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Elon Musk’s legal case against OpenAI is hilariously bad - The Verge (www.theverge.com)

submitted 8 months ago by [email protected] to c/technology

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[–] Hestia 43 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (3 children)

Read a bit of the court filing, not the whole thing though since you get the gist pretty early on. Jornos put spin on everything, so here's my understanding of the argument:

Musk, who has given money to OpenAI in the past, and thus can legally file a complaint, states that
OpenAI, which is a registered as an LLC, and which is legally a nonprofit, and has the stated goal of benefitting all of humanity has
Been operating outside of its legally allowed purpose, and in effect
Used its donors, resources, tax status, and expertise to create closed source algorithms and models that currently exclusively benefit for-profit concerns (Musk's attorney points out that Microsoft Bing's AI is just ChatGPT) and thus
OpenAI has created a civil tort (a legally recognized civil wrong) wherein
Money given by contributors would not haven been given had the contributors been made aware this deviation from OpenAI's mission statement and
The public at large has not benefited from any of OpenAI's research, and thus OpenAI has abused its preferential tax status and harmed the public

It's honestly not the worst argument.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

I actually agree with this. This technology should be open. I know that there are arguments to keep it closed, like it could be misused, etc. However, I think that all the scary stories about AI are also a way to keep attention away from the fact that if you have a monopoly on it, you have enormous power. This power will grow when the tech is used more and more. If all this power is in the hands of a commercial business (even though they say they aren't), then you know AI is going to be misused to gain money. We do not have clear insight in what they are doing and we have no reason to trust them.

You also know that bad actors, like dictatorial governments will eventually get or develop the technology themselves. So, keeping it closed is not a good way to protect it from that happening. At the same time, you are also keeping it from researchers who could investigate how to use and develop it further to be used responsibly and to the benefit of humanity.

Also, they relied on data generated by people in society who never got any payment or anything for that. So, it is immoral to not share the results with that same people in society openly and instead keeping it closed. I know they used some of my papers. However, I am not allowed to study their model. Seems unfair.

The dangers of AI should be kept at bay using regulation and enforcement by democratically chosen governments, not by commercial businesses or other non-democratic organisations.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 8 months ago

I don't want Musk to be right, but I have to admit, it sounds legit.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 8 months ago

Yeah, fuck "it's not in the terms of a contract". It's fraud.

You can't advertise yourself as a nonprofit organization for the public good, collect donations under that pretense, then just privatize anything you learn for profit.

People don't donate to for profit companies.