The weekend exploded when Elon Musk publicly filed a lawsuit against OpenAI for deviating from its founding mission: “they promised to be an ethical and non-profit company, but the reality is different,” explains the CEO of Tesla and Twitter.
Elon Musk has sued OpenAI, its CEO Sam Altman, its co-founder Greg Brockman, as well as other individuals, as he accuses them of violating the contractual commitments established during the creation of the company, when he helped found it in 2015.
The lawsuit argues that the shift of the Microsoft-backed AI company towards profit-driven goals goes against the original agreement.
Emails between OpenAI and Elon Musk
The email chain shared from OpenAI dates back to 2015, when the company was founded. Elon Musk helped co-found OpenAI, but later stepped away in 2018.
OpenAI has released emails from the billionaire in an attempt to debunk his claims that the company has deviated from its foundational mission to serve as a non-profit control over generative AI threats.
In the first email, supposedly sent by billionaire entrepreneur Elon, he says: “We have to go with a much higher figure than 100 million dollars to avoid looking hopeless.” The content of the email goes on to explain that a “1 billion dollar funding commitment” could be more appropriate.
Regarding the next step for OpenAI, the details in the blog state that “Elon wanted a majority stake, initial control of the board, and to be CEO. Amidst these discussions, he retained the funding.”
The blog post continues by saying: “We couldn’t reach an agreement with Elon on a for-profit company because we believed it went against the mission…”.
In a shared email by OpenAI, Elon Musk says that OpenAI should “stick with Tesla as its cash cow”. In the blog, the authors claim that “Elon understood that the mission did not involve releasing AGI”. Later they shared that Elon allegedly responded with “okay”.
