Key Takeaways
- The public interest is at stake in a case about a nonprofit research lab, regardless of who wins.
- Musk and OpenAI‘s other cofounders have prioritized building the world’s leading AI lab over ensuring that AGI benefits humanity.
- OpenAI has spent years attempting to rival multitrillion-dollar companies like Google by creating a for-profit company disguised as a nonprofit.
Attorneys delivered closing arguments in the Musk v. Altman trial on Thursday, with both sides arguing that their respective clients are the most well-intentioned and truth-telling stewards of OpenAI’s founding mission. However, regardless of the outcome, there is a wide set of losers in this case: employees, policymakers, and members of the public who believed in the nonprofit research lab and supported OpenAI because of it.
OpenAI’s stated mission was to ensure that artificial general intelligence (AGI) benefits humanity, but in practice, they have spent decades attempting to build AGI first. Additionally, Musk and Altman have fought tooth and nail to be the ones who control OpenAI.
Origin Story
Evidence revealed during this trial suggests that Altman and Musk were initially in agreement about launching OpenAI as a nonprofit and operating much like a typical startup. They shared the goal of beating Google DeepMind in the race to AGI, but creating OpenAI as a nonprofit turned out to be an inconvenient means to winning that race.
During one of the earliest emails Altman sent to Musk about setting up “some sort of nonprofit,” he wrote that the people working on it would get “startup-like compensation.” Musk responded by saying it was “worth a conversation.”
The nonprofit structure proved to be a roadblock for building OpenAI into a massive business. In December 2016, Musk wrote an email to his cofounders suggesting that setting up OpenAI as a non-profit might have been the wrong move, and he felt the sense of urgency was not as high.
By 2018, Musk and the founders had tried creating a for-profit arm, even considering scrapping the nonprofit entirely. However, these talks broke down after Musk requested control of the company and Brockman and Sutskever asked for large equity stakes.
Musk suggested folding OpenAI into Tesla—his for-profit car company—and even recruited Altman to run the AI unit, offering him a Tesla board seat to entice him. Despite these efforts, no other major AI company operates under a nonprofit structure like OpenAI.
During OpenAI’s brief ouster of Altman in November 2023, he was hand-picked by Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and new nonprofit board members for his return to the company. However, this move did not restore trust among the original board members who had fired him.
Despite OpenAI’s unique structure as a nonprofit research lab, it has faced numerous legal issues and allegations of negligence related to AI’s societal impacts. The nonprofit once provided moral high ground for attracting talent and garnering goodwill but now appears to have lost all but the last bit of its shine in this trial.
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