Elon Musk vs. Sam Altman / OpenAI Lawsuit

Overview

Elon Musk's OpenAI Lawsuit refers to entrepreneur Elon Musk suing OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman over the issue of the company's status as a nonprofit. According to Musk, OpenAI has strayed from its original mission of developing safe and responsible AI in order to pursue profits. In the lawsuit, Musk alleges that OpenAI has become a "de facto subsidiary of Microsoft," and this is a breach of contract. Musk notably participated in the founding of OpenAI as a nonprofit before leaving in 2018. After the lawsuit was filed in early 2024, it garnered prominent discourse online.

Background

OpenAI was incorporated in 2015 as a non-profit company. According to Elon Musk's lawsuit and his previous public statements, OpenAI was formed in partnership between Musk, Sam Altman and others who were concerned about the development of an artificial general intelligence (AGI) and the problems it might pose for humanity.^[1] The spur for founding OpenAI was Google's work on AI, which Musk saw as motivated by profit and potentially dangerous. The founders planned to create an open-source, not-for-profit AI, and Musk donated significant amounts of money.^[2]

In 2018, according to reporting from Semafor, Musk left OpenAI following a rift with Altman and others. Musk believed the company was falling behind Google and he wanted to take it over entirely and run it himself. Others refused, and Musk left.^[3]

In 2020, OpenAI entered into a partnership with Microsoft. After the release of ChatGPT in 2022, OpenAI became increasingly prominent and valuable. Sam Altman was briefly fired as CEO of OpenAI in 2023.

While the reason given for Altman's firing was a lack of communication with the board, many speculated that the real reason might have to do either with the rapid development of the technology, the company's non-profit status or the company's ties to Microsoft. Altman was rehired five days later after numerous employees protested.

Developments

Musk Files Lawsuit

Elon Musk filed the lawsuit against Sam Altman and OpenAI on February 29th, 2024, in California state court. The lawsuit alleges breach of contract and unfair business practices, with the intention of eventually holding a trial by jury. The lawsuit also has a series of exhibits attached, including a 2015 email from Altman to Musk laying out goals for the company as a nonprofit.

Additionally, Musk alleges that GPT-4 or other projects in development by OpenAI might already be a type of AGI, and therefore should be open-sourced according to the company's charter documents. He asks for a judicial determination on whether these models are AGI or not.^[1]

OpenAI Response

On March 5th, 2024, OpenAI put out a statement in the form of a blog post describing its relationship with Elon Musk.^[6] In the blog post, which was followed by a series of excerpted emails between company leaders, OpenAI stated that "we intend to move to dismiss all of Elon’s claims" and argue the lawsuit is without merit.

According to OpenAI, Musk and the other founders agreed to take the company down the for-profit route in 2017, but Musk demanded full control of the for-profit company. The others refused "because we felt it was against the mission for any individual to have absolute control over OpenAI." Musk then left OpenAI. The founders had settled on the for-profit idea originally because they wanted to raise more money for the company, a goal which Musk appears to express support for in emails released by OpenAI (seen below).

According to OpenAI, Musk also agreed that as the company produced increasingly advanced AIs, it made sense to be less open about progress and technology. Musk said "Yup" to this claim in an email attached to the blog post (seen below).

Musk Meme Responses

In response to a March 5th X post by OpenAI announcing the blogpost (which was later pinned to their profile) Musk replied "change your name." Both the reply and the original post received over 11,000 likes in less than 24 hours (seen below).^[10]

Musk went on to share a series of memes to his platform, X, poking fun at OpenAI and referring to it as "ClosedAI." For example, the meme seen below received 158,000 likes in five hours on March 5th and referenced a post made by Altman showing an OpenAI guest badge during the brief period when he was fired as CEO.

Online Reactions

Online, posters reacted to the 2024 lawsuit in a variety of ways. Some expressed doubt about Elon Musk's motives, like X user @Kei0x (seen below) whose March 1st, 2024, post about the topic received over 3,900 likes on X in six hours.^[4]

The development also saw considerable conversation on Reddit, with several posts in the /r/openai subreddit on March 1st, including one (seen below) by Redditor /u/assymmetry1 that joked that ChatGPT "passed the bar exam for situations just like this," receiving over 300 upvotes and 230 comments in seven hours.^[5] Many commenters also wondered about information that the lawsuit might reveal to the public about OpenAI's technological progress.

Memes About OpenAI's Corporate Structure

The lawsuit's first page revealed OpenAI's arcane corporate structure, with several entities named "OpenAI" tied together legally in various ways. Online, posters poked fun at this complexity, including @yacineMTB (seen below left) who received over 5,000 likes on in five days on March 1st. @netcapgirl received over 1,200 likes on the same day for making the post (seen below right) about the same topic.^[9]

Related Events

Firing of Sam Altman

Firing of Sam Altman from OpenAI, also known as Sam Altman Ousted From OpenAI, refers to the dismissal of former OpenAI CEO Sam Altman on November 17th, 2023, that led to a spurt of memes and speculation about the internal workings of the company behind ChatGPT in the latter half of 2023. Altman was fired from his position while Greg Brockman was released as the chairman of the board of directors. AI and tech enthusiasts on X and Reddit, among other sites, shared memes and discourse about Altman's controversial firing, which was reportedly due to him withholding information from the board.

External References