OpenAI alleges Elon Musk desired ‘total command’ of company

OpenAI rebuffs Musk’s claims, offering its perspective on alleged deviations from nonprofit goals in recent blog post

Artificial intelligence research firm OpenAI has countered Elon Musk’s lawsuit by asserting that he once sought complete authority over the organization by proposing a merger with Tesla.

In a recent blog entry, OpenAI announced its intention to dismiss all claims made by Musk and presented its own version of events regarding the company’s alleged deviation from its original nonprofit objective.  

The post, authored by OpenAI co-founders Greg Brockman, Ilya Sutskever, John Schulman, Sam Altman, and Wojciech Zaremba, revealed Musk’s desire for either a merger with Tesla or full control, encompassing majority ownership, primary board influence, and the CEO position.  

OpenAI declined Musk’s terms for a for-profit arrangement as they believed it contradicted their mission to prevent any individual from having absolute power over the organization. Musk’s lawsuit contends that OpenAI has evolved into a Microsoft-associated closed-source entity focused on profit rather than societal benefit, thereby straying from its original charitable purpose that he helped finance.  

Musk claims this deviation constitutes a contractual violation, although no formal founding agreement has been publicly disclosed yet, and OpenAI’s response did not directly address its existence. OpenAI also justified its choice to keep its work closed-source, stating that Musk acknowledged the mission did not mandate open-sourcing artificial general intelligence (AGI).  

The company referenced a January 2016 email exchange in which Sutskever highlighted the need for reduced openness as AI development progressed, and Musk agreed with this stance. Musk’s lawsuit includes perplexing assertions, such as labeling GPT-4 as a Microsoft-owned algorithm representing AGI, contentions previously refuted by OpenAI internally but not addressed in its recent public statement. 

Source: Newsroom