Elon Musk was once a co-founder of OpenAI. He left the company in 2018 and is now one of its biggest critics. However, he withdrew his lawsuit against the company
Tech billionaire Elon Musk dropped his lawsuit against AI pioneer OpenAI and its co-founders Sam Altman and Greg Brockman on Tuesday. In a document filed with the relevant court in the US state of California, a lawyer for Musk asked for the lawsuit to be dismissed. The letter does not provide any information on the reasons for this. Neither Musk nor OpenAI initially responded to requests for comment.
However, the withdrawal of the lawsuit took place just one day before the judge in charge was to decide whether to dismiss the lawsuit at OpenAI’s request. So there is some evidence that Musk wanted to avoid a dismissal in court.
Musk left OpenAI after a power struggle
Elon Musk was one of the co-founders of OpenAI in 2015. He saw the company as a response to Google’s research at the time, whose bosses he accused of not paying enough attention to the risks of AI. Three years later, however, Musk left after a power struggle within the company.
Musk filed the lawsuit against OpenAI in the spring. In the lawsuit, he argued that the company was intended to be a non-profit organization. However, the developer of the chatbot ChatGPT is now de facto a profit-oriented subsidiary of the software company Microsoft.
Musk filed the lawsuit just weeks after an internal dispute at OpenAI. In November, members of the board unexpectedly fired co-founder Sam Altman – after five days, Altman won the power struggle, also with the support of Microsoft, and returned to the company.
Elon Musk also criticizes Apple’s cooperation with OpenAI
Elon Musk has repeatedly warned about the dangers of artificial intelligence and even described AI as “our greatest existential threat”. This does not stop Musk from investing heavily in artificial intelligence himself: he has now started his own AI company, xAI.
On Monday, Musk responded with harsh criticism to the announcement of a partnership between technology giant Apple and OpenAI. “Apple has no idea what happens when it entrusts your data to OpenAI,” he wrote on the online service X.
Sources: AFP,
Source: Stern
