Musk is challenging the validity of the contract with Openai and Sam Altman
The OpenAI, Inc., a Corpora of Research, Development and Distribution of AI Technology for the Public Good (Extended Abstract)
The drama is partially based on the fears that OpenAI was skirting safety concerns by releasing new products too quickly. Altman has denied this.
“Under its new board, it is not just developing but is refining an AGI [Artificial General Intelligence] to maximize profits for Microsoft, rather than for the benefit of humanity,” claims the filing. The GPT-4 is a AGI, on information and belief.
Sadly, Musk is not that person, and his lawyers have figured out that letting the world’s richest man rack up billable hours filing nonsensical lawsuits is more lucrative than fitting the “facts” to the “law,” or whatever it is regular lawyers do.
First cause of action of the lawsuit can be taken. It is a claim for breach of contract — a very, very simple claim that almost any first-year law student can evaluate, because step one is asking if there is a contract, and step two is figuring out what the contract says. To have a valid contract, you need an offer, acceptance, and an exchange of value — what lawyers are trained to call “consideration,” in an enduring effort to make simple concepts sound confusing and increase fees.
The courts will not like to enforce contracts unless they are written down, and they don’t like doing that for ultra-sophisticated parties with a long history of dealing.
Openai, Inc.’s founding articles are among the places that this Founding Agreement can be found.
The specific purpose of this corporation is to provide funding for research, development and distribution of technology related to artificial intelligence. The resulting technology will benefit the public and the corporation will seek to open source technology for the public benefit when applicable. The corporation is not organized for the private gain of any person.
X-ray Judge Steven Stein’s Tenure on a Funded DeepMind Research Lab and the Openai Motion to Dismiss
I asked a few lawyer friends if any of that looked like a contract, and most of them just made puzzled faces. The judge told the attorneys for X that their case was related to one of the most vapid extensions of law he had ever heard, as Musk has become increasingly fuzzy about how contracts work.
This entire complaint is more akin to an exam question than a real lawsuit, as the second cause of action is something called “promissory estoppel,” which sets law professors aflame and which never goes away in the real world. The important thing to know is that the richest person in the world is now trying to tell a court that he somehow detrimentally relied upon the promises of a nonprofit when he donated millions of dollars to it with no written contract. At least this is very funny.
I think the Openai motion to dismiss will be another 1L favorite because it will likely be about the failure to state a claim.
A nonprofit board oversees its for-profit arm, which at times can create tension over how quickly to commercialize products. The at-times dueling sides were on display last year when Altman was abruptly ousted then brought back to the company.
According to the suit, during the year 2015, Altman met with Musk due to concern about the risks of Artificial Intelligence and specifically, DeepMind, a research lab owned by Google.
The company went astray in recent years by creating a for-profit subsidiary, giving Microsoft an exclusive license to some of its technology and keeping the internal design of its latest version a secret.
The backlash was openly participated in by Musk. Last year, he told then-Fox News host Tucker Carlson that ChatGPT has a liberal bias, and he planned to provide an alternative.
Musk’s company offers a limited number of users in the U.S. the opportunity to try the prototype and provide feedback, though early access requires a paid subscription to another Musk company, X, formerly known as Twitter.
Open and Closed: How Open Are Language Models? Why Openness is important for AI and how GPT-4 can make AI more useful
There’s a range of openness, from full open source to completely closed depending on how much inner workings are shared with the public. Those in favor of open source argue the approach allows greater transparency and potential for innovation. Arguments against include warnings that it makes powerful AI models potentially available to criminals or geopolitical adversaries. Meta’s Llama 2 model is free to download, modify, and deploy—though it does have some limitations on use—while GPT-4 is not.
A lot of us researchers on the ground think that large language models like GPT- 4 are a very significant tool for allowing humans to do more but that they are limited in ways that make them far from stand-alone intelligences.
