Foreign media news, recently, the controversy between OpenAI and Elon Musk has attracted the most attention. According to a blog post published by OpenAI, when OpenAI planned to transition to a for-profit entity to achieve its goals, Musk had hoped that the group would merge with Tesla, or take full control of the company. In response to Musk's lawsuit, OpenAI released old emails from 2015 to 2018 when Musk was involved in its operations.
In 2015, OpenAI announced that it had received $1 billion in funding when it introduced itself to the world. According to the company, Musk came up with the figure, but OpenAI raised less than $45 million from him and about $90 million from other donors. In the email, Musk said that in order to appear promising, a figure larger than $100 million was needed, and promised to cover what other donors did not provide.
In 2017, OpenAI began discussing the transition to a for-profit structure, as AI requires a lot of computing power. Musk was involved in the planning, initially hoping to gain a majority stake, control of the initial board of directors and CEO position. However, the group argued that giving one person absolute control over it was contrary to its mission, and the two sides failed to reach an agreement. During the negotiations, Musk reportedly refused to provide funding.
In 2018, Musk suggested to OpenAI that the organization merge with Tesla in order to fund AI research. He thinks it's the only way to compete with Google. However, OpenAI did not disclose the follow-up discussions, and Musk soon left the company. In the last email, Musk said that OpenAI has a 0% probability of relevance relative to DeepMind Google without drastically changing execution and resources.
In the lawsuit, Musk accused OpenAI of becoming a "closed de facto subsidiary" of Microsoft, using AI technology for products such as Bing. He believes that Microsoft is expected to make a profit by selling GPT-4 technology, but it will not be possible if OpenAI makes the technology available to the public for free as required. However, OpenAI said that Musk understands that its mission does not mean open-sourcing AI technology. They released an email in which co-founder and chief scientist Ilya Sutskever told Musk that it makes sense to be less open as AI builds progress. Musk agrees.
OpenAI expressed regret that it had come this far with Musk, who had inspired the company to aim high, but later started a competitor and filed a lawsuit when the company began to make progress on its own. After Musk filed the lawsuit, OpenAI sent an internal memo to employees denying his allegations. Chief strategy officer Jason Kwon said Musk's statement may stem from his regret that he was not involved in the company's affairs. Another memo was signed by Sam Altman, who nostalgically remembered the days when he competed with others by building better technology and echoed a thank-you tweet from Musk five years ago.
In the lawsuit, Musk accused OpenAI of breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duty, and unfair competition. He sought a jury trial and asked the court to order OpenAI to follow its long-standing practice of giving the public access to AI research and technology and prohibiting it from using it for the financial benefit of Microsoft or other specific organizations or individuals. At the moment, Musk has not responded to OpenAI's post.