Musk vs. OpenAI: Billionaire wanted full control of AI lab
In California, the lawsuit filed by Elon Musk against OpenAI continued with the billionaire's questioning. One time, a tweet got in his way.
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In the legal dispute between Elon Musk and the leadership of OpenAI, the billionaire was questioned by the opposing counsel on Wednesday. Musk refused to answer even simple questions directly. The Verge reports. According to the report, the picture has solidified that Musk only withdrew his financial support for the AI lab when it turned out that he would not gain full control over it.
Musk reportedly wanted four out of seven board seats and 51 percent of the shares. When he didn't get that, he allegedly stopped funding and brought then-OpenAI researcher Andrej Karpathy to Tesla. Long before that, he had stated in an email that setting up OpenAI as a non-profit might have been a mistake: “Sense of urgency is not as high,” he said. The cross-examination will continue on Thursday.
Undermined by his tweet
During the questioning, Musk stated that he initially funded OpenAI with a total of 38 million US dollars: “I was a fool who provided them free funding to create a startup,” the Wall Street Journal quotes him. Musk added that he had thus laid the foundation for a company worth around 800 billion US dollars today, free of charge. The opposing counsel reportedly pointed out that the monetary donations likely provided Musk with tax benefits. Musk criticized such inquiries as a trick intended to lead him astray. According to the report, Musk also admitted during the questioning that his AI company, xAI, is a competitor to OpenAI. His claim that his electric car group Tesla is not working on artificial general intelligence (AGI) was undermined by the display of a contradictory tweet.
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In the proceedings (Case No. 4:24-cv-04722), the case concerns a lawsuit that Elon Musk filed against his former business partners two years ago. The billionaire was on the board of OpenAI for three years but resigned before the AI company triggered the current AI hype with ChatGPT and later founded a for-profit subsidiary. He accuses those responsible of thereby violating the founding agreement, which stipulated that OpenAI would develop so-called artificial general intelligence (AGI) for the benefit of humanity and not for the profit maximization of individuals. AGI is defined as an AI system that can understand and perform any intellectual task like a human.
(mho)
