The company behind ChatGPT, OpenAI, publicly responded to the allegations of Elon Musk, who filed a complaint against it. The company dropped some bombs (merger with Tesla, financing, etc.) on the famous billionaire.
A few days ago, we learned that Elon Musk filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, accusing the company of wanting to transform itself into a profit machine driven by Microsoft. The owner of Tesla and SpaceX criticizes the company he co-founded for perfecting a “ general artificial intelligence » and to have betrayed his promise of departure, evoking a “ breach of contract » and unfair commercial practices. Tuesday March 5, OpenAI delivered its response, and it is juicy to say the least.
Deep disagreements over OpenAI funding
OpenAI has simply decided to share some facts about its “ relationship with Elon “. For example, we learn from emails that Elon Musk actually pushed the start-up to raise funds, to the tune of a billion dollars. The latter had initially invested 45 million dollars. Other donors had contributed $90 million. Sam Altman, co-founder and president of Open AI, and Greg Brockman, another co-founder, wanted to raise $100 million.
But Elon Musk was determined to go further, promising to cover “ anything that someone else won’t provide “. In an email dating back to the end of 2015, he wrote that he had to “ choose a number well above $100 million to avoid appearing desperate compared to what Google or Facebook spend “. Hence the sum of a billion dollars mentioned, which in any case would have been largely insufficient, according to OpenAI.
An aborted merger with Tesla
Even more surprising, OpenAI reveals that Elon Musk wanted, in 2018, the company to merge with Tesla and integrate its services. Annoyed, the entrepreneur left OpenAI, claiming that he himself was going to create a competitor to Google DeepMind (separated between Google Research and Deepmind at the time) that could hold up. In his eyes, Tesla was the only chance to allow OpenAI to stand up to Google. The leaders of OpenAI, a non-profit organization, wanted to build another, for-profit entity.
Musk has been pushing to own a majority stake, have control of the board of directors and be CEO. In short, he wanted full powers, which was refused to him. “ He then refused funding », Explains OpenAI, which welcomes the intervention of Reid Hoffman (co-founder of LinkedIn), who at the time had paid salaries and current operations.
OpenAI didn’t want a for-profit organization run by Elon Musk. The company believed that having a single man have absolute control over it was contrary to its mission. At the end of February 2018, the boss of SpaceX and Neuralink had definitively left OpenAI. Since then, it has unveiled Grok, its anti-ChatGPT artificial intelligence.
OpenAI, proud of its mission and “sad” to get there with Elon Musk
Elon Musk, who criticizes OpenAI for having stopped the development of AI for the benefit of humanity, comes up against a company which intends to reject absolutely all of his allegations. But the editor of ChatGPT deplores the situation.
“ We’re sad to come to this with someone we deeply admire, someone who inspired us to aim higher, then told us we would fail, threw a competitor into their corner, then sued us in court when we began to make significant progress toward our original mission, without him », Writes the Californian firm.
OpenAI reiterated its intention to ensure that artificial general intelligence can benefit “ to all humanity », as a final nod to Elon Musk’s complaint.
Source : OpenAI
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