Remember, when Elon Musk said,“AI is far more dangerous than Nukes”? Now that you’ve seen what’s happening in the AI world, you have no reason to deny his statement. AI has started to replace jobs and reduce the need for people in certain roles, and there are a lot more to come.
Well, it all started with a product calledChatGPT. When it was launched in November 2022byOpenAI, it was considered the most advanced chatbot that can answer anything that has ever been recorded on earth. The CEO of OpenAI, Sam Altman has become one of the most influential personalities all over the world.
Now, Elon Musk, a former co-founder of OpenAI filed a lawsuit against OpenAI claiming that OpenAI breached the founding agreement by pursuing profits over helping humanity.
You will only understand Musk’s out-of-the-blue lawsuit when you know the whole story.
Let’s talk a walk to 2015!
Disclaimer: Everything that is said in this article is based on the facts provided in various news articles.
In2015, Sam Altman and Greg Brockman convinced Elon Musk to fund and co-found a startup called OpenAI. The OpenAI was initially built to produce the most advanced Large Language Model, which is none other than the ChatGPT. Elon Musk agreed with the promise that OpenAI’s products were supposed to be non-profitable and should be available to the public for free.
Makes sense, so far?
Then, the startup registered its name as OpenAI, Inc. in Delaware. But, the startup was registered as a non-profitable entity. That is, OpenAI should not make any money from the products it builds. It should solely serve humanity with no profits in return.
Sounds interesting, right?
Elon Musk was totally behind this idea. But in late 2019, he backed out from OpenAI, saying “AI is dangerous” — or something of that sort. Well, he wasn’t wrong, was he?
The next year, 2020, OpenAI slowly started to drift towards turning their AI research into a cash-flowing machine. They started their for-profit subsidiary called OpenAI Global, LLC. The majority of investments were thrown into the for-profit subsidiary and not the non-profit one.
The non-profit one is still there, you know, for helping humanity!
When Sam Altman was asked about this shift, he explained that OpenAI started as a non-profit but then they realized that they needed to raise far more capital to run the non-profit entity and hence the for-profit entity was formed.
Now, OpenAI calls itself the capped-profit hybrid organization. Let’s decode the terminologies.
capped profit: It is defined as placing a limit on the amount of profit that can be generated by the company.
**Hybrid Organization:**An organization that holds both non-profit and for-profit entities.
A common perception is Elon Musk was not entirely happy with the idea that OpenAI was making a ton of money when it was supposed to be a non-profit.
He also stated that their for-profit entity has shifted towards commercializing its AGI(Artificial General Intelligence) research after partnering with Microsoft.
Now, Microsoft’s cumulative investment in OpenAI has increased to 13 Billion dollars. I believe all the investments and partnerships must have destroyed whatever patience he had left and triggered him to submit the lawsuit.
The funny thing to note here, based on an article, is Elon Musk repeatedly mentioned in the lawsuit that according to the founding agreement,OpenAI should run as a non-profit entity. But, so far, there was no such “founding agreement” presented as evidence along with the lawsuit. Basically, there is no written agreement tied to what Musk was claiming, which is a terrible sign for him.
Along with the lawsuit, there were attached references to emails between the defendants and the plaintiff. If you have watched any detective shows, you would know these emails won’t stand in the court.
Elon Musk’s claim of “breach of contract” references a specific email sent from Sam Altman to Elon Musk. In short, it states “OpenAI develops for the good of the world”.
Below is an attachment of the email sent by Sam Altman which was replied to by Elon Musk saying — “Agree on all”.
Up until now, we have seen Elon Musk’s moves which are not very surprising but what’s more exciting is how Sam Altman is going to retaliate. We all know the incident where Sam Altman showed his true power when he made OpenAI’s board of directors request him to come back to the same position from which he was fired two days earlier. Based on that incident, my expectations have only gone up.
Let’s wait and watch!!