Tesla founder Elon Musk dropped his case against OpenAI and its founders, Sam Altman and Greg Brockman just one day before a San Francisco court had scheduled a hearing to consider its dismissal. Experts previously said that the suit had little legal merit, and the company leadership publicly rebutted all of Musk’s claims point by point.
Musk’s primary complaint was how OpenAI betrayed the company’s ‘Founding Agreement’ by focusing on profits. According to the lawsuit, “Under its Boards, it is not just developing but is actually refining an AGI to maximize profits for Microsoft, rather than for the benefit of humanity. Its technology, including GPT-4, is closed-source primarily to serve the proprietary commercial interests of Microsoft.”
Furthermore, Musk claimed that OpenAI was developing artificial general intelligence (AGI), which could become a “grave threat to humanity.” He also said in the lawsuit that the company is now a “de facto subsidiary” of Microsoft, especially as Microsoft has already poured billions into the AI company, with a $100-billion-dollar AI supercomputer partnership coming soon.
Musk’s moves and pronouncements against OpenAI are indicative of his mistrust of the company and its leadership. OpenAI’s leadership says that Elon Musk is doing this to the company simply because he regrets stepping away from its board in 2018. Sam Altman has even warned his staff that OpenAI will likely continue receiving attacks for the foreseeable future.
This lawsuit is another direct example of Musk’s attacks on OpenAI. But if his claims are unsubstantiated (or have a shaky foundation), he needs to drop them or the courts could reveal how petty they are.
