Elon Musk v OpenAI, court filing, accessed April 30, 2024, is part of HackerNoon’s legal PDF series. You can jump to any part of this filing here. This part is 12 of 29.
I. OpenAI today
138. The defendants’ unbridled power and profit-seeking have recently led to a flood of security and legal concerns, as well as fierce backlash against OpenAI and Altman for abandoning their nonprofit mission.
139. In addition to pending civil lawsuits from media outlets such as The New York Times, Raw Story, and The Intercept over OpenAI’s illegal use of their media content to train GPT models, the acquisition of the board and Microsoft’s increasingly close relationship with OpenAI have triggered numerous ongoing investigations by the Securities and Exchange Commission, the US Federal Trade Commission, and various UK and EU regulators. On July 22 and August 1, 2024, the US Senate sent Altman letters demanding documents and questioning OpenAI’s business practices, its commitment to security, and its attempts to silence employee whistleblowers. (9)
140. In addition, in a series of letters dated January 9 (10), March 5 (11), and June 6, 2024 (12) to the Attorney General of California, the well-known consumer protection organization Public Citizen outlined numerous issues related to Altman’s self-dealing and the problematic influence exerted by OpenAI’s for-profit arm over the nonprofit organization, and called on the Attorney General to investigate OpenAI, Inc.’s Section 501(c)(3) status.
141. Furthermore, OpenAI is, by all information and belief, losing employees and executives on a continuous basis. The resignations appear to be largely in protest against Altman and OpenAI’s increasingly unbridled and contradictory pursuit of profit at the expense of security.
142. For example, in May 2024, OpenAI, Inc.’s chief scientist Dr. Sutskever and CEO Jan Leike resigned. The two were the leaders of OpenAI, Inc.’s “Superalignment” team, which was tasked with managing the risk that the company’s technology “could lead to the disempowerment of humanity or even the extinction of humanity.”13 Leike stated that he could no longer work for the company because he feared that safety and societal impact “take a back seat to shiny products.”(14)
143. Other employees, including Daniel Kokotajlo, resigned because they “lost faith in OpenAI’s leadership and its ability to handle AGI responsibly.” In an interview with Vox on May 18, 2024 (15), Kokotajlo stated: “I came with great hope that OpenAI would rise to the occasion and behave more responsibly the closer they got to making AGI a reality. Many of us slowly realized that this was not going to happen.” The same article reported numerous other departures: “At least seven people () tried to help OpenAI become more secure from within, but ultimately lost so much faith in its charismatic leader (Altman) that their position became untenable.”
144. Carroll Wainwright, a former alignment researcher for OpenAI, also resigned in May 2024 because “I fear that the board will not be able to effectively control the for-profit subsidiary, and I fear that the for-profit subsidiary will not be able to effectively prioritize the mission when the incentive to maximize profits is so strong.” (16)
145. The world finally sees through Altman’s long deception.
146. A June 15, 2024, article in Cointelegraph titled “OpenAI reportedly considering for-profit transition as CEO joins board” details how Altman “told shareholders sometime during the week of June 10 that he was considering the (for-profit) transition. If implemented, the transition would reportedly result in OpenAI’s nonprofit board losing control of the company.”(17) Altman is now moving forward with his plan to transform the nonprofit company co-founded by Musk into the for-profit company Altman always envisioned.
147. Altman laid the bait and lured Musk with feigned altruism. Then, as the nonprofit’s technology approached artificial intelligence and profits drew closer, he turned the tables. He mobilized the defendants to turn OpenAI, Inc. into their personal piggy bank and turn OpenAI into a multi-billion dollar moneymaker.
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(9) Letter from Senators King, Lujan, Schatz, Warner, and Welch to Samuel Altman, CEO of OpenAI (July 22, 2024), https://www.schatz.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/letter_to_openai.pdf; Letter from Senator Grassley to Samuel Altman, CEO of OpenAI (August 1, 2024), https://www.washingtonpost.com/documents/8bf076a6-663b-4552-be52-079b79274f9c.pdf.
(10) Public Citizen letter to the Attorney General of California on OpenAI’s nonprofit status (January 9, 2024), https://www.citizen.org/article/letter-to-california-attorney-general-on-openaisnonprofit-status/.
(11) Public Citizen’s follow-up letter to the Attorney General of California regarding OpenAI’s nonprofit status (March 5, 2024), https://www.citizen.org/article/second-letter-californiaattorney-general-openai-nonprofit-status-musk-lawsuit/.
(12) Public Citizen’s June 2024 follow-up letter to the Attorney General of California regarding OpenAI’s nonprofit status (June 6, 2024), https://www.citizen.org/article/june-2024-california-ag-openai-nonprofit-status-letter/.
(13) https://www.openai.com/index/introducing-superalignment/.
(14) https://www.x.com/janleike/status/1791498174659715494.
(15) Samuel, “I lost trust”: Why the OpenAI team responsible for protecting humanity imploded, Vox (May 18, 2024), https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2024/5/17/24158403/openairesignations-ai-safety-ilya-sutskever-jan-leike-artificial-intelligence.
(16) https://www.x.com/clwainwright?ref_src=twsrc^tfw|twcamp^twee.
(17) Greene, OpenAI reportedly considering conversion to for-profit company as CEO joins board, Cointelegraph (June 15, 2024), https://www.cointelegraph.com/news/open-ai-artificialintelligence-for-profit.
