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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]

#691

Post by helsinkiandrew »

emodendroket wrote: post #255
helsinkiandrew wrote: post #16

OpenAi is also being investigated by the SEC. If "Altman hadn’t been consistently candid in his communications with the board" is interpreted as being misleading then that could be interpreted as misleading investors and therefore securities fraud. https://www.wsj.com/tech/sec-investigating-whether-openai-in...

Nothing I've read about that whole kerfuffle suggests that "investors" were the main people the ousted board members cared about. Kind of seems like reading back significance not intended into the original text.

In a company (it may be complicated due to OpenAIs structure) the boards sole purpose is to represent all shareholders. If they don’t that’s usually asking for a SEC investigation or private law suit.

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

#692

Post by JamisonM »

cljacoby wrote: post #522

Similar to the firing-unfiring of Sam Altman, so much of this seems to be boil down to OpenAI's puzzle-box organizational structure. It seems like the whole "capped for-profit within a non-profit" is not going to to work long term.

A non-profit with a for-profit subsidiary is actually pretty common and it is probably one of the more "normal" things OpenAI has done.

https://www.marcumllp.com/insights/creating-a-for-profit-sub...

My personal opinion is that not creating a for-profit wing would have made a even bigger mess.

(But then I also think this suit is very obviously without merit and the complaint is written in a way that it sounds like lawyers sucking up to Musk to take his money - but people seem to be taking it very seriously!)

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

#693

Post by lukan »

psychoslave wrote: post #655
lukan wrote: post #644

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Plastic bag for example, are not only potentially dangerous, they make a significant contribution to the current mass extinction of biodiversity." That is news to me, how exactly do they significantly contribute?

https://theconversation.com/curious-kids-how-do-plastic-bags... https://www.biologicaldiversity.org/programs/population_and_... https://www.genevaenvironmentnetwork.org/resources/updates/p...

I am really not a fan of plastic trash, neither in the oceans, nor the forest, nor anywhere else. But in your links I did not found hints of "a significant contribution to the current mass extinction of biodiversity."

This was the most concrete, so some contribution (no news to me), but not in a significant way, like pesticides do, for example.

"When turtles eat plastic, it can block their intestinal system (their guts). Therefore, they can no longer eat properly, which can kill them. The plastics in their tummy may also leak chemicals into the turtle. We don’t know whether this causes long term problems for the turtle, but it’s probably not good for them."

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

#694

Post by andy_ppp »

HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #580

Any competent lawyer is going to get Musk on the stand reiterating his opinions about the danger of AI. If the tech really is dangerous then being more closed arguably is in the public's best interest, and this is certainly the reason OpenAI have previously given. Not saying I agree that being closed source is in the public good, although one could certainly argue that accelerating the efforts of bad actors to catch…

Are you a lawyer or have some sort of credentials to be able to make that statement? I’m not sure if Elon Musk being hypocrite about AI safety would be relevant to the disputed terms of a contract.

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

#695

Post by sonicanatidae »

Aloisius wrote: post #670
troupe wrote: 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.

Let's say for the sake of argument that they violated their original charter, it still wouldn't give Musk standing to bring the suit. The charter is not a contract with Musk. He has no more standing than you or I.

[flagged]

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

#696

Post by karaterobot »

krisboyz781 wrote: post #220
karaterobot wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want to be in the position of defending Elon Musk, but in this case his complaint seems to be that OpenAI claims one thing and does another. If X.ai started out telling everyone it's for-profit and closed off, then it's not hypocritical at all for it to be that. It's something else, sure.

But Musk claims X is the free speech town square but it isn't

If you have standing, you are always free to file a suit against X on that basis. Even so, I'm not sure how X is relevant to lawsuit Musk made against OpenAI. If you're just saying that Musk is a hypocrite, you won't hear me arguing, but it has nothing to do with a lawsuit against a different company. I think the word for it is whataboutism.

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

#697

Post by HarHarVeryFunny »

starbugs wrote: post #590
HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #580

Any competent lawyer is going to get Musk on the stand reiterating his opinions about the danger of AI. If the tech really is dangerous then being more closed arguably is in the public's best interest, and this is certainly the reason OpenAI have previously given. Not saying I agree that being closed source is in the public good, although one could certainly argue that accelerating the efforts of bad actors to catch…

> If the tech really is dangerous then being more closed arguably is in the public's best interest If that was true, then they shouldn't have started off like that to begin with. You can't have it both ways. Either you are pursuing your goal to be open (as the name implies) or the way you set yourself up was ill-suited all along.

Their position evolved. Many people at the time disagreed that having open source AGI - putting it in the hands of many people - was the best way to mitigate the potential danger. Note that this original stance of OpenAI was before they started playing with transformers and having anything that was beginning to look like AI/AGI. Around the time of GPT-3 was when they said "this might be dangerous, we're going to hold it back".

There's nothing wrong with changing your opinion based on fresh information.

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

#698

Post by Matticus_Rex »

Aloisius wrote: post #670
troupe wrote: 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.

Let's say for the sake of argument that they violated their original charter, it still wouldn't give Musk standing to bring the suit. The charter is not a contract with Musk. He has no more standing than you or I.

If Musk's tens of millions in donations were in reliance on the charter and on statements made by sama, Brockman, etc., there's probably a standing argument there. Musk is very different than you or I -- he's a co-founder of the company and was very involved in its early work. I wouldn't guess that standing would be the issue they'd have trouble with (though I haven't read the complaint).

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

#699

Post by TaylorAlexander »

reso wrote: post #657

It's clear that OpenAI has become something that it wasn't intended to be at it's founding. Maybe that change happened for good reasons, but the fact that there was a change is not in doubt.

Intention is an interesting word. I wonder how many of the founders quietly hoped it would make them a lot of money. Though to be fair, I do believe that hope would have been tied to the expectation that they meet their stated goals of developing some form of AGI.

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

#700

Post by e_i_pi_2 »

amou234 wrote: post #681
reso wrote: post #657

It's clear that OpenAI has become something that it wasn't intended to be at it's founding. Maybe that change happened for good reasons, but the fact that there was a change is not in doubt.

Elon Musk: actual billionaire Sam Altman: fake billionaire (most equity is tied to openAI) this should be a one sided battle

This type of thing makes me wish the only option was public defenders so you aren't able to just pay more and have better chances in court. That said - I still don't think Musk has a good chance here, he's lost cases against people with far less resources by just being confidently wrong, at some point paying more for lawyers doesn't help you
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