SAN FRANCISCO — Jury selection is to begin Monday in a high-profile legal battle between billionaire Elon Musk and artificial intelligence startup OpenAI, which he accuses of betraying its non-profit mission.<\/p>\n
The clash in a courtroom across the bay from San Francisco pits the world\u2019s richest man against a startup that Musk once backed and now competes against in the booming AI sector.<\/p>\n
OpenAI\u2019s ChatGPT is a formidable rival to the Grok chatbot made by Musk\u2019s xAI lab.<\/p>\n
While the lawsuit filed by Musk is part of a feud between him and OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman, it spotlights a debate whether AI should ultimately benefit the privileged few or society as a whole.<\/p>\n
Court filings lay out how Altman tried to convince Musk to back OpenAI in 2015, acting as a co-founder for a non-profit lab whose technology \u201cwould belong to the world.\u201d<\/p>\n
Musk pumped some $38 million into the lab before he left.<\/p>\n
OpenAI is now valued at $852 billion, with Microsoft among its backers, and is preparing to go public on the stock market.<\/p>\n
The judge presiding over the trial is aiming for a jury to decide by late May whether OpenAI broke a promise to Musk in its drive to be a leader in AI or just smartly rode the technology to glory.<\/p>\n
– Musk duped? –<\/p>\n
Musk argues in his lawsuit that he was deceived about OpenAI\u2019s mission being altruistic.<\/p>\n
The tycoon cites an email from Altman in 2017 claiming that he remained \u201centhusiastic about the non-profit structure\u201d of their AI venture after Musk threatened to cut off funding for the lab.<\/p>\n
Just a few months later, however, OpenAI established a commercial subsidiary in the face of needing to invest hundreds of billions of dollars in data centers to power its technology.<\/p>\n
Over the course of the following two years, Microsoft pumped billions of dollars into OpenAI and the tech stalwart\u2019s stake in the startup is now valued about $135 billion.<\/p>\n
Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella is among those slated to testify at the trial.<\/p>\n
– Aimed at Altman –<\/p>\n
Along with calling for OpenAI to be forced to revert to a pure nonprofit, Musk\u2019s suit urges the ousting of Altman and OpenAI co-founder and president Greg Brockman.<\/p>\n
Musk is also seeking as much as $134 billion in damages and to have the court make OpenAI sever ties with Microsoft.<\/p>\n
During pre-trial hearings, US Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers mused that Musk team seemed to be \u201cpulling numbers out of the air\u201d when it came to calculating damages.<\/p>\n
If the jury sides with Musk, it will be left to Rogers to determine any remedies or payment.<\/p>\n
In what OpenAI has dismissed as a public relations stunt, Musk has vowed that any damages awarded in the suit will go to the startup\u2019s nonprofit foundation.<\/p>\n
– Quest for control? –<\/p>\n
OpenAI internal communications brought to light by the lawsuit reveal tensions that culminated with the temporary ouster of Altman as AI chief executive in late 2023.<\/p>\n
Musk\u2019s legal team highlighted a 2017 entry in Brockman\u2019s personal journal reasoning that it would be lying if Altman publicly asserted OpenAI would stay a nonprofit but became a corporation a short time later.<\/p>\n
OpenAI now has a hybrid governance structure giving its nonprofit foundation control over a for-profit arm.<\/p>\n
In court filings, OpenAI countered that its break-up with Musk was due to his quest for absolute control rather than its nonprofit status.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis case has always been about Elon generating more power and more money for what he wants,\u201d OpenAI said in a post on X, a platform Musk owns.<\/p>\n
\u201cHis lawsuit remains nothing more than a harassment campaign that\u2019s driven by ego, jealousy and a desire to slow down a competitor.\u201d<\/p>\n
The startup noted that days after Musk entered the AI race in 2023 he called for a 6-month moratorium on development of advanced AI.<\/p>\n
By Benjamin Legendre, AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN FRANCISCO — Jury selection is to begin Monday in a high-profile legal battle between billionaire Elon Musk…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":628415,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[62,712,276,277,49,48,61],"class_list":{"0":"post-628414","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-apple-news","10":"tag-artificial-intelligence","11":"tag-artificialintelligence","12":"tag-ca","13":"tag-canada","14":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/628414","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=628414"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/628414\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/628415"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=628414"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=628414"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=628414"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}