The Messy, Humiliating Courtroom Drama Between Elon Musk and OpenAI
Artificial intelligence companies were already unpopular before the billionaires started fighting in court.
In January 2018, Greg Brockman, a co-founder of OpenAI, sent Elon Musk a lengthy memo about the future of the artificial intelligence lab, which was then structured as a not-for-profit entity. Musk had been urging Brockman and another OpenAI co-founder Sam Altman to consider merging the lab with his electric-car company, Tesla Inc. This would provide sufficient financial resources for their research efforts while giving Musk control over OpenAI. Musk claimed the last part was a side benefit. All he cared about was making sure that someone would create AI technology that would help humanity.
Brockman’s memo argued against this union, using similarly altruistic language. He pointed to the progress OpenAI had already made and suggested that Musk’s proposal to merge the lab into a for-profit company would represent a setback. “Our biggest tool is the moral high ground,” he wrote. “AI is going to shake up the fabric of society, and our fiduciary duty should be to humanity.”