Elon Musk vs. OpenAI: A Timeline of the Decade-Long Rivalry

On February 29 Elon Musk Filed a case against Open AI and its CEO, Sam Altman. The main allegation was that the company breached its founding agreement with Musk — one of the AI ​​firm’s co-founders — by entering into a partnership with Microsoft as its “closed-source de facto subsidiary.” is operating on, with the objective of maximizing profit. . This, according to the billionaire, goes against its commitment to run as a non-profit and keep the project open source.

gave Trial It was filed in a San Francisco court, and the first hearing is still pending. Meanwhile, OpenAI hit back at the allegations by publishing a statement on Wednesday. Extensive post It contained 2015 email correspondence with Musk and said it would move to “reject all of Elon’s claims.”

OpenAI alleged that Musk wanted OpenAI to merge with Tesla or take full control of the organization himself. “We were unable to agree to profitable terms with Elon because we felt it was against the mission for any one person to have complete control over OpenAI,” said the post, which was written by OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman. , written by Ilya. Sutskever, John Schulman, Sam Altman, and Wojciech Zaremba. The Post also reveals through email conversations that the billionaire wanted OpenAI to “connect with Tesla as his cash cow.” If true, it contradicts Musk’s intentions to keep the AI ​​firm unprofitable.

Another email written by Sutskever said, “As we get closer to building AI, it will make sense to start being less open. In OpenAI, open means that everyone has access to AI. Once created, the fruits should be reaped, but it’s perfectly fine not to share the science, to which Musk replied, “Yes.” The email would directly refute Musk’s allegation that the AI ​​firm is closed. It is becoming a source.

Oh Reports According to The Verge, based on court filings, the Founder’s Agreement is not a contract or a binding contract that can be breached. Thus, Musk’s accusations against OpenAI could potentially be nullified.

“We regret that this has happened to someone we deeply admired – someone who encouraged us to aim high, then told us we would fail, a A competitor started, and then sued us when we started making meaningful progress toward OpenAI. Mission without it,” the statement said.

One thing OpenAI’s response proves is that the animosity between the two parties is not recent. It goes back to 2015. For those not fully familiar with the history of the two, here is the sequence of events that connects the dots and makes sense of this developing story.

Elon Musk vs. OpenAI: A Timeline of the Decade-long Rivalry

Those who follow Musk on X or are active in controversies in the tech space are no strangers to the antics of the world’s second-richest person (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos Went ahead It was elevated to the top spot on Tuesday). The Tesla CEO is known for his unfiltered social media posts, interviews, and strong decision-making. By buying X after creating social media Post Rebranding the entire platform in a Saturdayand by responding to antisemitism Post To to throw With Disney CEO Bob Iger (among many others) boycotting ads on the platform and accusing them of killing the platform, the list is long.

But these movements are not new. In 2015, Musk co-founded OpenAI with Altman, President and Chairman Greg Brockman, and several others. Musk was also the largest investor in the company, which has dedicated itself to the development of artificial intelligence, according to a Reports By TechCrunch. However, to everyone’s surprise, the billionaire resigned from his board seat in 2018.

The start of a fight

The reason for Musk’s resignation depends on who you ask. X Malik referred to “potential future conflict. [of interest]” in his role as CEO of Tesla as the electric vehicle giant was also developing AI for its self-driving cars. However, a semaphore Reports Citing unnamed sources, Altman said the billionaire felt that OpenAI had fallen behind other players such as Google, and instead proposed taking over the company himself, which the board would recommend. immediately rejected, leading to his exit. OpenAI has now confirmed this.

However, the exit was just the beginning. Just over a year later, OpenAI announced That it is building a profitable enterprise to meet its ambitious goals and pay its dues. That same year, Microsoft investment $1 billion in AI firm after finalizing multi-year partnership It was also the same year as GPT-2. announced And created quite a buzz online.

The events were interesting because not only was the company moving in the opposite direction of Musk’s philosophy, but the company also saw unprecedented success, both financially and technologically, that the billionaire reportedly thought was not possible.

Arrival of ChatGPT

However, as of 2022, nothing more has been heard from either side on the subject. In November 2022, ChatGPT, the AI-powered chatbot that arguably started the AI ​​arms race, was launched by OpenAI. Musk soon broke the silence. Answering a Post Where a user asked the chatbot to write a tweet in his style, it alleged that OpenAI had access to the X database for training, and pulled the plug on it. It was also the first time Musk publicly said, “OpenAI was launched as open source and non-profit. Neither is true yet.”

The billionaire didn’t stop there. During 2023, he took multiple shots at the company. In February, he claimed That OpenAI was built to be open source, and that’s why Musk named it OpenAI. “But now it’s become a closed-source, profit-maximizing company controlled by Microsoft,” he added.

Again, in March 2023, he Posted“I’m still confused about how a non-profit I donated ~$100M to became a $30B market cap for profit. If it’s legal why isn’t everyone doing it? Interesting The point is that the allegations in these three posts are also the main allegations in the case.

And that brings us to the present as we wait for the trial to begin. The lawsuit will also begin the climax of the Elon Musk vs. OpenAI saga, which has been brewing for nearly a decade. To the casual onlooker, this may simply be a corporate feud between two stakeholders, but a closer inspection reveals that it is much bigger than that. On one side is the serial entrepreneur who is known for repeated success and takes a strong (sometimes dogmatic) philosophical approach to technology. And on the other hand, this organization has the honor of being a pioneer of generative AI technology that could lead to the development of Artificial General Intelligence. Even with litigation, it could potentially change the course of AI.