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OpenAI says Elon Musk’s lawsuit is BS – they have receipts to prove it

Elon Musk has filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, accusing the company of betraying its humanity-first principles in favor of profits, and OpenAI is vowing to dismiss the claims.

Alt text: A collage showing a man wearing a headset microphone speaking with his hand raised against a purple backdrop with the OpenAI logo, alongside a close-up of another man's face.
Image: KnowTechie

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Elon Musk, the mind behind SpaceX and Tesla, has thrown down the legal gauntlet against OpenAI, accusing the company of betraying its humanity-first principles in favor of profits.

At the heart of the dispute is a claim that OpenAI, initially launched as a non-profit with Musk’s support, has strayed far from its altruistic path after flipping the for-profit switch.

Musk’s lawsuit seeks to stop anyone—yep, that includes you, Microsoft—from profiting off of OpenAI’s tech, especially the headline-hogging ChatGPT

OpenAI, for its part, isn’t taking Musk’s accusations lying down. The San Francisco-based titan shot back, refuting his claims and vowing to chuck his lawsuit into the nearest trash bin.

Adding intrigue to the saga, OpenAI’s riposte includes a juicy tidbit: emails hinting at Musk’s dreams of merging the AI upstart with his own ventures—Tesla or SpaceX.

“The mission of OpenAI is to ensure AGI benefits all of humanity, which means both building safe and beneficial AGI and helping create broadly distributed benefits,” OpenAI said in a blog post. “We intend to move to dismiss all of Elon’s claims.”

OpenAI stated that its mission is to ensure artificial general intelligence (AGI) benefits all of humanity, and it intends to move to dismiss all of Musk’s claims.

Musk’s lawsuit claims breach of contract and seeks an injunction to prevent anyone from benefiting financially from OpenAI’s technology.

OpenAI argued that both the company and Musk recognized the need for the company to become a for-profit entity but could not agree on terms.

An email screenshot showing a message from Elon Musk discussing his skepticism about OpenAI's relevance without significant change in execution and resources, mentioning that billions are needed, not just millions, and expressing concern about humanity's future. Personal email addresses and some lines of text are redacted. The image includes a watermark from "KnowTechie via Axios."
Image: KnowTechie

As OpenAI transitions from its non-profit roots to a profit-chasing entity, the question looms large—can an organization keep its altruistic vision alive while chasing the almighty dollar?

How about the other side of the coin here: Will Musk’s legal actions hinder OpenAI’s progress, or will it just contribute to the intricate web of artificial intelligence ethics?

Well, the only certainty is uncertainty. Musk and OpenAI both seem ready to duel it out in the courts of law and public opinion.

Have any thoughts on this? Drop us a line below in the comments, or carry the discussion to our Twitter or Facebook.

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Kevin is KnowTechie's founder and executive editor. With over 15 years of blogging experience in the tech industry, Kevin has transformed what was once a passion project into a full-blown tech news publication. Shoot him an email at kevin@knowtechie.com or find him on Mastodon or Post.

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