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Elon Musk sues Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, and OpenAI [pdf]

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451–460 of 1001 posts

Re: Elon Musk sues Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, and OpenAI [pdf]

#451
At best a court forces OpenAI to be more transparent and clear about its for-profit motives (they couldn't hide behind the open, for-the-good-of-mankind mask forever anyways). Maybe even rebrand to stop misusing the terms 'open' and 'non-profit'.

At worst, court rules out the case and we see an OpenAI IPO and another evil company (very much like Google is born) founded on cutting every corner possible to solicit funds as a for-profit non-profit ?? all while stealing intellectual property and profiting their shareholders.

Re: Elon Musk sues Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, and OpenAI [pdf]

#452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they are non-profit, they do not make billions in profits. I suspect you mean revenue :) Exec compensation is another thing, but also not a concern I am super sympathetic to given that for profit companies of similar magnitude generally pay their execs way more they just are not required to report it.

> If they are non-profit, they do not make billions in profits. I suspect you mean revenue :) Uhm, profit is a fact of accounting. Any increase in equity (or "net assets", or whatever other euphemism the accountant decides to use) on a balance sheet is profit. Revenue is something completely different.

Change in net asset is calculated the same as net profit, but is not the same in an accounting sense.

Constitutive to profit is a return to private stakeholders, holding assets in reserve or re-investing in capital is not the same.

Re: Elon Musk sues Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, and OpenAI [pdf]

#453
post #148

In what capacity is Musk suing OpenAI? Musk may have co-founded the company, but then he left (to avoid any potential future conflict of interest with his role as CEO of Tesla, as Tesla was increasingly becoming an AI-intensive company). Is he a shareholder, if not what gives him any say in the future of the company?

Breach of contract seems to be the major one - from https://www.scribd.com/document/709742948/Musk-vs-OpenAI page 34 has the prayers for relief. B and C seem insane to me, I don't see how a court could decide that. On the other hand, compelling specific performance based on continual reaffirmations of the founding agreement (page 15)...seems viable at a glance. Musk is presumably a party to several relevant contracts…

The "reaffirmations" referred to on page 15 don't mean anything. Altman merely said he was "enthusiastic" about the nonprofit structure, not that he was limiting OpenAI to it. And notably, the "I" is that quote is bracketed, meaning that Altman did not actually say "I" in his response to Musk (in legal documents, brackets in quotes mean that the quote has been altered between the brackets). Furthermore, despite the headline to that section claiming "repeat" reaffirmations, based on the facts as presented by Musk's own lawyers, Altman only potentially reaffirms the nonprofit structure once...

And the other individuals aren't even quoted, which is strong evidence that they didn't actually say anything even remotely in support of "reaffirming" the nonprofit structure (especially given that his lawyers were heavy handed with including quotes when they could be even remotely construed in favor of Musk's position) and that Musk is unilaterally characterizing whatever they actually said to support his claims, however reasonable or unreasonable that may be.

Due to the money at stake, and given that both Musk and Altman have serious credibility issues that would make a trial outcome impossible to predict, I expect this to be settled by giving Musk a bunch of stock in the for-profit entity to make shut up.

Re: Elon Musk sues Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, and OpenAI [pdf]

#455
post #116
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because of Twitter's amazing new UI I have no idea what Sam is replying to and what the context is, so the link by itself is meaningless.

New? Looks the same as it has been for years. Also sam is clearly speaking in general terms.

The link shows only the following:

>@danielpsegundo that would be of interest though I'd hate to bet against elon winning

We cannot see what Dan asked to understand what Sam is responding to.

Re: Elon Musk sues Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, and OpenAI [pdf]

#456
post #38

imo the most interesting page is page 40 if you don't feel like reading the whole thing. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39562778

Off-topic, but what are the doing there? I gather it's some MSOffice HTML stuff, but did it actually show up in the rendered email, or is it some artifact of the archival process(?) for legal discovery?

Looks like it's about html to pdf:

https://meta.discourse.org/t/help-us-to-test-the-html-pastin...

Re: Elon Musk sues Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, and OpenAI [pdf]

#457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The replies that say "well the profits go to the non-profit, all's good" miss the reality of these high profit nonprofits: the profits invariably end up in the pockets of management. Most of those are essentially scams, but it doesn't mean that OpenAI isn't just a more subtle scam. The hype and the credulity of the general public play right into this scam. People will more or less believe anything Sam the Money Gushi…

If your beef with this structure is that executives get paid handsomely I have bad news about the entire category of nonprofits, regardless of whether they have for-profit arms or not.

the way openai structure their pay is dubious to say the least. maybe they will find a way to make money someday but rn everything they are doing is setting my alarm bells off.

"In conversations with recruiters we’ve heard from some candidates that OpenAI is communicating that they don’t expect to turn a profit until they reach their mission of Artificial General Intelligence" https://www.levels.fyi/blog/openai-compensation.html

Re: Elon Musk sues Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, and OpenAI [pdf]

#458

Has there been a successful suit against a company for "abandoning their founding mission"? Does anyone think that this suit will succeed? Another article: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/mar/01/elon-musk...

But in this case, it wasn’t a company, but a nonprofit.

Nonprofit is a tax status, not a corporate structure.

Re: Elon Musk sues Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, and OpenAI [pdf]

#459
post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only way to truly make a ton of wealth is to break rules that others follow.

This statement represents the complete disintegration of the optimism that ruled in the 90s and before when we ardently believed that networking and communication amongst people would increase understanding and improve lives by ensuring no one would be cut off from the common wisdom and knowledge of humanity. While robber baron economics certainly appeal to a lot of robber barons, the twentieth century pretty decisiv…

> optimism that ruled in the 90s

This is such an interesting take, about which we could probably write whole paragraphs.

Can the 90s be really summarized in such way? Yes, we had the "information highway" and "waiting for year 2000", but at the same time people distrusted their governments. X-files was all the rage, maybe grunge.

In USA there was Bill Clinton - the president that didnt do any wars and balanced the budget.. who got removed for blowjobs. But at the same time there was outsourcing. In rest of the world it also cannot be summed up so easily - I remember that 90s were a struggle, especially for post communism countries.

Obviously later on we got cell phones, but we also got the cancer such as Jack Welch style management that lead to various methods of enshittyfying everything.

I had a talk some time ago - I have a genuine polo bought in a supermarket in the 1980s (wont tell the brand since it is irrelevant). This piece of cloth feels and fits very well - after 40 years. It was worn through many summers. Now I cant buy a polo shirt that will last more than 2 seasons. And I buy the "better" ones. There is lots of crap that falls apart fast. For me the 90s were a start of that trend - enshittification of products that are designed to last 25 months (with a 24 month guarantee) and be thrown away.

But maybe it depends on life experience and anecdotes.

Was there optimism in 90s? Lots of it in marketing materials. But did people really believe that?

Re: Elon Musk sues Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, and OpenAI [pdf]

#460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know how comparable it would be, but I imagine if I donated $44 million to a university under the agreement that they would use the money in a particular way (e.g. to build a specific building or to fund a specific program) and then the university used the money in some other way, I feel I ought to have some standing to sue them. Of course, this all depends on the investment details specified in a contract an…

Yeah - Had you donated the funds as "restricted funding" in the nonprofit parlance, they would have a legal requirement to use the funds as you had designated. It seems that Musk contributed general non-restricted funding so the nonprofit can more or less do what they want with the money.. Not saying there's no case here, but if he really wanted them to do something specific, there's a path for that to happen and tha…

> Musk contributed general non-restricted funding so the nonprofit can more or less do what they want with the money.

Seems like "more or less" is doing a lot of work in this statement.

I suppose this is what the legal system is for, to settle the dispute within the "more or less" grey area. I would wager this will get settled out of court. But if it makes it all the way to judgement then I will be interested to see if the court sees OpenAI's recent behavior as "more" or "less" in line with the agreements around its founding and initial funding.

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