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| Elon Musk And Sam Altman (Credit: Getty Images for Vanity Fair) |
OpenAI claims to develop safe, beneficial, and economically valuable AI. Elon Musk is one of the initial board members of OpenAI, while Sam Altman is the co-founder and CEO. Both expressed concern over AI overpowering humans, which might cause an ‘intelligence explosion.’ Thus, the company wants to help people through AI rather than posing a threat to mankind.
Elon Musk’s Lawsuit
Last month, Musk sued OpenAI and its CEO, Sam Altman, for allegedly breaching the company’s founding statement of freely collaborating with institutions and researchers and being open to the public. The company dealt with Microsoft, one of the investors, who would help it get a profit of $13 billion. Now, Musk wants OpenAI to give Microsoft its money back.
Thus, according to Musk, OpenAI became a profit maximization company. He believed it fell behind other giant conglomerates implementing AI. He wanted to take over the company himself and merge it with Tesla, but other board members refused.
Thus, Musk left the board in 2018 and promised to continue donating to the company, though he reportedly did not keep his promise. Meanwhile, the company raised over $90 million through other donors. Currently, Sam Altman gets all the credit for OpenAI’s success.
According to OpenAI’s remaining leadership team, it admired Musk, who later claimed that they would fail. Thus, he left the company, became a competitor, and sued them when they were at their peak.
During an on-stage event, Musk called OpenAI a closed-source company focusing on maximum profits through AI, though it was established as an open-source foundation.
OpenAI turned from non-profit to capped profit in 2019 and began attracting investors. Meanwhile, it distributed equity to the employees. The same year, Microsoft partnered with OpenAI and invested $1 billion in the company. Now, it is a for-profit company that possesses some non-profit characteristics.
OpenAI Shares Elon Musk’s Old Reproduced Emails
OpenAI reproduced and published old emails sent by Musk during the early days of the company. Accordingly, he did not expect the company to survive on cash alone. Instead, he asked them to hunt for alternative sources of revenue. He sent them another email in 2018, stating that the company required a dramatic change in resources and execution.
Moreover, the old emails reportedly state that Musk advised OpenAI to be less open and not share the company’s science with the public. The company released GPT-4 in March 2023. Ironically, Musk’s lawyers allege that the model is secret and focuses on making a profit rather than safety.
OpenAI’s Reaction To Elon Musk’s Lawsuit
The board members of OpenAI, Sam Altman (CEO), Greg Brockman (President), and Ilya Sutskever (CSO), responded to Musk’s allegation by stating that Musk hindered their opportunities to raise more money from investors in the beginning, which affected the AI application development process.
For instance, Sam and Greg were planning to raise $100 million when the company was launched in 2015, but Musk allegedly popped up and asked them to go for a $1 billion fund. It affected the company’s mission of using AI for the betterment of mankind.
Further, OpenAI launched ChatGPT, a chatbot, in November 2022. It turned successful and introduced AI into the daily lives of people. It generated revenue of more than 2 billion per year, and millions of people signed up within five days of its launch. At that time, the company reportedly expected revenue of $1 billion in 2024.
On the other hand, Musk founded an AI startup company, xAI, in March 2023 and announced its formation in July. The company’s mission is to understand the universe. According to Musk, it stands out from the crowd because it can process advanced mathematical reasoning.
Moreover, xAI is integrated with X (formerly Twitter). The company is yet to release a beta version that will be only available to the X’s subscribers and premium users.
What If Elon Musk Got OpenAI’s Board Control?
Musk could fire Sam Altman and other key personnel if he got OpenAI’s board control. He asked for its board control and majority equity and wanted to be the CEO. He was not convinced by Altman’s ideas. So, why would he keep another leading person who would challenge his decisions in the future?
Musk proved this point by firing Twitter’s former CEO, Parag Agrawal, General Counsel, Sean Edgett, Chief Legal Counsel, Vijaya Gadde, CFO, Ned Segal, and thousands of other employees after purchasing the company in 2022. Those four top management employees sued Musk for not paying their severance, as promised, which was entitled to $128 million on 04 March 2024.
Similarly, several terminated employees did not get their payments. According to the lawsuit, Musk terminated them for ‘willful misconduct and gross negligence.’ Besides that, the company has several unpaid bills, and Musk reportedly believes that old rules do not apply to him because he is the new owner.
On the other hand, Sam Altman had a bitter experience of getting fired from his own company, OpenAI, on 17 November 2023. Reportedly, the board members fired him over a difference in opinion and Sam’s alleged deviation from the company’s original mission. They did not share more details with the public.
Microsoft interfered and appointed him as the chief of AI research programs in OpenAI, followed by an offer to be the CEO. Thus, Sam took some time to keep his anger and ego aside before accepting the position on 30 November 2023. Later, he terminated the board members who previously terminated him.
These past bitter experiences must have boosted Sam to stand for himself and refuse to give more powers to Musk in OpenAI.
Conclusion
The current situation shows that Musk discouraged OpenAI, which proved him wrong. Thus, he will soon come up with an AI model to compete with OpenAI and other tech giants. The top management has its struggles and legal battles. However, it will be better to come up with better solutions and reduce the damages caused to anyone.
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