Friday, March 1st 2024

Elon Musk Sues Open AI and Sam Altman for Breach of Founding Contract

Elon Musk in his individual capacity has sued Sam Altman, Gregory Brockman, Open AI and its affiliate companies, of breach of founding contract, and a deviation from its founding goal to be a non-profit tasked with the development of AI toward the benefit of humanity. This lawsuit comes in the wake of Open AI's relationship with Microsoft, which Musk says compromises its founding contract. Musk alleges breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duty, and unfair business practices against Open AI, and demands that the company revert to being open-source with all its technology, and function as a non-profit.

Musk also requests an injunction to prevent Open AI and the other defendants from profiting off Open AI technology. In particular, Musk alleges that GPT-4 isn't open-source, claiming that only Open AI and Microsoft know its inner workings, and Microsoft stands to monetize GPT-4 "for a fortune." Microsoft, interestingly, was not named in the lawsuit as a defendant. Elon Musk sat on the original board of Open AI until his departure in 2018, is said to be a key sponsor of AI acceleration hardware used in the pioneering work done by Open AI.
Source: Courthouse News Service
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94 Comments on Elon Musk Sues Open AI and Sam Altman for Breach of Founding Contract

#26
Dr. Dro
Owen1982basically: I don't want to pay alot of money to put the leading AI in my Teslas.
I don't believe it to be so shallow an issue. Musk is completely in the right on this one. I think it has potential to become a landmark case in favor of free software as well.
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#27
Selaya
when problems are fighting themselves, every1 else wins.
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#28
Chrispy_
I don't see how what OpenAI are doing is defensible, Elon Musk or not.
  1. They breached their contract with Elon. Even if you think he's a ****head, a contract is a contract and it's legally binding.
  2. They are taking intellectual property that others have contributed under the agreement that it would be for the public domain. They need to reimburse those contributors or remove their contributions if selling their work to Microsoft, and the decision to remove contributions or compensate those contributors would needed to have been dealt with in full before the Microsoft deal for all living contributors on a per-contributor individual basis.
  3. They have violated the GNU AGP License that their entire company was founded on. Regardless of who pays them now, they need to settle with contributors made under GNU AGPL or expose themselves to countless more lawsuits, potentially class-action lawsuits for any and all contributors so far.
I'm no lawyer but this seems like a cut and dry case. They've breached contracts and licenses left right and center, selling source code that they do not have the right to sell, because it's not theirs.
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#29
ThrashZone
Hi,
Guess that 5-7 trillion donation/ investment tin cup turned into a fire sell instead :cool:
Some nonprofits do well and others are just shelters from taxes.
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#30
Kohl Baas
ty_gerI have zero empathy.
Your empathy is irrelevant. As do the history of Musky Musk. It's just business.
Chrispy_I don't see how what OpenAI are doing is defensible, Elon Musk or not.
  1. They breached their contract with Elon. Even if you think he's a ****head, a contract is a contract and it's legally binding.
  2. They are taking intellectual property that others have contributed under the agreement that it would be for the public domain. They need to reimburse those contributors or remove their contributions if selling their work to Microsoft, and the decision to remove contributions or compensate those contributors would needed to have been dealt with in full before the Microsoft deal for all living contributors on a per-contributor individual basis.
  3. They have violated the GNU AGP License that their entire company was founded on. Regardless of who pays them now, they need to settle with contributors made under GNU AGPL or expose themselves to countless more lawsuits, potentially class-action lawsuits for any and all contributors so far.
I'm no lawyer but this seems like a cut and dry case. They've breached contracts and licenses left right and center, selling source code that they do not have the right to sell, because it's not theirs.
This! ^ Exactly this above.
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#33
Nosada
ty_gerPot calling the kettle black? One of the biggest tech fraudsters currently relevant complaining about someone else not keeping their word.

Musk is broke. This seems like a money grab.
But you see, Tesla's would be fully autonomous if only OpenAI was OPEN!

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#34
A&P211
bugTaken at face value, the claims seems to stand.
As for Microsoft not being mentioned... why would they be? This is about OpenAI doing an about-face.

Maybe this could be settled by renaming to OpenishAI?
or name is NreedyAI
AnarchoPrimitivI think this SHOULD be done, but I'm skeptical of Musk's reasons...granted, I'm not privy to his reasoning, but based on everything else he seems to believe....I probably won't agree.

That said, while on the topic of dangerous AI, has everybody seen this 7 minute film that was created by a professor of Computer Science, Staurt Russel,to warn of AI being combined with weapons? It's crazy

At 1:40, I liked when he said "and destroy the contents". Referring to penetrating the human head.
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#35
GhostRyder
I sometimes don't get all the Elon hate, not saying he's a savior or the greatest person ever but man the hate I see on him is getting old. I don't always agree with him but he is business savvy and has propelled society forward in many areas whether its by investing or assisting he has moved a lot of companies forward.

As for this, he's completely right and just based on what I've read his case is solid. Going to be interesting to see how this turns out.
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#36
evernessince
I'm no fan of Musk but I believe every case should be decided on the merits.

There isn't enough information here for anyone to even form an opinion, let alone a determination. Is there any link to the founding contract or is that just not public? Really without that everyone is just taking stabs in the dark as to whether this is justified or not.
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#37
TheEndIsNear
Everything must be monetized because the human race is horrible.
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#38
Space Lynx
Astronaut
AnarchoPrimitivI think this SHOULD be done, but I'm skeptical of Musk's reasons...granted, I'm not privy to his reasoning, but based on everything else he seems to believe....I probably won't agree.

That said, while on the topic of dangerous AI, has everybody seen this 7 minute film that was created by a professor of Computer Science, Staurt Russel,to warn of AI being combined with weapons? It's crazy

humans are capable of so much, yet so little. good little video though, and it is probably the future sadly.
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#39
ADB1979
TheEndIsNearEverything must be monetized because the human race is horrible.
"Money" is simply a common thing for people to use to buy and sell a variety of different goods and services. Before "Money", people would have to trade physical goods or trust a promise. You try buying a pair of shoes with a bucket of fish and see how far you get...

Seriously, try it, have a friend with you videoing the whole thing, upload it to YouTube and drop the link here, I would love to see it. If they don't go for the trade with a bucket of fish option, you can simply tell them that they are horrible Human beings because they are selling those shoes instead of simply giving them away, that always works for me.!
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#40
friocasa
TheEndIsNearEverything must be monetized because the human race is horrible.
Well, eating, medical care, and housing ain't free

The issue is when profits are put on top on everything, and so everything becomes a fair game, including war, drugs, messed up medical care, contamination, manipulation of society

And companies are by design focused on profits, and so there are most of the investors who fuel this fire, and over time the most aggressive companies prevail eating the smaller ones or forcing them to close

Capitalism is a problem, but the other systems seem to be even worse, your nick is right
Posted on Reply
#41
evernessince
friocasaWell, eating, medical care, and housing ain't free

The issue is when profits are put on top on everything, and so everything becomes a fair game, including war, drugs, messed up medical care, contamination, manipulation of society

And companies are by design focused on profits, and so there are most of the investors who fuel this fire, and over time the most aggressive companies prevail eating the smaller ones or forcing them to close

Capitalism is a problem, but the other systems seem to be even worse, your nick is right
Nothing is free but if you have enough capital to leverage you can earn more than enough off investments that it might as well be. Those Investments also happen to be in companies that often unequally exploit the middle-class and poor. The middle class and particularly the poor spend a much larger portion of their income on necessities because they have zero leverage. This also extends to other aspects of life from getting credit to purchasing a house / car, simply not being rich makes things more expensive. This inevitably leads to further concentration of wealth, especially given the lack of tax enforcement on the rich. It's fine to be rich but over-concentration of wealth is bad for the economy. Money needs to change hands at least 9 times in order for an economy to be considered healthy but with a greater proportion of that money being in control the wealthy it's leaving a smaller and smaller pool of money that is actively being exchanged generating economic activity.

Capitalism is a self destructive system without adequate government oversight.
Posted on Reply
#42
dgianstefani
TPU Proofreader
evernessinceNothing is free but if you have enough capital to leverage you can earn more than enough off investments that it might as well be. Those Investments also happen to be in companies that often unequally exploit the middle-class and poor. The middle class and particularly the poor spend a much larger portion of their income on necessities because they have zero leverage. This also extends to other aspects of life from getting credit to purchasing a house / car, simply not being rich makes things more expensive. This inevitably leads to further concentration of wealth, especially given the lack of tax enforcement on the rich. It's fine to be rich be over-concentration of wealth is bad for the economy. Money needs to change hands at least 9 times in order for an economy to be considered healthy but with a greater proportion of that money being in control the wealthy it's leaving a smaller and smaller pool of money that is actively being exchanged generating economic activity.

Capitalism is a self destructive system without adequate government oversight.
I agree with some of what you say, but government oversight rarely tends to make things better, especially economies.
Posted on Reply
#43
evernessince
dgianstefaniI agree with some of what you say, but government oversight rarely tends to make things better, especially economies.
The government is only as effective as the people elected to uphold it. If a government is enacting policies most folk don't agree on or is in general ineffective that's a sign of a broader issue.
Posted on Reply
#44
A&P211
AnarchoPrimitivI think this SHOULD be done, but I'm skeptical of Musk's reasons...granted, I'm not privy to his reasoning, but based on everything else he seems to believe....I probably won't agree.

That said, while on the topic of dangerous AI, has everybody seen this 7 minute film that was created by a professor of Computer Science, Staurt Russel,to warn of AI being combined with weapons? It's crazy

At 1:40, I liked when he said "and destroy the contents". Referring to penetrating the human head.
Posted on Reply
#45
DavidC1
evernessinceThis inevitably leads to further concentration of wealth, especially given the lack of tax enforcement on the rich.
There were no income taxes before WWI. They introduced it in the guise of being temporary for funding the war and never rescinded it. Income taxes need to go away, period.

The problem is not "rich are taxed enough" like AOC claims but just bad policies of endless spending and never planning to pay off debt and money printers going into places that only favor those in power.
TheEndIsNearEverything must be monetized because the human race is horrible.
I'd like you to try a society where no one is compensated for their work.
ADB1979Away from the military uses, this is why having things like "open AI" actually being open source is a very good thing to have, so people can see what they are doing and how they are manipulating and using the information. Obviously this will never apply to military, but everything that can be applied to one can be applied to another via certain "rules" and "parameters", but I have no idea whether this information input is also "open", I doubt it is, and that is a very important part of all of the nonsense we have seen with "AI" chatbots.
The real scary thing is the bad humans taking advantage of it to bring an era of absolute censorship and 100% blatant stealing of IP with "AI". Take the leftist leaning you were talking about with machines at doors preventing entry to necessary stores and establishments unless your social credit score is high, and unlike humans it won't have any empathy because it's just a machine, no conscious, no intelligence, no feelings.

As for Terminator, that's just fiction, and kind of a way to shift blame elsewhere. The problem has always been the human condition, which won't change.
Posted on Reply
#46
evernessince
DavidC1There were no income taxes before WWI. They introduced it in the guise of being temporary for funding the war and never rescinded it. Income taxes need to go away, period.
That's only part of the story, income tax was pushed by southern states as the North's industrial economy was booming while the south's agricultural economy was being left behind: www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/16th-amendment

It's all fine and dandy to say to get rid of income tax but ultimately you've proposed nothing to replace that massive gap in funding. Yes America didn't always have income tax but it did have sin tax, excise tax, and a whole host of other taxes. Whatever your replacement is needs to be worthwhile enough to make such sweeping changes.
DavidC1The problem is not "rich are taxed enough" like AOC claims but just bad policies of endless spending and never planning to pay off debt and money printers going into places that only favor those in power.
Endless spending is certainly an issue but so too is the increasing income inequality. The bottom 50% of Americans control a mere 2.6% of all the wealth while the top 20% control 86.6%: www.statista.com/statistics/203961/wealth-distribution-for-the-us/

At some point you have to have taxes targeted specifically at preventing concentration of wealth. In a capitalist economy, the further the concentration of wealth the more leverage those few have. More leverage often means more exploitation as they have more money while conversely everyone else has less and they use that power to further that trend. That exploitation in particularly bad when people are living paycheck to paycheck as often this means people have no choice but to take what they can get. If concentration of wealth becomes bad enough where people lower on the ladder don't have enough to buy everything they might ordinarily, that reduces the amount of economic activity there could have been otherwise. Ultimately the economy is carried on the backs of the commonfolk as they are the one's generating the vast majority of economic activity.

You sort of acknolwege this by saying that goverment policy only favors those in power. Well those in power in a capitalist economy are those with the most money.
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#47
Why_Me
ty_gerPot calling the kettle black? One of the biggest tech fraudsters currently relevant complaining about someone else not keeping their word.

Musk is broke. This seems like a money grab.
Did you even read the article?
TheEndIsNearEverything must be monetized because the human race is horrible.
?
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#48
Dr. Dro
GhostRyderI sometimes don't get all the Elon hate, not saying he's a savior or the greatest person ever but man the hate I see on him is getting old. I don't always agree with him but he is business savvy and has propelled society forward in many areas whether its by investing or assisting he has moved a lot of companies forward.

As for this, he's completely right and just based on what I've read his case is solid. Going to be interesting to see how this turns out.
It seems that it's become commonplace to hate on successful people and entities, as if the common folk were supposedly paragons of justice and uphold unquestionable moral standards. It makes me sick.
A&P211or name is NreedyAI
What does NVIDIA have to do with this quarrel? (I know it's a joke)
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#49
Scrizz
EternitThis needs international and national laws governing its usage.
Laws only apply to those that abide by them. ;)
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#50
R0H1T
Iain Saturnthey quickly changed course and abandoned the company's original mission to develop artificial intelligence for the benefit of humanity not profit.
I bet he had an iron clad contract for that, like the one with Twitter :laugh:
ScrizzLaws only apply to those that abide by them. ;)
Survival of the fittest meanest!
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