Elon Musk drops lawsuit after OpenAI publishes his emails

New York
CNN
—

Elon Musk’s lawyers moved Tuesday to dismiss the billionaire’s lawsuit Lawsuit against OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman, ending a months-long legal battle between the AI ​​startup’s co-founders.

Musk — who co-founded OpenAI in 2015 — filed a lawsuit against the company in February, accusing the ChatGPT maker of abandoning its original nonprofit mission by reserving some of its most advanced AI technology for private clients. The lawsuit sought a jury trial, and for the company, Altman, and co-founder and president Greg Brockman to repay any profits they received from the company.

But OpenAI is fast Pay for retreat disputed Musk’s claims, calling them “incoherent” and “frivolous” and arguing in a lawsuit that the case should be dismissed. The company too Published a blog post Which included several of Musk’s emails from the early days of OpenAI. The emails appear to show Musk acknowledging the company’s need to make large sums of money to fund the computing resources needed to support its AI ambitions, which contradicts allegations in his lawsuit that OpenAI was wrongly seeking profit.

Musk’s lawyers did not give a reason for their request to dismiss the lawsuit in Tuesday’s filing. A hearing on OpenAI’s motion to dismiss the case was scheduled for Wednesday.

The move to drop the lawsuit also came one day after Musk’s announcement Launched a series of posts On his social media platform Siri for users on a subscription basis.

“If Apple integrates OpenAI into the OS (operating system) level, Apple devices will be blocked in my companies. “This is an unacceptable security violation.” He said In one post. (Apple said as part of its announcement that user queries sent to ChatGPT will not be stored by OpenAI.)

The Musk-OpenAI legal battle represents the divergent visions of how to manage the maker of ChatGPT — which has skyrocketed in value and become a leader in the burgeoning field of artificial intelligence that many consider the future of technology.

Musk accused OpenAI of racing to develop powerful “artificial general intelligence” technology in order to “maximize profits.” Meanwhile, OpenAI has accused Musk of being jealous that he is no longer involved in the startup, having left OpenAI in 2018 following a failed attempt to convince his fellow founders to let Tesla acquire it.

But while OpenAI has called Musk’s claims “fiction,” the billionaire isn’t the only one to raise questions about OpenAI’s leadership and direction. Last year, the company faced a high-profile leadership crisis that led to Altman’s temporary ouster from the company, apparently over concerns from several board members about… Artificial intelligence risks. After days of uncertainty and the intervention of Microsoft, the main investor in OpenAI, Altman was restored to his position in what industry analysts said was a victory for those seeking to commercialize artificial intelligence technology.

Recently, several notable safety leaders have emerged from OpenAI I left the company, with many publicly claiming that the company prioritized rolling out new products quickly at the expense of safety. Weeks later, the company said it had done so Established A new committee will make recommendations to the company’s board of directors on safety and security.

This story has been updated with additional details and context.