A federal court on Monday dismissed claims filed against OpenAI and its top executives by Elon Musk, who accused them of betraying a shared vision for it to guide artificial intelligence’s development as a nonprofit dedicated to humanity’s benefit.
Musk, the world’s richest man, was a co-founder of OpenAI, the company that launched in 2015 and went on to create ChatGPT. After investing $38 million in its first years, Musk accused OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and his top deputy of shifting into a moneymaking mode behind his back.
The nine-person jury found that Musk waited too long to file his lawsuit and missed the deadline for the statute of limitations.
The jury served in an advisory role, but Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers accepted the verdict Monday as the court’s own and dismissed Musk’s claims. The jury deliberated only two hours before returning its verdict.
The trial that began April 27 in Oakland, California shed light on the bitter falling-out between the two Silicon Valley titans and the beginnings of OpenAI, now a company valued at $852 billion and moving toward potentially one of the largest initial public offerings in history.
Altman and OpenAI claimed there was never a promise to keep OpenAI a nonprofit forever. In fact, they argued, Musk knew this and filed his lawsuit because he couldn’t have unilateral control over the fast-growing AI developer.
Musk was seeking damages to be paid to the altruistic efforts of OpenAI’s charitable arm as well as Altman’s ouster from OpenAI’s board. Musk’s decision to stop funding the company contributed to a bitter rift between the former allies. Musk says he was responding to deceptive conduct that OpenAI’s board picked up on when it fired Altman as CEO in 2023 before he got his job back days later.
The three-week trial saw testimony from Musk, Altman and his top lieutenant Greg Brockman, along with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and a slew of others in the tech titans’ orbit. Musk told jurors on his first of three days on the stand that, fundamentally, “I think they’re going to try to make this lawsuit … very complicated, but it’s actually very simple,” Musk said. “Which is that it’s not OK to steal a charity.”
Musk’s lawsuit claimed that, in addition to “breach of charitable trust,” Altman and Brockman unjustly enriched themselves from the windfall as the ChatGPT maker soared in valuation. Brockman revealed during the trial that his stake in OpenAI is worth about $30 billion.
OpenAI has brushed off Musk’s allegations as an unfounded case of sour grapes aimed at undercutting its rapid growth and bolstering Musk’s own xAI, which he launched in 2023 as a competitor. During cross-examination, Musk was sometimes combative with OpenAI lawyer William Savitt.
“Your questions are not simple,” Musk said at one point. “They are designed to trick me essentially.”
At least some lawyers got paid insane amounts of money to watch a couple of spoiled brats fight over who’s a bigger pile of shit excuse of a human.
The nine-person jury found that Musk waited too long to file his lawsuit and missed the deadline for the statute of limitations.
Why did there even need to be a trial? Couldn’t the statue of limitations have been applied before it got that far?
The judge almost dismissed it outright because of this.
“There’s a substantial amount of evidence to support the jury’s finding, which is why I was prepared to dismiss on the spot,” U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers said.
In considering statute of limitations it depends on when “the clock starts ticking”. Without having looked into the case at all, I’m assuming that was the basis of the lawsuit. Musk trying to say the clock didn’t start until later, or possibly should have been paused at some point. The jury ruled that was wrong.
Again, no knowledge on this case in particular, but that’s what I’d assume.
From what I was able to gather, this entire lawsuit was a tangled spaghetti mass of bullshit from the start, and a lot of what the jury had to do was sort through the spaghetti bullshit and find out exactly what were the legal claims at issue and to figure out how to rule on them with the judge (the jury was just an advisory panel for the judge, and the judge said they would take advice from the jury on how to rule). Once that was done, the jury figured out the statute of limitations had passed anyway, so it didn’t even fucking matter.
“There’s a substantial amount of evidence to support the jury’s finding, which is why I was prepared to dismiss on the spot,” U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers said.
It feels like such a waste of time and money to have spent so much time figuring out the answer to the statute question while having the whole trial. If they simply could have short circuited the proceedings and only focused on this to start, got an answer to this, and then continued if necessary it would have been so much easier on everyone. It doesn’t take 11 days to answer this question.
I mean, yeah, but I think the whole point of this trial in the first place was for musk and Altman to publicly slap-fight about this in court. they’re both so rich, that whatever money either would have won or lost over this could hardly have ever mattered. it was about the public bitchery of it, and to hell with everyone else’s wasted time/
fuck both of these shitstains
Lol! Wait till you learn about how the rest of society works!
American courts need to keep feeding lawyers.
This guy is evil, but OpenAI WAS set up to be nonprofit. It was the whole point.
That’s why it’s called OpenAI
Maybe, but musk wasn’t really suing about that. Musk was suing because he’s a jealous piss baby. This lawsuit was bullshit from the start. It’s not like if musk won, openAI was suddenly gonna start operating for the public benefit. Musk was just gonna get paid a bunch of money that he definitely doesn’t need.
And Google was set up to not be evil. Never trust any company telling you their motives are altruistic.
Agreed.
But don’t give them a pass when they set up a multi billion dollar foundation and just say “Oh well, we would have more money if we break our promises. I’m sure you won’t mind if we just keep it for ourselves”.
I am happy to see Musk use his billions in a way that makes it harder to get away with that kind of fraud. Even if the good that comes out of it is accidental.
But what if he’s only doing it to give himself a leg up on the evil? That was the thing I was struggling with. He seemed to be wanting to sabotage open ai to make it easier for him and others to take over the space. Not because he genuinely thought good would come out of it.
His motivations can be selfish & still, unknowing to him, produce a favorable outcome for everyone else. Not saying it makes him a better person, just that it has a net positive result. For all the wrong reasons, of course.
That was Musk’s weak excuse. The point of this lawsuit was to slow down OpenAI to allow XAI to catch up.
If Musk actually cared about Open source AI he would make XAI open source.
Open*
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- Terms and conditions apply
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i don’t want to see Musk win, but i do want to see Altman lose 🫤
There are hundreds of lawsuits against Open AI in NY. From all the people they steal data from.
I feel like training AI on GPL code violates the terms if you don’t open source and GPL the model, but I’m not an expert on licensing.
Super fucking annoying that they just steal all this data before people even knew this was the eventual risk. They should all get shut down for that behavior.
this man just doesn’t know how to not embarrass himself.
🤖🫧🪡
Come oooooon any moment now
I’m sure Musk was just busy working on full self driving-- That thing he has been pretending works in teslas for like a decade, that doesnt work.
Where is full self driving ,Elon? Will you release it this month? I bought a tesla with a self driving computer in it, why did you pretend that was a real product?Musk is a lying scammer grifter and belongs in jail. I want my money back.
Make sure when you sue to ask for like 10x the damage because of the lost revenue from you not renting out your Tesla as a taxi for passive side profit like he also promised. I mean even if you didn’t use the feature, it would still increase the price for the used market dramatically.
Womp womp.
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So now I assume he appeals so he continue this grumpy billionaire feud?
The judge told them they don’t think it will succeed because the statute of limitations is a finding of fact. The only way it can continue is if they somehow convince the appeals court it hadn’t passed, and then it’d probably mean a whole new trial since they didn’t rule on the rest of the case?
My guess is that he’ll try to keep appealing as far as he can because the court costs are trivial for him, and in the rare chance he can kneecap Altman, he benefits.
Also, he gets to continue to pester Altman like a petty asshole, and that probably brings him joy.
What would he appeal on?
No idea, but he already said he’d do it.
So basically Musk assumed that a non profit would stay a non profit forever, and got angry this turned out to not be the case.
And then waited past the statute of limitations to actually sue them.
Uh… yep.
There is no broad … rule or law that says a non profit cannot transition to being a legally different kind of entity.
Not sure why Elon assumed otherwise, but he is rather infamous for just assuming things work like he thinks they do or will, without actually checking to find out what reality actually looks like.
Alternate headline.
Which point did Musk make? Musk wasn’t upset about OpenAI going private. He was one of the people that suggested and supported the idea of privatizing (before he left OpenAI). What Musk is pissed about is that Musk wanted to be in charge of the new private entity and the other members of OpenAI disagreed. So Musk left and made his own AI with hookers, blow, and lots of pollution of the Memphis Tennessee atmosphere.
There are no good people on either side of this lawsuit. This whole thing is sour grapes on Musk’s part.
Setting his motivation aside (which is and has always been to stroke his own ego until climax), the good point he made was “I think they’re going to try to make this lawsuit … very complicated, but it’s actually very simple, which is that it’s not OK to steal a charity.” I agree with that sentiment.
but it’s actually very simple, which is that it’s not OK to steal a charity.” I agree with that sentiment.
Except Musk actively lobbied for stealing the charity and making it private himself when he was still with OpenAI. These events happened in 2018:
“Elon did not think that OpenAI needed to remain solely a non-profit. As the context shows, he agreed that OpenAI needed both a non-profit and a for-profit entity—the exact structure OpenAI has today, and that Elon is now suing OpenAI over. At the time, he said only that the non-profit should continue to exist “in some form.” Ilya, not Elon, suggested that the for-profit should have a connection to the OpenAI mission. Shortly after this call, Elon actually created an OpenAI PBC (or “B-corp”).”
meh
For shame… I scrolled and saw no meme /s
