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OpenAI I fired again Billionaire Elon Musk on Friday released a series of emails and texts that the company claims show that Musk’s lawsuit against it is misleading.
Musk’s legal battle with OpenAI, which has been ongoing for months, essentially accuses the company of abandoning its original nonprofit mission of making the fruits of AI research available to everyone. Things escalated last month, when Musk’s legal team filed an injunction to stop OpenAI’s ongoing transformation from a nonprofit to a for-profit company.
OpenAI says Musk’s complaints are baseless and just a sour case.
Since 2015, Musk has floated the idea of OpenAI with a nonprofit and for-profit component, emails and published texts from OpenAI show. OpenAI eventually launched as a non-profit, but after several years faced funding challenges.
On June 13, 2017, according to exchanges published by OpenAI, Musk proposed merging OpenAI with a hardware startup — possibly the chip company Cerebras. Several members of OpenAI’s leadership agreed, according to the letters, and OpenAI began down the path to what President Greg Brockman called “for-profit AI + hardware research.”
Musk claimed a majority stake, OpenAI claims, between 50% and 60%. He put in place an organizational structure where he “unequivocally has primary control of the company” – and is appointed as its CEO.
Musk went so far as to create a public benefit corporation called Open Artificial Intelligence Technologies, Inc, registered in Delaware. But OpenAI leadership rejected Musk’s terms.
Musk then recommended that OpenAI turn to Tesla, his electric car company, with a $1 billion budget that would “increase dramatically.” OpenAI leadership also rejected this proposal.
At that point, in 2018, Musk resigned from OpenAI — and largely cut ties with its executives. OpenAI claims to have offered Musk shares in its for-profit wing on more than one occasion, but Musk always declined.
“You can’t sue your way to (artificial general intelligence),” OpenAI said in a statement. “We have great respect for Elon’s accomplishments and are grateful for his early contributions to OpenAI, but he should be competing in the marketplace, not in the courtroom.”
Musk formed his answer to OpenAI, xAI, last year. Shortly after, the company released Grok, an AI model that now powers a number of features on Musk’s social network, X (formerly known as Twitter). xAI also offers an Application Programming Interface (API) that allows customers to build Grok into third-party apps, platforms, and services.
In a complaint filed late last month, Musk’s lawyers alleged that OpenAI is starving the xAI company of capital by extracting promises from investors not to fund it and compete. In October, Financial Times I mentioned OpenAI asked investors in its latest funding round to refrain from funding any of OpenAI’s competitors, including xAI.
Naturally, XAI has had no problem raising funds recently. Last month, the company closed a $6 billion round It is said With the participation of prominent investors including Andreessen Horowitz and Fidelity. With about $12 billion in the bank, xAI is one of the best-funded AI companies in the world.
Musk’s motion for an injunction also alleges that OpenAI and Microsoft, its close collaborator and investor, are illegally sharing proprietary information and resources. Google reportedly did too Named To investigate Microsoft’s relationship with OpenAI, specifically the two organizations’ cloud computing arrangements.
OpenAI is under pressure to complete its for-profit turnaround quickly. According to According to Bloomberg, investors in the latest funding round will be able to get their money back if OpenAI does not transition from a non-profit within two years.
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