OpenAI responds to Musk’s lawsuit by airing dirty laundry

OpenAI publicly counterattacked the lawsuit, which Elon Musk announced last week, by publishing an article on his corporate blog that revealed details of Musk’s own relationship with the company.

“We are sorry that we had to go to such an extreme. someone we deeply admire, someone who inspired us to go further, who later said we must failbegan to compete with us and is now suing us just as OpenAI has begun to make significant progress in its mission without counting on it,” detailed the article, which includes a series of internal emails between Musk and company executives , which they exchanged between 2015 and 2018. .

Neither Musk’s legal representation nor OpenAI’s representatives responded to a request for comment I sent him several hours ago. Business Insider.

In the lawsuit filed last Friday, Musk accused OpenAI and its directors of abandoning their principles. Open source after an alliance with Microsoft. He claimed that in 2019 the company switched to its unique limited profit model –limited profit company

– violation of its fundamental meaning: sbe a non-profit companysince I was born in 2015.

The Tesla CEO left OpenAI’s board of directors in 2018, but Musk’s lawyers say the billionaire continued to make contributions to the company until 2020.

In the first of a series of emails released Tuesday by OpenAI, Musk writes to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and President Greg Brockman in November 2015. The letter stated that the company should seek financing until it breaks even. “the figure is well over $100 million” to avoid appearing “desperate” about what “Google or Facebook” have already spent.

“I think we should say we’re starting with a $1 billion funding commitment,” Musk argued at the time. “Is it true. I will talk about what no one talks about.”

In the article, Altman, Brockman and other OpenAI executives highlight that while Musk and the rest of those in charge were discussing the best financial path to follow (Musk was still a board member at the time), it became clear in late 2017 that the best option was would be the opening of a commercial structure that would guarantee the necessary attraction of capital.

OpenAI responds to Elon Musk’s demand: he wanted the startup to merge with Tesla, but in fact he contributed only 41 million euros

“Elon wanted a majority stake, initial control of the board of directors and became CEO. In the midst of this debate, he withdrew the funding. Reid Hoffman had to act as a bridge to be able to pay salaries and carry out transactions,” the text says. . “We could not agree with Elon on a commercial company because we believed that It went against OpenAI’s values ​​for one person to have absolute control over it.

“He proposed merging OpenAI with Tesla.”

The article highlights another batch of emails from February 2018. Musk forwards the letter from an unidentified third party to Brockman and OpenAI co-founder and chief scientist Ilya Sutskever. The post suggested that OpenAI join Tesla as “the goose that lays the golden eggs.”

Musk adds the following comment to the forwarded letter: “You are absolutely right.” “Collaboration with Tesla is the only way to try to outshine Google. Despite this, the ability to compete with Google is slim… but right now it’s zero.”

“Elon decided to leave OpenAI, saying that his chances of success were zero and that he would create a generative AI competitor inside Tesla,” the article continues. “When he left at the end of February 2018, he told our team that he supported us in finding our own way to raise billions.”

“In December (of that year) he sent us an email warning that even raising hundreds of millions would not be enough.” “You’ll need billions a year. If not, forget about it.”

The new drama between Musk and OpenAI comes just weeks after the generative artificial intelligence company announced it was valued at around $80 billion.

Although he has abandoned OpenAI more than once since leaving the company, Musk has doubled down on his criticism of the firm’s legality and ethics, questioning its financial structure. He has already done this in a publication on

Moreover, Musk has repeatedly stated that OpenAI wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for him.

The article, published by OpenAI on Tuesday, attempts to address many of the criticisms Musk has made over the years, and ends with an attempt to convey confidence that despite the tycoon’s accusations, OpenAI is ‘focused on advancing’ its missionand that he “still has a long way to go.”

“As we improve our tools, we are excited to deploy these systems that empower people.”

Axel Springer, editor of Business Insider, has entered into a global agreement that allows OpenAI models to be trained using information from article headlines..