Elon Musk sparks battle of giants with OpenAI lawsuit

No one who says they don’t love drama actually means it. 

What we have to understand is there are different types of messiness to be enjoyed and savored. Take me for instance.

I didn’t get the celebrity beef enjoyer gene. I didn’t get the YouTube fights enjoyer gene. But when it comes to watching big businesses duke it out, I am a fiend. 

Worldstar, who?

The latest thing that has me reaching for the popcorn is Elon ‘X marks the spot’ Musk going after OpenAI. 

As a former cofounder, Musk alleges that OpenAI is turning to the dark side. The company was formerly a purely nonprofit entity, but has since broken from that model opening a for profit ‘wing’ of the OpenAI name, and made moves like partnering with Automattic companies Tumblr and WordPress to train on user creations. 

This is after CEO Sam Altman’s firing and near-immediate rehiring in 2023, which was followed by what the suit calls a “coup” —a restock of the company’s board with members allegedly handpicked by Altman himself to better suit partners at Microsoft.

To quote the lawsuit: 

“Mr. Musk has long recognized that AGI poses a grave threat to humanity—perhaps the greatest existential threat we face today.  His concerns mirrored those raised before him by luminaries like Stephen Hawking and Sun Microsystems founder Bill Joy.

Mr. Altman caused OpenAI to radically depart from its original mission and historical practice of making its technology and knowledge available to the public.

On information and belief, this secrecy is primarily driven by commercial considerations, not safety.”

Even to a purple prose proponent like me, it’s a surprisingly flowery document for a document submitted to a court. Then again, I’m no lawyer. And it doesn’t take a lawyer to consider the repeated actions of the person bringing this suit ostensibly based so heavily in morality and human rights forward. Also worth considering is that fact that he’s the founder of XAI, another AI company that might see OpenAI as a competitor. 

I don’t have a horse in this race as far as who wins—after all, I’m no big fan of either entity. But this does raise the question of how far you can get away from what you tell your principle founders/investors before the hammer comes down. 

Laura Lazaro Cabrera, of the Center for Democracy and Technology, told Wired that the bigger problem looming is that:

“…many AI startups such as OpenAI find themselves in a position where they’re reliant on big tech finances and infrastructure, because of the sheer computing power that AI needs to develop.” 

Could moving past initial mission statements towards bigger payouts actually come to be seen as morally and even legally wrong in a pro-capitalist context? 

Or will this case mark a precedence in which OG founders and financiers can get cut off more easily as soon as their investees get big enough? 

No one really wins here except me and every other fan of catty corporate tea. But place your bets anyway!