- After almost 3 months, Elon Musk has dropped his lawsuit against OpenAI that accused the company of breaching their founding agreement.
- He has not cited any reason behind this sudden change of heart.
- OpenAI’s fierce battle against this lawsuit might be one of the reasons.
Elon Musk has dropped his lawsuit against OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman. On Tuesday, Musk’s lawyers moved to get the procedure started, marking the end of the legal battle that has been going on since March.
Elon Musk was a co-founder of OpenAI. In the lawsuit, he claimed that he had a “founding agreement” with the company that they were violating.
He also added that by partnering up with Microsoft, OpenAI is digressing from its original vision, which was to be a research-focused non-profit AI organization.
He also sought a jury trial and wanted the company to pay back any profit they had made from the business.
However, the reason behind the sudden change of heart is unknown but we can always speculate.
Reason #1
For instance, one very possible reason might be that Musk realized he wasn’t going to win this case. After OpenAI made his past emails public (more on that later) through a blog, there was no way his claims would stand in court.
Reason #2
The second reason might seem a little far-fetched, but still possible. Just today Elon Musk heavily criticized the partnership between Apple and OpenAI and said that the latter cannot be trusted with user data.
So maybe, Musk felt that if he has an active case going on against OpenAI and at the same time he goes on to openly criticize its partnership, it might seem like he has a personal vendetta against the company.
And that’s very much possible considering that Musk was a founding member of OpenAI and one of its biggest investors and now they are both competing against each other in the AI industry.
But it’s important to note that this is nothing but speculation. Musk and his team were not available to make a comment and until they do, we won’t know for sure what exactly prompted this decision.
What Did OpenAI Say In Response?
OpenAI was quick to push back against the lawsuit and called it “incoherent” and “frivolous”. It also requested the court to dismiss the case immediately since it was baseless.
- First, OpenAI made it very clear that there was no “founding agreement” or any agreement for that matter between Musk and the company.
- Then, the company published a blog that included several past emails from Musk where he wrote that it’s time for the company to focus on making some profit to fund the computing resources necessary to achieve its AI goals.
OpenAI’s leadership was rather unhappy with how things went down with Musk. After they were sued, they published a blog and said,
‘We’re sad that it’s come to this with someone whom we’ve deeply admired – someone who inspired us to aim higher, then told us we would fail, started a competitor, and then sued us when we started making meaningful progress towards OpenAI‘s mission without him.
Just because OpenAI is off the hook this time doesn’t mean Musk’s claims were all baseless because he isn’t the only one questioning the company’s motives.
Recently, a string of top-level executives left the company. While some were left with sealed lips, others revealed that is because OpenAI is prioritizing profit over safe and sustainable AI development.
In response to this, the company said that it had already established a new committee that will handle product safety and security. But how effective this committee will be is yet to be seen.
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