Elon Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI may go to trial in part, judge says

Elon Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI, which was supposed to be a for-profit organization, may go to trial, according to a federal judge in the US, adding that the Tesla CEO will have to testify and appear in court.
“Something is going to trial in this case”, US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers in Oakland, California, said early in the court session on Tuesday.
“]Elon Musk will] sit on the stand, present it to a jury, and a jury will decide who is right”.
Rogers was considering Musk’s most recent request for a preliminary injunction to stop OpenAI from going to trial. This is the most recent instance of a groomfight.
In May 2021, Rogers last issued a preliminary injunction in Epic Games’ lawsuit against Apple.
Musk and Altman co-founded OpenAI in 2015, but Musk left before the company’s success. Musk later founded xAI, a rival AI startup, in 2023.
According to OpenAI, it currently tries to transition from a nonprofit to a for-profit organization, which it needs to do in order to secure the funding needed to create the best artificial intelligence models.
Last year, Musk filed a , lawsuit , against OpenAI and Altman, saying that OpenAI’s founders originally approached him to fund a nonprofit focused on developing AI to benefit humanity, but that it is now focused on making money.
He later , expanded , the lawsuit to add federal antitrust and other claims, and in December asked the judge presiding over the case to stop OpenAI from transitioning to a for-profit.
The young startup’s internal conflict that led to Altman becoming OpenAI’s CEO in 2017 is at the center of the conflict.
If the startup succeeded in its goal of creating better-than-human AI, known as artificial general intelligence, or AGI, then Musk had also sought to be CEO and grew frustrated after two other OpenAI co-founders claimed he would have too much power as a major shareholder and chief executive. Musk has , long voiced concerns , about how advanced forms of AI could threaten humanity.
Altman eventually became the company’s CEO, and he has continued to do so, save for a short while in 2023 when he was fired and then reinstated days later when the board that removed him was replaced.
High stakes
OpenAI has stated that it will move to reject Musk’s claims and that Musk “should be competing in the marketplace rather than the courtroom.”
To raise money for the hardware and computer power required by AI, OpenAI has sought to demonstrate Musk’s early support for the idea of turning OpenAI into a for-profit company.
The stakes on OpenAI’s corporate transition have now escalated, as OpenAI’s , last fundraising round of $6.6bn and a new round of up to $25bn under discussion with SoftBank are conditioned on the company restructuring to remove the nonprofit’s control.
According to Rose Chan Loui, the executive director of the UCLA Law Center for Philanthropy and Nonprofits, a restructuring like this would be unusual. Nonprofit conversions to for-profits have historically been for healthcare organisations like hospitals, not venture capital-backed companies, she said.
Source: Aljazeera
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