Musk had initially sued OpenAI in March 2024, alleging breach of contracts, unfair business practices, and failure in fiduciary duty. He claimed that his contributions to the company were made “in exchange for and in reliance on promises that those assets were irrevocably dedicated to building AI for public benefit, with only safety as a countervailing concern.”

The lawsuit sought remedies for “breach of contract, promissory estoppel, breach of fiduciary duty, unfair business practices, and accounting,” as well as specific performance, restitution, and damages.

However, Musk’s filings to withdraw the case provided no explanation for abandoning the lawsuit. OpenAI had previously called Musk’s claims “incoherent” and that his inability to produce a contract made his breach claims difficult to prove, stating that documents provided by Musk “contradict his allegations as to the alleged terms of the agreement.”

The withdrawal of the lawsuit comes at a time when Musk is strongly opposing Apple’s plans to integrate ChatGPT into its operating systems.

During Apple’s keynote event announcing Apple Intelligence for iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and macOS Sequoia, Musk threatened to ban Apple devices from his companies, calling the integration “an unacceptable security violation.”

Despite assurances from Apple and OpenAI that user data would only be shared with explicit consent and that interactions would be secure, Musk questioned Apple’s ability to ensure data security, stating, “Apple has no clue what’s actually going on once they hand your data over to OpenAI. They’re selling you down the river.”

Since bringing the lawsuit against OpenAI, Musk has also created his own AI company, xAI, and secured over $6 billion in funding for his plans to advance the Grok chatbot on his social network, X.

While Musk’s reasoning for dropping the OpenAI lawsuit remains unclear, his actions suggest a potential shift in focus towards advancing his own AI endeavours while continuing to vocalise his criticism of OpenAI through social media rather than the courts.

See also: DuckDuckGo releases portal giving private access to AI models

Want to learn more about AI and big data from industry leaders? Check out AI & Big Data Expo taking place in Amsterdam, California, and London. The comprehensive event is co-located with other leading events including Intelligent Automation Conference, BlockX, Digital Transformation Week, and Cyber Security & Cloud Expo.

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“We believe that users should be able to create, distribute, and consume material related to sexual themes as long as it is consensually produced and distributed. Sexual expression, visual or written, can be a legitimate form of artistic expression,” X’s updated ‘adult content’ policy states.

The policy further elaborates: “We believe in the autonomy of adults to engage with and create content that reflects their own beliefs, desires, and experiences, including those related to sexuality. We balance this freedom by restricting exposure to adult content for children or adult users who choose not to see it.”

Users can mark their posts as containing sensitive media, ensuring that such content is restricted from users under 18 or those who haven’t provided their birth dates.

While X’s violent content rules have similar guidelines, the platform maintains a strict stance against excessively gory content and depictions of sexual violence. Explicit threats or content inciting or glorifying violence remain prohibited.

X’s decision to allow graphic content is aimed at enabling users to participate in discussions about current events, including sharing relevant images and videos. 

Although X has never outright banned porn, these new clauses could pave the way for developing services centred around adult content, potentially creating a competitor to services like OnlyFans and enhancing its revenue streams. This would further Musk’s vision of X becoming an “everything app,” similar to China’s WeChat.

A 2022 Reuters report, citing internal company documents, indicated that approximately 13% of posts on the platform contained adult content. This percentage has likely increased, especially with the proliferation of porn bots on X.

See also: Elon Musk’s xAI secures $6B to challenge OpenAI in AI race

Want to learn more about AI and big data from industry leaders? Check out AI & Big Data Expo taking place in Amsterdam, California, and London. The comprehensive event is co-located with other leading events including Intelligent Automation Conference, BlockX, Digital Transformation Week, and Cyber Security & Cloud Expo.

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Musk has some history in the AI space. He co-founded OpenAI in 2015 alongside the current CEO, Sam Altman, and others. However, he parted ways with the company in 2018 due to disagreements over its priorities and direction, specifically OpenAI’s move away from open-source AI models and towards proprietary, closed models that they sell access to. Musk became one of OpenAI’s most vocal critics after that.

Fast-forward to July of last year, and Musk formally re-entered the generative AI arena with the announcement of xAI. Since then, the company has been aggressively working on building advanced AI systems that it claims will be “truthful, competent, and maximally beneficial for all of humanity.”

One of xAI’s first offerings is Grok, an edgier version of OpenAI’s ChatGPT. It is currently available only to X Premium subscribers. According to benchmarks shared by xAI, Grok-1 outperformed models like Llama-2-70B and GPT-3.5 but still lagged behind Anthropic’s Claude3, OpenAI’s GPT-4, Google’s Gemini, and Meta’s open-source Llama 3.

This latest funding round saw investments from big names, including Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, and even Saudi Arabian Prince Al Waleed bin Talal. Last year, filings showed xAI was looking to raise up to $1 billion in equity investments, and just a few months ago, reports surfaced that they had increased their target to a whopping $6 billion—a figure Musk initially denied.

Developing the hardware capable of powering AI at this sophisticated level is no small feat and certainly is costly. Just last week, a report revealed that xAI would need an astonishing 100,000 of Nvidia’s current H100 chips for a supercomputer to power an upgraded version of Grok, each costing between $30,000 to $40,000.

Musk has ambitious plans for these powerful resources. He reportedly informed investors that the goal is to launch this new data centre by fall 2025, marking a significant step forward in xAI’s technological capabilities.

Continuing this AI race for chips, talent, and technology will be expensive. Big tech firms have already invested billions into AI startups like Anthropic, on top of what companies like Google, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta are investing in their own AI projects.

Microsoft, in particular, has struck a multi-billion-dollar partnership with OpenAI, whose CEO, Sam Altman, is reportedly pursuing trillions more to revamp the global chip industry.

Tesla will continue to hire AI engineers for self-driving cars, even though Elon Musk has previously stated a preference for not bringing most of those AI and robotics capabilities in-house, to allow greater focus on external ventures. He talks about breaking free from the traditional constraints of auto manufacturing as part of a broader agenda.

At the same time, Tesla is gearing up for its annual meeting on June 13, where shareholders will start voting on whether to reinstate Musk’s record-breaking $56 billion pay package, a significant development given Musk’s substantial influence across various tech sectors.

Over the years, Musk has made substantial contributions to AI research, and now his venture, xAI, is at the forefront of AI developments. It will be fascinating to watch how these efforts unfold and see which of xAI’s contributions will secure a place in the annals of AI history during this rapid evolution.

See also: Elon Musk’s xAI open-sources Grok

Want to learn more about AI and big data from industry leaders? Check out AI & Big Data Expo taking place in Amsterdam, California, and London. The comprehensive event is co-located with other leading events including Intelligent Automation Conference, BlockX, Digital Transformation Week, and Cyber Security & Cloud Expo.

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The release fulfils Musk’s promise to open source Grok in an effort to accelerate AI development and adoption.

XAI announced the move in a blog post, stating: “We are releasing the base model weights and network architecture of Grok-1, our large language model. Grok-1 is a 314 billion parameter Mixture-of-Experts model trained from scratch by xAI.”

Grok had previously only been available through Musk’s social network X as part of the paid X Premium+ subscription. By open sourcing it, xAI has empowered developers, companies, and enthusiasts worldwide to leverage the advanced language model’s capabilities.

The model’s release includes its weights, which represent the strength of connections between its artificial neurons, as well as documentation and code. However, it omits the original training data and access to real-time data streams that gave the proprietary version an advantage.

Named after a term meaning “understanding” from Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide series, Grok has been positioned as a more open and humorous alternative to OpenAI’s ChatGPT. The move aligns with Musk’s battle against censorship, “woke” ideology displayed by models like Gemini, and his recent lawsuit claiming OpenAI violated its nonprofit principles.

While xAI’s open source release earned praise from open source advocates, some critics raised concerns about potential misuse facilitated by unrestricted access to powerful AI capabilities.

You can find Grok-1 on GitHub here.

(Image Credit: xAI)

See also: Anthropic says Claude 3 Haiku is the fastest model in its class

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Musk’s lawsuit accuses OpenAI of breaching its non-profit status and reneging on a founding agreement to keep the organisation non-profit and release its AI technology publicly. However, OpenAI has refuted these allegations, stating that there is no such agreement with Musk and branding it as a mere “fiction.”

According to court filings, OpenAI asserts that there is no existing agreement with Musk, contradicting his assertions in the lawsuit.

The organisation further alleges that Musk had actually supported the idea of transitioning OpenAI into a for-profit entity under his control. It is claimed that Musk advocated for full control of the company as CEO, majority equity ownership, and even suggested tethering it to Tesla for financial backing. However, negotiations between Musk and OpenAI did not culminate in an agreement, leading to Musk’s withdrawal from the project.

OpenAI’s rebuttal highlights purported emails exchanged between Musk and the organisation, indicating his prior knowledge and support for its transition to a for-profit model. The company suggests that Musk’s lawsuit is driven by his desire to claim credit for OpenAI’s successes after he disengaged from the project.

In response to Musk’s legal action, OpenAI has portrayed his motives as self-serving rather than altruistic, asserting that his lawsuit is a bid to further his own commercial interests under the guise of championing humanity’s cause.

Meanwhile, Musk’s own foray into the realm of artificial intelligence with his company xAI has drawn attention.

Musk announced xAI’s intention to open source its Grok chatbot shortly after OpenAI’s publication of emails purportedly demonstrating Musk’s prior awareness of its non-open source intentions. While this move could be interpreted as a retaliatory gesture against OpenAI, it also presents an opportunity for xAI to garner feedback from developers and enhance its technology.

The legal clash between Musk and OpenAI underscores the complexities surrounding the development and governance of AI technologies, as well as the competing interests within the tech industry.

(Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash)

See also: OpenAI announces new board lineup and governance structure

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A blog post from OpenAI, in response to a lawsuit filed by Musk against the company, revealed email communications from 2015 to 2018 when Musk was still involved with the company’s operations. 

In one email from 2017 – as OpenAI was exploring a transition to a for-profit model to secure more funding – Musk reportedly wanted majority equity, control of the board of directors, and the CEO position. However, OpenAI felt this level of control by one individual would go against its mission.

“Elon wanted us to merge with Tesla or he wanted full control,” wrote OpenAI in their blog post. “Elon left OpenAI, saying there needed to be a relevant competitor to Google/DeepMind and that he was going to do it himself. He said he’d be supportive of us finding our own path.”

When the merger discussions stalled, Musk suggested in 2018 that OpenAI could become attached to Tesla as a path for the automaker to provide funding. “Tesla is the only path that could even hope to hold a candle to Google,” Musk wrote in an email forwarded to OpenAI.

The blog post indicates these merger or acquisition proposals from Musk did not ultimately succeed, and he soon left the company. In a final email cited, Musk said his “probability assessment of OpenAI being relevant to DeepMind/Google without a dramatic change in execution and resources is 0%.”

Musk’s lawsuit, filed in March 2024, accuses OpenAI of breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duty and unfair competition. It alleges the company has become a “closed-source de facto subsidiary” of Microsoft after taking $13 billion in investment from the tech giant.

OpenAI denies the claims, stating Musk was aware the “Open” in its name did not mean it had to open-source all its AI technology to the public. The company expressed sadness that the situation has devolved into litigation with someone they “deeply admired.”

Musk has not yet publicly responded to the blog post from OpenAI. The lawsuit seeks to compel OpenAI to make its research freely available and prohibit exclusive arrangements benefiting individual companies.

“We intend to move to dismiss all of Elon’s claims,” says OpenAI.

(Photo by Austin Ramsey on Unsplash)

See also: Anthropic’s latest AI model beats rivals and achieves industry first

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The legal battle, unfolding in the Superior Court of California for the County of San Francisco, revolves around OpenAI’s departure from its foundational mission of advancing open-source artificial general intelligence (AGI) for the betterment of humanity.

Musk was a co-founder and early backer of OpenAI. According to Musk, Altman and Greg Brockman (another co-founder and current president of OpenAI) convinced him to bankroll the startup in 2015 on promises that it would remain a nonprofit.

In his legal challenge, Musk accuses OpenAI of straying from its principles through a collaboration with Microsoft—alleging that the partnership prioritises proprietary technology over the original ethos of open-source advancement.

Musk’s grievances include claims of contract breach, violation of fiduciary duty, and unfair business practices. He calls upon OpenAI to realign with its nonprofit objectives and seeks an injunction to halt the commercial exploitation of AGI technology.

At the heart of the dispute is OpenAI’s recent launch of GPT-4 in March 2023. Musk contends that unlike its predecessors, GPT-4 represents a shift towards closed-source models—a move he believes favours Microsoft’s financial interests at the expense of OpenAI’s altruistic mission.

Founded in 2015 as a nonprofit AI research lab, OpenAI transitioned into a commercial entity in 2020. OpenAI has now adopted a profit-driven approach, with revenues reportedly surpassing $2 billion annually.

Musk, who has long voiced concerns about the risks posed by AI, has called for robust government regulation and responsible AI development. He questions the technical expertise of OpenAI’s current board and highlights the removal and subsequent reinstatement of Altman in November 2023 as evidence of a profit-oriented agenda aligned with Microsoft’s interests.

See also: Mistral AI unveils LLM rivalling major players

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Marcus founded RobustAI and Geometric Intelligence (acquired by Uber), is the Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Neural Science at NYU, and authored Rebooting.AI. His views on AGI are worth listening to.

AGI is the kind of artificial intelligence depicted in movies like Space Odyssey (‘HAL’) and Iron Man (‘J.A.R.V.I.S’). Unlike current AIs that are trained for a specific task, AGIs are more like the human brain and can learn how to do tasks.

Most experts believe AGI will take decades to achieve, while some even think it will never be possible. In a survey of leading experts in the field, the average estimate was there is a 50 percent chance AGI will be developed by 2099.

Elon Musk is far more optimistic:

2029 feels like a pivotal year. I’d be surprised if we don’t have AGI by then. Hopefully, people on Mars too.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 30, 2022

Musk’s tweet received a response from Marcus in which he challenged the SpaceX and Tesla founder to a $100,000 bet that he’s wrong about the timing of AGI.

AI expert Melanie Mitchell from the Santa Fe Institute suggested the bets are placed on longbets.org. Marcus says he’s up for the bet on the platform – where the loser donates the money to a philanthropic effort – but he’s yet to receive a response from Musk.

In a post on his Substack, Marcus explained why he’s calling Musk out on his prediction.

“Your track record on betting on precise timelines for things is, well, spotty,” wrote Marcus. “You said, for instance in 2015, that (truly) self-driving cars were two years away; you’ve pretty much said the same thing every year since. It still hasn’t happened.”

Marcus argues that pronouncements like Musk is famous for can be dangerous and take attention away from the kind of questions that first need answering. 

“People are very excited about the big data and what it’s giving them right now, but I’m not sure it’s taking us closer to the deeper questions in artificial intelligence, like how we understand language or how we reason about the world,” said Marcus in 2016 in an Edge.org interview.

An incident in April, where a Tesla on Autopilot crashed into a $3 million private jet in a mostly empty airport, is pointed to as an example of why the focus needs to be on solving serious issues with AI systems before rushing to AGI:

“It’s easy to convince yourself that AI problems are much easier than they are actually are, because of the long tail problem,” argues Marcus.

“For everyday stuff, we get tons and tons of data that current techniques readily handle, leading to a misleading impression; for rare events, we get very little data, and current techniques struggle there.”

Marcus says that he can guarantee Musk won’t be shipping fully-autonomous ‘Level 5’ cars this year or next, despite what Musk said at TED2022. Unexpected outlier circumstances, like the appearance of a private jet in the way of a car, will continue to pose a problem to AI for the foreseeable future.

“Seven years is a long time, but the field is going to need to invest in other ideas if we are going to get to AGI before the end of the decade,” explains Marcus. “Or else outliers alone might be enough to keep us from getting there.”

Marcus believes outliers aren’t an unsolvable problem, but there’s currently no known solution. Making any predictions about AGI being achievable by the end of the decade before that issue is anywhere near solved is premature.

Along those same lines, Marcus points at how deep learning is “pretty decent” at recognising objects is but nowhere near as adept at human brain-like activities such as planning, reading, or language comprehension.

Here’s a pie chart used by Marcus of the kind of things that an AGI would need to achieve:

Marcus points out that he’s been using the chart for around five years and the situation has barely changed, we “still don’t have anything like stable or trustworthy solutions for common sense, reasoning, language, or analogy.”

Tesla is currently building a robot that claims to be able to perform mundane tasks around the home. Marcus is sceptical given the problems that Tesla is having with its cars on the roads.

“The AGI that you would need for a general-purpose domestic robot (where every home is different, and each poses its own safety risks) is way beyond what you would need for a car that drives on roads that are more or less engineered the same way from one town to the next,” he reasons.

Because AGI is still a somewhat vague term that’s open to interpretation, Marcus makes his own five predictions that AI will not be able to do by Musk’s 2029 prediction that AGI will be achieved:

Well then, Musk—do you accept Marcus’ challenge? Can’t say I would, even if I had anywhere near Musk’s disposable income.

(Photo by Kenny Eliason on Unsplash)

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Musk has been one of the most prominent figures to warn that AI is a “danger to the public” and potentially the “biggest risk we face as a civilisation”. In 2017, he even said there was just a “five to 10 percent chance of success [of making AI safe]”.

Speaking about London-based DeepMind in a New York Times interview last year, Musk said: “Just the nature of the AI that they’re building is one that crushes all humans at all games. I mean, it’s basically the plotline in ‘War Games’”.

Unveiling a 5ft 8in AI-powered humanoid robot may seem to contradict Musk’s concerns. However, rather than leave development to parties who he believes would be less responsible, Musk believes Tesla can lead in building ethical AI and robotics.

Musk has form in this area after co-founding OpenAI. The company’s mission statement is: “To build safe Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), and ensure AGI’s benefits are as widely and evenly distributed as possible.”

Of course, it all feels a little like building nuclear weapons to deter them—it’s an argument that’s sure to have some rather passionate views on either side.

During the unveiling of Tesla Bot, Musk was sure to point out that you could easily outrun and overpower it.

Tesla Bot is designed to “navigate through a world built for humans” and carry out tasks that are dangerous, repetitive, or boring. One example task is for the robot to be told to go to the store and get specific groceries.

Of course, all we’ve seen of Tesla Bot at this point is a series of PowerPoint slides (if you forget about the weird dance by a performer dressed as a Tesla Bot … which we’re all trying our hardest to.)

The unveiling of the robot followed a 90-minute presentation about some of the AI upgrades coming to Tesla’s electric vehicles. Tesla Bot is essentially a robot version of the company’s vehicles.

“Our cars are basically semi-sentient robots on wheels,” Musk said. “It makes sense to put that into humanoid form.”

AI Day was used to hype Tesla’s advancements in a bid to recruit new talent to the company. 

On its recruitment page, Tesla wrote: “Develop the next generation of automation, including a general purpose, bi-pedal, humanoid robot capable of performing tasks that are unsafe, repetitive or boring.

“We’re seeking mechanical, electrical, controls and software engineers to help us leverage our AI expertise beyond our vehicle fleet.”

A prototype of Tesla Bot is expected next year, although Musk has a history of delays and showing products well before they’re ready across his many ventures. Musk says that it’s important the new machine is not “super expensive”.

Find out more about Digital Transformation Week North America, taking place on 9-10 November 2021, a virtual event and conference exploring advanced DTX strategies for a ‘digital everything’ world.

The post AI Day: Elon Musk unveils ‘friendly’ humanoid robot Tesla Bot appeared first on AI News.

Musk has been among the most vocal prominent figures in warning about the dangers of artificial intelligence. In 2018, for example, Musk famously warned that AI could become “an immortal dictator from which we would never escape” and that the technology is more dangerous than nuclear weapons.

Speaking in a New York Times interview, Musk said that current trends suggest AI could overtake humans by 2025. However, Musk adds “that doesn’t mean that everything goes to hell in five years. It just means that things get unstable or weird.”

If correct, the latest prediction from Musk would mean the so-called technological singularity – when machine intelligence overtakes human – is set to happen much sooner than other experts predict. Ray Kurzweil, a respected futurist, has previously estimated the aforementioned singularity to occur around 2045.

As the founder of Tesla, SpaceX, and Neuralink – three companies which use AI far more than most – Musk isn’t against the technology, but has called for it to be regulated.

Musk also founded OpenAI back in 2015 with the goal of researching and promoting ethical artificial intelligence. Following disagreements with the company’s direction, Musk left OpenAI in 2018.

Back in February, Musk responded to an MIT Technology Review profile of OpenAI saying that it “should be more open” and that all organisations “developing advanced AI should be regulated, including Tesla.”

Last year, OpenAI decided not to release a text generator which it believed to have dangerous implications in a world already struggling with fake news and disinformation campaigns.

Two graduates later recreated and released a similar generator to OpenAI’s, with one saying that it “allows everyone to have an important conversation about security, and researchers to help secure against future potential abuses.”

OpenAI has since provided select researchers access to their powerful text generator. The latest version, GPT-3, has been making headlines in recent weeks for the incredible things it can achieve with limited input.

GPT-3 offers 175 billion parameters compared to GTP-2’s 1.5 billion parameters – which shows the rapid pace of AI advancements. However, Musk’s prediction of the singularity happening within five years perhaps needs to be taken with a pinch of salt.

(Image Credit: Elon Musk by JD Lasica under CC BY 2.0 license)

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