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

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

#541
post #512
post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From: Elon Musk To: Sam Altman Subject: AI Lab Agree on all On Jun 24, 2015, at 10:24 AM, Sam Altman wrote: 1. The mission would be to create the first general Al and use ti for individual empowerment ie, the distributed version of the future that seems the safest. More generally, safety should be a first-class requirement. 2. I think we'd ideally start with a group of 7-10 people, and plan to expand from there. We h…

Anyone understand what the point no 5 means? What regulation letter is it referring to?

"The fifth bullet point is about a proposed open letter to the US government on AI safety and regulation, which the complaint says was eventually published in October 2015 “and signed by over eleven thousand individuals, including Mr. Musk, Stephen Hawking and Steve Wozniak."

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-03-01/openai...

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

#542

This suit claims breach of the "Founding Agreement". However, there is no actualy Founding Agreement, there are email communications claimed to be part of a "Founding Agreement". IANAL, but I would suspect that these emails don't matter for much now that there are Ariticles of Incorporation. Those articles are mentioned, but the "Founding Agreement" implied by emails is mentioned more. The suit also seems alarmist by…

It likely depends on what constitutes a valid contract in this jurisdiction. For example, some states recognize a "handshake agreement" as a legally-binding contract, and you can be taken to court for violating that agreement. I'm certain people have been found guilty in a legal context because they replied to a email one way but acted in the opposite manner.

The Articles of Incorporation are going to be the key legal document. Still, the Founding Agreement is important to demonstrate the original intentions and motivations of the parties. That builds the foundation for the case that something definitively caused Altman to steer the company in a different direction. I don't believe it's unfair to say Altman is steering; it seems like the Altman firing was a strategy to draw out the anti-Microsoft board members, who, once identified, were easily removed once Altman was reinstated. If Altman wasn't steering, then there's no reason he would have been rehired after he was fired.

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

#543
post #440

I uploaded the PDF to ChatGPT4 with the original name and got "Unable to upload musk-v-altman-openai-complaint-sf.pdf" multiple times I changed it to "defnotalawsuit.pdf" and it worked...

I had zero problems, worked on the first try without any re-naming.

Update: it is working for me now under the original name. I had tried 4 times before (refreshing/new chat) and only was getting the error on the original file name.

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

#544

There is a lot in here but turning a non-profit into a for-profit definitely should be challenged. Otherwise why wouldn't everyone start as a non-profit, develop your IP, and then switch to 'for-profit' mode once you got something that works? You don't pay income taxes and your investors get write offs.

I think this is a different case. The purpose of OpenAI could not have been achieved had it not been converted to a for-profit organization. Profits are necessary since they incentivize the innovation that AI calls for. Non-profits can never achieve these.

Today we all benefit from OpenAI, but its the for-profit Open AI that made it possible. How else would they spend billions on compute and take those large risks, on whose money?

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

#545

Microsoft first invested in OpenAI in 2019, which is when they changed their corporate structure. It's now 2024. If Musk had some ideological issue with OpenAI's new corporate structure then why didn't he sue right away?

"Not suing right away" isn't a good argument in many cases. There are myriad of reasons why people don't sue immediately. I don't think the question is worth asking.

I'm not saying it has any legal implications to have waited so long (maybe it does - I've no idea), but if this is really about ideology then the timing seems very weird.

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

#546
post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> (...) but if he really wanted them to do something specific (...) Musk pledged donating orders of magnitude more to OpenAI when he wanted to take over the organization, and reneged on his pledge when the takeover failed and instead went the "fox and the grapes" path of accusing OpenAI of being a failure. It took Microsoft injecting billions in funding to get OpenAI to be where it is today. It's pathetic how Elon Mu…

Elon was the largest donator in 2015, Microsoft didn't inject any money until the team was set up and their tech proven in 2019 with GPT-2. Four years is huge in tech, and especially in the AI area.

It seems you are really trying to bend reality to leave a hate comment on Elon. Your beef might be justified, but it's hard to call his contribution insignificant.

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

#547
post #505
post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah, the lawyers will have the whole case on those two words: "where applicable"

Rather „not organized for the private gain of any person“

Corporations aren’t people, my friend

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

#549
post #438

If OpenAI became a non-profit with this in its charter: “resulting technology will benefit the public and the corporation will seek to open source technology for the public benefit when applicable. The corporation is not organized for the private gain of any person" I don't think it is going to be hard to show that they are doing something very different than what they said they were going to do.

Is the charter legally binding?

Is it unchangeable?

A single quote doesn't tell us much.

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

#550

A NY Times article says "Though Mr. Musk has repeatedly criticized OpenAI for becoming a for-profit company, he hatched a plan in 2017 to wrest control of the A.I. lab from Mr. Altman and its other founders and transform into a commercial operation that would work alongside his other companies, including the electric carmaker Tesla, and make use of their increasingly powerful supercomputers, people familiar with his…

>That would let OpenAI lawyers keep this suit tied up for a very long time.

Why?

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