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Elon Musk has lost his lawsuit against Sam Altman and OpenAI

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Re: Elon Musk has lost his lawsuit against Sam Altman and OpenAI

#91
post #52
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, twitter ended up useful for him when he used it to buy his way into the US government and close down all the departments that were investigating his companies for breaking all sorts of laws.

As a business transaction: Twitters acquisition is among the worst deals in human history. As means to buy an election an Presidency: highly efficient use of capital with an undeniable short and long-term ROI.

> Twitters acquisition is among the worst deals in human history.

That he won't have to pay for. Shareholders will, as part of the SpaceX IPO.

Re: Elon Musk has lost his lawsuit against Sam Altman and OpenAI

#92
post #51
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Statute of limitations is not a "bureaucratic technicality", it is the law.

Can some lawyer explain the rationale of statute of limitations? Like why does a robber get to get away with the crime if they are able to evade the police for x number of years. Is it just because the trials suck after a while cuz no one remembers anything?

Not a lawyer, but - fugitives don't get to run the clock on statute of limitations.

Re: Elon Musk has lost his lawsuit against Sam Altman and OpenAI

#93

Because no one has commented yet on the legal significance: Musk lost today because the jury found that he waited too long to bring his claims. The jury answers only yes/no questions, so we do not know their exact thoughts, but it is likely they determined that the 2019 and 2021 Microsoft deals were too similar to the 2023 Microsoft deal that was the centerpiece of Musk’s lawsuit. Musk could have brought the same law…

>Musk could have brought the same lawsuit in 2019 or 2021, meaning his claims were untimely for the 3 year statute of limitations.

Why is a hypothetical ground for this decision? "You didn't complain immediately the first time you got robbed, therefore all the robbing since then is covered by a statute of limitation".

Re: Elon Musk has lost his lawsuit against Sam Altman and OpenAI

#94
post #45

I think a lot about how there's a very plausible alternate history where Elon Musk controls most of the frontier of AI.

You speak as if Elon Musk didn't buy tons of AI chips for full self driving (Dojo) and COMPLETELY flub it. It's the same as always. Musk himself is an awful business man. He relies upon buying the success of others and taking over. Outside of that, he's kind of awful. Initiatives started by Musk himself almost inevitably fail.

Tesla wasn't "successful" before he "took it over" (read: invested most of their seed capital and ran the actual day-to-day operations).

SpaceX, founded entirely by him alone, is also the most valuable space technology company on earth, so...

Re: Elon Musk has lost his lawsuit against Sam Altman and OpenAI

#97
post #45

I think a lot about how there's a very plausible alternate history where Elon Musk controls most of the frontier of AI.

You speak as if Elon Musk didn't buy tons of AI chips for full self driving (Dojo) and COMPLETELY flub it. It's the same as always. Musk himself is an awful business man. He relies upon buying the success of others and taking over. Outside of that, he's kind of awful. Initiatives started by Musk himself almost inevitably fail.

10 years returns S&P 500 (index of all those better than Musk): 261% Tesla: 2700%

Disclaimer: My portfolio is 65% Tesla.

Re: Elon Musk has lost his lawsuit against Sam Altman and OpenAI

#98

Because no one has commented yet on the legal significance: Musk lost today because the jury found that he waited too long to bring his claims. The jury answers only yes/no questions, so we do not know their exact thoughts, but it is likely they determined that the 2019 and 2021 Microsoft deals were too similar to the 2023 Microsoft deal that was the centerpiece of Musk’s lawsuit. Musk could have brought the same law…

My own thoughts:

If I had been on the jury, I would have found against Musk on every point.

His lawyers created a “3 phases of doubt” to try and sidestep the statute of limitations, but it was clearly bogus and he was on notice of OpenAI creating a for-profit in 2019.

Musk was perfectly happy to have OpenAI be a for-profit, a non-profit with an attached for-profit (the current structure), or even just absorbed into Tesla. His complaints fell flat for me given the number of emails where he said that a non-profit was likely a mistake.

This is technical, but Musk clearly never created a charitable trust, which was a precondition for his claims. His funds were donated for general use by OpenAI, not for any specific use that would allow him to claim breach of charitable trust. Also, all of his funds were spent by no later than 2020 which is before his alleged breach in 2023.

Musk unreasonably delayed bringing this case until the success of ChatGPT and starting a competing AI company, and he had unclean hands because he attempted to sabotage OpenAI repeatedly by poaching its key staff while on the board.

Re: Elon Musk has lost his lawsuit against Sam Altman and OpenAI

#100
post #90

So you are allowed to violate the law if you aren't sued quickly enough.

Yes. This has always been, and will always be, the case. It's the same in things like copyright law - you can violate any software license if the copyright holder doesn't know you're doing it, or doesn't want to sue you, or doesn't sue you in time. It's the same with taxi medallions or hotel regulations if you're trying to start Uber or AirBNB.
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