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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]

#831
post #703
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…

What is with these "ti", "ni", "fi" typos? Weird.

I copy pasted the text from the PDF mentioned in GP comment for those as lazy as myself

I cleaned it up a bit but didn't notice that bug of 2 letters. I used Preview for macOS, for what it's worth. I also wonder why it swapped two letter words

The original had a `[NUM]) ` for each bullet point which I found interesting, haven't seen that before in emails

Link to pdf: https://www.courthousenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/mu... (reference page 40, exhibit 2)

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

#832
post #588

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, and this is certainly the reason OpenAI have previously given. Not really. It slows down like security over obscurity. It needs to be open that we know the real risks and we have the best information to combat it. Otherwise, someone who does the same in closed matter, has better chances to get advantage when misusing i…

I don't see how opening it makes it safer. It's very different from security things, where some "white hat" can find a security, and they can then fix it so instances don't get hacked. Sure, a bad person could run the software without fixing the bug, but that isn't going to harm anyone but themselves.

That isn't the case here. If some well meaning person discovers a way that you can create a pandemic causing superbug, they can't just "fix" the AI to make that impossible. Not if it is open source. Very different thing.

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

#833
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.

What about damages. How difficult to show.

In case anyone is confused I am referring to 126, 132 and 135. Not 127.

"126. As a direct and proximate result of Defendants breaches, Plaintiff has suffered damages in an amount that is presently unknown, but that substantially exceeds this Courts jurisdictional minimum of $35,000, and, if necessary, will be proven at trial.

127. Plaintiff also seeks and is entitled to specific performance of Defendants contractual obligations.

132. Injustice can only be avoided through the enforcement of Defendants repeated promises. If specific enforcement is not awarded, then Defendants must at minimum make restitution in an amount equal to Plaintiffs contributions that have been misappropriated and by the amount that the intended third-party beneficiaries of the Founding Agreement have been damaged [how??], which is an amount presently unknown, and if necessary, will be proven at trial, but that substantially exceeds this Courts jurisdictional minimum of $35,000.

135. As a direct and proximate result of Defendants breaches of fiduciary duty, Plaintiff and the express intended third-party beneficiaries of the Founding Agreement have suffered damages in an amount that is presently unknown, but substantially exceeds this Courts jurisdictional minimum of $35,000, and if necessary, will be proven at trial."

The end result of this suit, if it is not dismissed, may be nothing more than OpenAI settling with the plaintiffs for an amount equal to the plaintiffs' investments.

According to this complaint, we are supposed to be third-party beneficiaries to the founding agreement. But who actually believes we would be compensated in any settlement. Based on these claims, the plaintiffs clearly want their money back. Of course they are willing to claim "the public" as TPBs to get their refund. Meanwhile, in real life, their concern for "the public" is dubious.

Perhaps the outcome of the SEC investigation into Altman's misrepresentations to investors, if any, may be helpful to these plaintiffs.

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

#834

Wouldn't you have to prove damages in a lawsuit like this? What damages does Musk personally suffer if OpenAI has in fact broken their contract?

Could they just give him back the $60M or whatever? That seems like nothing to them, or Elon.

Imagine if a regular for profit startup did that. It gets 60 million in initial funding, and later their valuation goes up to 100 billion. Of course they can't just give the 60 million back.

This is different and has a lot of complications that are basically things we've never seen before, but still, just giving the 60 million back doesn't make any sense at all. They would've never achieved what they've achieved without his 60 million.

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

#836
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.

What about damages. How difficult to show. In case anyone is confused I am referring to 126, 132 and 135. Not 127. "126. As a direct and proximate result of Defendants breaches, Plaintiff has suffered damages in an amount that is presently unknown, but that substantially exceeds this Courts jurisdictional minimum of $35,000, and, if necessary, will be proven at trial. 127. Plaintiff also seeks and is entitled to spec…

Elon's asking for specific performance (IE they uphold the agreement) not damages.

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

#837

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So much of the discussion here is about being a non-profit, but per your quote I think the key is open source. Here we have people investing in an open source company, and the company never opened their source. Rather than open source technology everyone could profit from, they kept everything closed and sold exclusive access. I think it is going to be hard for OpenAI to defend their behavior, and a huge amount of da…

It says "will seek to open source technology for the public benefit when applicable" they have open sourced a number of things, Whisper most notably. Nothing about that is a promise to open source everything and they just need to say it wasn't applicable for ChatGPT or DallE because of safety.

I doubt the safety argument will hold up in court. Anything safe enough to allow Microsoft or others access too would be safe enough to release publicly. Our AI overlords are not going to respect an NDA. And for the public safety/disinformation side of things, I think it is safe to say that cat is out of the bag and chasing the horse that has bolted.

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

#838
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

At least 1/2 of Altman's net worth is invested in Helion energy (fusion energy startup).

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

#839
"In March 2023, OpenAI released its most powerful language model yet, GPT-4. GPT-4 is not just capable of reasoning. It is better at reasoning than average humans. It scored in the 90th percentile on the Uniform Bar Exam for lawyers. It scored in the 99th percentile on the GRE Verbal Assessment. It even scored a 77% on the Advanced Sommelier examination."

One could argue a common characteristic of the above exams is that they each test memory, and, as such, one could argue that GPT-4's above-average performance is not necessarily evidence of "reasoning". That is, GPT-4 has no "understanding" but it has formidable reading speed and retention (memory).

While preparation for the above exams depends heavily on memorisation, other exams may focus more on reasoning and understanding.

Surely GPT-4 would fail some exams. But when it comes to GPT-4's exam performance, only the positive results are reported.

https://freeman.vc/notes/reasoning-vs-memorization-in-llms

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

#840
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.

So much of the discussion here is about being a non-profit, but per your quote I think the key is open source. Here we have people investing in an open source company, and the company never opened their source. Rather than open source technology everyone could profit from, they kept everything closed and sold exclusive access. I think it is going to be hard for OpenAI to defend their behavior, and a huge amount of da…

I might be too generous, but my interpretation is that the ground changed so fast that they needed to shift to continue the mission given the new reality. After ChatGPT, every for-profit and its dog is going hard. Talent can join the only Mother Teresa in the middle, or compete with them as they stupidly open all the source the second they discover anything. You can’t compete with the biggest labs in the world who have infinite GPU, with selfless open sourcers running training on their home PC’s. And you need to be in the game to have any influence over the eventual direction. I’d still bet the goal is the same, but how it’s done has changed by necessity.
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