I don’t trust either party, and have spoken publicly again both. Musk’s company would stand to gain if OpenAI lost, and his motives are suspect, even if Musk has promised to give away any proceeds to the OpenAI nonprofit foundation.
But Musk has a point. OpenAI repeatedly promised in legal documents and public statements to be a nonprofit for the benefit of humanity and welched. In a 2017 video that everyone should watch, Altman said “OpenAI is structured as a nonprofit because we don’t ever want to be making decisions to benefit shareholders. The only people we want to be accountable to is humanity as a whole… That’s why we’re a nonprofit.” They capitalized on that claim in recruiting, raising money and reputation from Musk, and in tax exmpt status and in a countless other ways. The world would be better off if the transition to for-profit was unwound forcing the company to benefit humanity, as Musk has asked.
Tactically, from what I can glean from the reporting, Musk may be making the trial too much about himself. If the trial is cast as a referendum on Musk, rather than on OpenAI’s founders, he will lose. I hope his lawyers will keep focus on OpenAI’s pattern of behavior, rather than on his own contributions to the company.
For those who like video, I talked about some of this this morning on CNN International:
You can watch the interview here.