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[Broken clocks are still right twice a day] Elon Musk Sues OpenAI, Sam Altman for Making Money Over Benefitting Humanity

cross-posted from: https://midwest.social/post/9303135

Huh, though the clock is broken, this is one of the times of the day it’s still correct:

Elon Musk accused Sam Altman and OpenAI of pursuing profit over bettering humanity in a new breach of contract lawsuit filed in San Francisco Superior Court yesterday, Feb. 29.

Musk helped Altman found OpenAI as a non-profit in 2015 (Musk left the board of directors in 2018 and no longer has a stake). Central to the lawsuit is OpenAI’s “founding agreement,” which, per the lawsuit, stated the lab would build artificial general intelligence (AGI) “for the benefit of humanity,” not to “maximize shareholder profits,” and that the technology would be “open-source” and not kept “secret for propriety commercial reasons.”

Musk’s new lawsuit alleges that OpenAI has reversed course on this agreement, particularly through its $13 billion partnership with Microsoft. It further calls out the secrecy shrouding the tech behind OpenAI’s flagship Chat GPT-4 language model and major changes to the company’s board following Altman’s tumultuous hiring and re-firing last year.

“These events of 2023 constitute flagrant breaches of the Founding Agreement, which Defendants have essentially turned on its head,” the suit reads. “To this day, OpenAI, Inc.’s website continues profess that its charter is to ensure that AGI ‘benefits all of humanity.’ In reality, however, OpenAI, Inc. has been transformed into a closed-source de facto subsidiary of the largest technology company in the world: Microsoft.”

. . .

[archive link]

tigerjerusalem ,

My guess is that he wants to put his hands on the tech behind OpenAI success to somehow use it on his Robotaxis thing.

aBundleOfFerrets ,

Thank goodness the courts don’t have a “pot calling the kettle black” clause

1984 ,
@1984@lemmy.today avatar

I really think Elon deserves to be flushed down a toilet.

iAvicenna ,
@iAvicenna@lemmy.world avatar

he is just jealous that nowadays people are talking more about Altman so wants a piece of the action

tonytins ,
@tonytins@pawb.social avatar

While I appreciate Elon's efforts, he's still a hypocrite.

PrincessLeiasCat ,

Much of that board was booted once Altman was brought back, and the lawsuit suggests he “hand-picked” a new board with little “technical expertise or any substantial background in AI governance, which the previous board had by design.”

Instead, the lawsuit states, the new board included members “with more experience in profit-centric enterprises or politics than in AI ethics and governance. They were also reportedly ‘big fans of Altman.’

Bro let me tell you about a little company called “Twitter”. Sit down tho, because that shit is wild.

wewbull ,

Twitter was never non-profit with a founding charter. Two very different organisations.

PrincessLeiasCat ,

Agree, and I was more so using the comparison between “early intentions” vs “real action” that both of the companies made. Basically, they lied to everyone, got in control, and did whatever they wanted.

whatupwiththat ,

Jealous Elmo strikes again

JayBird76 ,
@JayBird76@lemmy.world avatar

Elon has some nerve calling out someone for making money of bettering humanity. That's the very definition of "the pot calling the kettle black".

conciselyverbose ,

There's a difference, though.

OpenAI was built on, and raised money on the premise of, being open.

tzrlk ,

I think the real reason he's doing this is that as long as GPT-4 isn't open source, he can't steal it.

ry_ ,

Yep. Use the the gpt4 architecture and fine tuning infrastructure as a starting point of your own close efforts: helping his companies leapfrog to the front of the line.

Edit: that said, while I’ve no doubt that musk does not have the betterment of humanity in mind (except where he’s making a profit from such betterment), openAI being open would be a good thing.

stoly ,

He knows precisely what he's doing but just doesn't care because, ya know, he's rich.

lvxferre ,
@lvxferre@mander.xyz avatar

major changes to the company’s board following Altman’s tumultuous hiring and re-firing last year.

I believe this to be central here, as it was likely when OpenAI stopped pretending to be a non-profit.

stoly ,

I do think that both Elon and the board underestimated how charismatic that Altman must be to have so many people willing to walk out over him being fired. They (not claiming Elon was in this one) certainly tried to push things into one direction without realizing that they never could win.

toothbrush ,
@toothbrush@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

He wasnt that charismatic. Microsoft offered everyone at openai a spot in their top ai division if they signed that letter, with all the employee benefits and clout that microsoft employment can offer. Of course they signed it!

stoly ,

interesting, so it was really about the money

toothbrush ,
@toothbrush@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

yeah, I wrote a "conspiracy theory" of sorts as a comment a few months ago about that as the situation developed. Turns out it was true, microsoft used OpenAI's CEO to remove critical board members, so they get control over the non-profit part of the company that controls the patents/software.

bizzle ,
@bizzle@lemmy.world avatar

I want to read it, can I get a link?

wewbull ,

I don't know how much was charisma, and how much was the workforce looking for the success that comes from commercialising the tech over a non-profit entity giving the tech away. Not everyone is an altruist.

doublejay1999 ,
@doublejay1999@lemmy.world avatar

Just tells us how far behind Elon is.

toothbrush ,
@toothbrush@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

wow, that could actually be big if openAI loses! Imagine open source chatGPT and Dall-E...

stoly ,

I bet that you'd get the model but no data set and so it would be useless. Of course, you can feed it your own corpora if you like.

toothbrush ,
@toothbrush@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

it wouldnt be useless, most "open source" models work like this. But yeah, having access to the dataset is very important, and in my opinion open source licenses requires its inclusion. However, no legal battles have been fought over that fact yet...

stoly ,

I guess I'm saying that it would be useless unless you are willing to train it, assuming that the training corpus isn't included.

toothbrush ,
@toothbrush@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

I think it will be released pre-trained if they are forced to make it open source, otherwise they are not actually releasing chatgpt/dall-e, just the underlying technology they used to make it. No idea however if musks lawyers know that.

ThrowawaySobriquet ,

While I agree with the spirit of the suit, it very much smacks of Lex Luthor suing Veronica Cale for Moral Impropriety

thefartographer ,

"Man who builds cars that crash themselves with passengers inside accuses technology company of not prioritizing humans"

He's not wrong, but we should just eat all of them.

SnotFlickerman ,
@SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

You're not wrong, Walter Elon, you're just an asshole.

lebowski.social is leaking.

RobotToaster ,
@RobotToaster@mander.xyz avatar

In this case, Elon may be the lesser of two assholes.

That isn't intended as a compliment to Elon.

autotldr Bot ,

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Elon Musk accused Sam Altman and OpenAI of pursuing profit over bettering humanity in a new breach of contract lawsuit filed in San Francisco Superior Court yesterday, Feb. 29.

Central to the lawsuit is OpenAI’s “founding agreement,” which, per the lawsuit, stated the lab would build artificial general intelligence (AGI) “for the benefit of humanity,” not to “maximize shareholder profits,” and that the technology would be “open-source” and not kept “secret for propriety commercial reasons.”

It further calls out the secrecy shrouding the tech behind OpenAI’s flagship Chat GPT-4 language model and major changes to the company’s board following Altman’s tumultuous hiring and re-firing last year.

“These events of 2023 constitute flagrant breaches of the Founding Agreement, which Defendants have essentially turned on its head,” the suit reads.

Instead, the lawsuit states, the new board included members “with more experience in profit-centric enterprises or politics than in AI ethics and governance.

Beyond the money, though, the lawsuit states Musk brought it to “compel OpenAI to adhere to the Founding Agreement and return to its mission to develop AGI for the benefit of humanity, not to personally benefit the individual Defendants and the largest technology company in the world.”

The original article contains 517 words, the summary contains 198 words. Saved 62%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

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