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The Musk v. Altman trial is now well underway, in which businessman, entrepreneur, and the world's richest person, Elon Musk, is suing OpenAI co-founder Sam Altman and OpenAI itself. Musk has alleged that, as a co-founder of the company, he was deliberately misled in regards to OpenAI shifting the organisation away from a non-profit venture towards a for-profit model, breaking its foundational agreement.
In a post to an ongoing blog by OpenAI defending the company and laying out claims against Musk, titled "The truth about Elon Musk and OpenAI", the opening statement reads:
"Journalists have reported on the existence of a smear campaign headed by Elon and his intermediaries, and there is also evidence that Elon coordinated with Mark Zuckerberg in repeated attempts to undermine OpenAI’s mission," the post alleges.
"Elon is using his lawsuit to attack the non-profit OpenAI Foundation, which is focused on work in areas such as life sciences and curing diseases for everyone’s benefit."
The post then goes on to list both OpenAI and the OpenAI Foundation's claimed achievements. Among them is the company's stated mission to create AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) "that benefits all of humanity", and the OpenAI Foundation's initial $25 billion financial commitment, which is said to be focussed on health breakthroughs, the curing of diseases, and "proactively tackling risks that may arise from more capable AI."
Later in the text, the claims regarding Musk and OpenAI's history continue. The post alleges that OpenAI and Elon agreed in 2017 that a for-profit entity "had to be part of the next phase for OpenAI, given the large sums of money that would need to be raised."
At the trial, Musk has said that he was "not opposed to there being sort of a small-for-profit to provide funding for the non-profit," according to The Guardian, "as long as it was not the tail wagging the dog."
The OpenAI post claims that "Elon... demanded full control of OpenAI, and even wanted to merge it into Tesla. When we wouldn’t agree to his terms, he walked away and told us we had a '0% chance' of success. He turned out to be wrong though, and a resentful Elon has attacked OpenAI ever since."
The post also claims that a $38 million sum donated by Musk to the OpenAI non-profit was spent "exactly" as intended, and directly references the ongoing court case:
"Despite claiming and receiving a tax deduction for this donation, he’s now asking the court to treat it as an investment that entitles him to significant ownership of OpenAI," the statement claims.
When Musk was asked to clarify the lawsuit as he first took the stand, he said: "It's actually very simple. It's not okay to steal a charity... if it's okay to loot a charity, the entire foundation of charitable giving will be destroyed." The tech CEO is accusing OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, president Greg Brockman, and the company's major partner, Microsoft of breach of charitable trust, and unjust enrichment.
The OpenAI post concludes with a mission statement, in which the company says it remains focused on supporting the OpenAI Foundation, and continuing to improve ChatGPT. It's unclear if the purpose of the page is to provide more statements from the company in relation to the ongoing trial, but we'll be keeping an eye on it for any future developments.
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