OpenAI, the most respected AI startup, said Wednesday it intends to dismiss all claims made by Elon Musk in a recent lawsuit and suggested that the billionaire entrepreneur, who was involved in the corporate’s co-founding, didn’t really have that much impact on its development and success.
In a blog post authored by your entire OpenAI band – Greg Brockman, Ilya Sutskever, John Schulman, Sam Altman, Wojciech Zaremba and OpenAI – the Microsoft-backed startup revealed that since its inception in 2015, it had raised lower than $45 million from Musk, despite his initial commitment to supply as much as $1 billion in funding. The startup also secured greater than $90 million from other donors to support its research efforts, it said.
OpenAI’s response follows Musk suing Altman, Brockman, OpenAI and other affiliates of the firm last week, alleging the ChatGPT-maker had breached its original contractual agreements by pursuing profits as an alternative of the nonprofit’s founding mission to develop AI that advantages humanity. OpenAI was founded to construct a counterweight to Google, he said.
OpenAI’s founding agreement required the startup to make its technology “freely available” to the general public however the firm had extra time modified its prioritise to maximizing profits for Microsoft, Musk said within the lawsuit.
The high-stakes legal battle between Musk and OpenAI could have far-reaching implications for the long run of AI. Because the most respected AI startup, with a valuation of over $80 billion, OpenAI’s success with ChatGPT has ignited an unprecedented AI race since its public release in late 2022. The end result of this lawsuit could significantly impact the direction and pace of AI development, in addition to the balance of power amongst key players within the industry.
In its blog post today, OpenAI asserted that because it recognized the vast computational resources mandatory to develop artificial general intelligence (AGI) – an AI system with human-level or superior intelligence – it became clear that the annual costs would amount to billions of dollars. This realization led to the understanding that transitioning to a for-profit structure was essential to secure the required funding and resources.
That is when disagreements began between Musk and other co-founders of OpenAI, OpenAI wrote within the blog post, which incorporates five email exchanges between Musk and OpenAI executives.
“As we discussed a for-profit structure with the intention to further the mission, Elon wanted us to merge with Tesla or he wanted full control. Elon left OpenAI, saying there needed to be a relevant competitor to Google/DeepMind and that he was going to do it himself. He said he’d be supportive of us finding our own path,” OpenAI wrote.
OpenAI said Wednesday it maintains that its mission is to make sure AGI advantages all of humanity, which incorporates developing protected and helpful AGI while promoting widespread access to its tools. OpenAI’s technology is getting used in places including Kenya and India to empower people and improve their each day lives, the startup wrote.
“We’re sad that it’s come to this with someone whom we’ve deeply admired — someone who inspired us to aim higher, then told us we might fail, began a competitor, after which sued us after we began making meaningful progress towards OpenAI’s mission without him,” OpenAI wrote within the blog post.
In response to Musk’s accusation of OpenAI abandoning its open-source principles, the Microsoft-backed startup countered by emphasizing that Musk had been aware of and agreed to the eventual shift away from complete transparency because the organization made significant progress in its AGI development.
“Elon understood the mission didn’t imply open-sourcing AGI. As Ilya told Elon: ‘As we catch up with to constructing AI, it can make sense to begin being less open. The Open in openAI signifies that everyone should profit from the fruits of AI after its built, nevertheless it’s totally OK to not share the science…’, to which Elon replied: ‘Yup’.”
