Is Elon Musk right to sue OpenAI, Sam Altman and Greg Brockman?
It’s hard to take the idea of Elon Musk suing someone seriously: he has a reputation for bringing lawsuits at the drop of a hat, which has dented his credibility, despite being widely considered as having changed the world for the better. In short, he’s highly divisive; what the British call a Marmite person.
Musk’s latest lawsuit, brought against OpenAI, and the two men he co-founded the company with, Sam Altman and Greg Brockman for breach of contract, for “a stark betrayal of the Founding Agreement”, by having “transformed into a de facto subsidiary of the world’s largest technology company: Microsoft.” According to Musk, “under its new board of directors, the company is not only developing, but actually refining an artificial general intelligence (AGI) to maximize Microsoft’s profits, rather than for the benefit of humanity.”
The company has rejected Musk’s assertions, insisting it is still an independent company, and that it continues to work for the benefit of humanity. Everything indicates that the lawsuit has very little chance of moving forward considering the foundations on which it is built. Fundamentally, because even though the company’s name is OpenAI and it’s now anything but open, most of the foundational deals were carried out in the form of conversations, assumptions and expectations, rather…
