OpenAI Responds to Elon Musk's Lawsuit Allegations

OpenAI has issued a rebuttal to Elon Musk's recent lawsuit, asserting that Musk had previously expressed a desire for "absolute control" over the company through a potential merger with Tesla. In response to Musk's allegations of OpenAI deviating from its nonprofit mission, the organization declared its intention to dismiss all of Musk's claims.

According to OpenAI's blog post, Musk's lawsuit accuses the organization of becoming a Microsoft-controlled entity focused on profit rather than its original humanitarian objectives. However, OpenAI contends that Musk's understanding of the company's mission did not necessitate open-sourcing artificial general intelligence (AGI), as evidenced by email correspondence from 2016. In one exchange, Musk acknowledged the feasibility of being less open as AI development progressed.

"As we discussed a for-profit structure in order to further the mission, Elon wanted us to merge with Tesla or he wanted full control," including "majority equity, initial board control, and to be CEO," according to the post, which is authored by OpenAI co-founders Greg Brockman, Ilya Sutskever, John Schulman, Sam Altman, and Wojciech Zaremba. "We couldn't agree to terms on a for-profit with Elon because we felt it was against the mission for any individual to have absolute control over OpenAI."

Regarding Musk's assertion that GPT-4 represents proprietary technology owned by Microsoft, OpenAI had previously refuted this claim internally. However, the organization did not address these specific allegations in its public response. The post says, "Elon understood the mission did not imply open-sourcing AGI," referring to artificial general intelligence. The company issued a January 2016 email conversation in which Sutskever said, "as we get closer to building AI, it will make sense to start being less open," and that "it's totally OK to not share the science." Musk responded: "Yup."

While Musk's lawsuit references a "founding agreement" with OpenAI, the details of such an agreement remain undisclosed to the public. OpenAI's response focuses on challenging Musk's claims and defending its decisions regarding the direction and transparency of its work.

Overall, OpenAI's retort aims to clarify its stance on Musk's allegations, emphasizing that GPT-4 is "a de facto Microsoft proprietary algorithm," its commitment to its mission, and refuting claims that it deviates from its nonprofit goals.

OpenAI 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."