OpenAI Just Unleashed Some Explosive Texts From Elon Musk: “You Can’t Sue Your Way To Artificial General Intelligence”.
Source Of Image: “Elon Musk Closing the 2016 Tesla Annual Shareholders’ Meeting” by jurvetson is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
Things are getting seriously intense in the legal battle between Elon Musk and OpenAI, as OpenAI just fired back with a blog post defending their position against Musk’s claims. This post includes some pretty interesting text messages exchanged between key players like co-founders Ilya Sutskever, Greg Brockman, and Sam Altman, along with Elon Musk himself and former board member Shivon Zilis.
OpenAI’s blog post directly addressed Musk’s lawsuit, stating, “You can’t sue your way to AGI” (referring to artificial general intelligence, which Altman has predicted is coming soon). They expressed respect for Musk’s past contributions but suggested he should focus on competing in the market rather than the courtroom. The post emphasized the importance of the U.S. maintaining its leadership in AI and reiterated OpenAI’s mission to ensure AGI benefits everyone, expressing hope that Musk shares this goal and the principles of innovation and free market competition that have fueled his own success.
The released messages shed light on internal discussions. In July 2017, Brockman told Zilis about a meeting with Musk, where Musk reportedly acknowledged that while a non-profit structure was initially appropriate, it might not be the best long-term. Later that month, Brockman outlined a potential path for OpenAI to Musk: a non-profit model through 2017, transitioning to a for-profit model focused on AI research and hardware in 2018, and potentially involving government projects at some point.
The blog post also detailed Musk’s attempts to become CEO and gain majority control of OpenAI. Interestingly, it mentioned that Musk once stated he “didn’t care about equity” but simply needed to accumulate $80 billion for a Mars city. The idea of merging OpenAI with Tesla, which had been previously reported, was also brought up. When OpenAI’s co-founders rejected this proposal due to concerns about a potential power struggle, Musk resigned from the company.
Following his resignation, Musk reportedly held a farewell meeting with the team, encouraging them to pursue their plan of raising billions annually and indicating that he would pursue advanced AI research at Tesla, believing it to be the only entity capable of securing that level of funding.
Around the time Musk was acquiring Twitter, he texted Altman, expressing his “disturbance” at OpenAI’s new $20 billion valuation. According to the released texts, Musk claimed he provided almost all the seed, Series A, and most of the Series B funding, calling the valuation a “bait and switch.”
Just a few months later, Musk launched his own OpenAI competitor, xAI.
Some of these messages had previously surfaced in court filings Musk submitted as part of his ongoing lawsuit against OpenAI and its partner Microsoft. Musk’s lawsuit, initially filed in March, alleged that OpenAI had deviated from its original non-profit mission of developing AI for the public good. He withdrew the suit without explanation in June 2024, only to refile it in August 2024.
