decade since OpenAI's founding, AI has rapidly evolved from a field of research into a hot but costly investment magnet.
Driving the news: OpenAI's new court filing includes a number of e-mails between Musk (and his representatives) and other OpenAI co-founders, including Altman and Ilya Sutskever.
- The emails discuss the ideal structure for the company as well as the growing need for more capital to fund the massive amount of hardware needed to pursue OpenAI's work.
- OpenAI maintains that Musk was pushing for a for-profit entity in which he had both control and a majority equity stake.
- OpenAI also disclosed that Musk registered in September 2017 to incorporate a public benefit corporation entitled "Open Artificial Intelligence Technologies, Inc."
What they're saying: "Elon Musk's latest legal filing against OpenAI marks his fourth attempt in less than a year to reframe his claims," OpenAI said in a blog post. "However, his own words and actions speak for themselves — in
2017, Elon not only wanted, but actually created, a for-profit as OpenAI's proposed new structure."
- "When he didn't get majority equity and full control, he walked away and told us we would fail," the company continued. "Now that OpenAI is the leading AI research lab and Elon runs a competing AI company, he's asking the court to stop us from effectively pursuing our mission."
What they're saying: In Sept. 2017, Sutskever sent Musk — along with Altman and co-founder Greg Brockman — an email rejecting Musk's terms.
- "The current structure provides you with a path where you end up with unilateral absolute control over the AGI. You stated that you don't want to control the final AGI, but during this negotiation, you've shown to us that absolute control is extremely important to you," the email said.
- OpenAI aims "to make the future good and to avoid an AGI dictatorship," Sutskever wrote. "Thus we are concerned that as the company makes genuine progress towards AGI, you will choose to retain your absolute control of the company despite current intent to the contrary."
Yes, but: The new emails are presented in an OpenAI blog post without full context.
- The early discussion of how OpenAI should be structured also includes references to Y Combinator, which Sam Altman was running at the time, and whether OpenAI should be part of the startup incubator or separate.
