Can’t help but think Elons lawsuit will trigger more releases by OpenAI. His core arguments are BS, but raised legitimate questions about their non-profit status and lack of non-profit related activity.
> raised legitimate questions about their non-profit status and lack of non-profit related activity
What is "non-profit related activity"? IANAL but the only justification needed for non-profit designation is not being for-profit.
And maybe their structure with a for-profit subsidiary is up for debate because of this. But you don't get to be non-profit by doing "good stuff" like open sourcing things. You get it by investing all profits back into the business.
Evil Corp for Doing Evil could be a non-profit if it invested all its profits back into the business.
> What is "non-profit related activity"? What is "non-profit related activity"? IANAL but the only justification needed for non-profit designation is not being for-profit.
Good thing you are NAL, because this is flat out wrong. "Non-profit" is a term used to refer to specific tax-exempt institutions under US tax law 501(c), and has nothing to do with investing profits "back into the business" (otherwise, you could have called Amazon or Uber "non-profits").
OpenAI[1] is specifically a 501(c)(3)[2] which explicitly requires the organization's purpose be one of the following "exempt" purposes:
>charitable, religious, educational, scientific, literary, testing for public safety, fostering national or international amateur sports competition, and preventing cruelty to children or animals. [3]
If it does not continue to fill one of those purposes, it can lose its tax-exempt nonprofit status.
> His core arguments are BS, but raised legitimate questions about their non-profit status and lack of non-profit related activity.
These legitimate questions about their non-profit status ARE his core arguments. His complaints are the same as the popular notion on hackernews that OpenAI has failed to be open.
> These legitimate questions about their non-profit status ARE his core arguments.
Except for the portion where he advocated for a capped-profit arm which he would run under Tesla. You know that part that is shown in the OpenAI emails. It seemed he was ok with it when HE would stand to benefit.
You can't believe that Elon is "a great businessman" while also believing that he is totally altruistic and ignores all of the self serving impulses that have gotten him to where he is.
Elon had always advocated for a for-profit structure so that OpenAI can raise enough money to achieve its vision. In the email they are discussing how the for-profit structure could work. Nothing wrong with that especially when he was the GP.
While I am not a lawyer, I think it’s pretty apparent you can’t sue someone for damages for participating in an action that you conspired to be a part of.
Is that even true? If you are in talks for something but it falls through for whatever reason, if the thing the other people do violates some prior agreement with you then I don't see why you can't sue for damages. You would need to actually alter the agreement, not just discuss potentially altering it, no?
Of course he's not "totally altruistic"; nobody is. Of course he's self-serving; everyone is all the time. Even the most ostensibly selfless acts have a basis in feeling good about selflessness.
But I don't see how your dichotomy makes any sense. There are selfish poor people. There are altruistic poor people. There are selfish wealthy people. And there are altruistic wealthy people (disregarding blanket denials by far left wackos with emotionally derived selective criticisms of capitalism).
Eye-rolling conspiracy theories aside, Bill Gates is absolute proof that someone can be an objectively great businessman and objectively highly altruistic.
Seems to me that the impusles which got Musk to where he is an obsession with extreme risk taking, combined with sufficient education and clarity of vision to sometimes bend extreme odds in his favour. History is littered with examples of wealth incinerated in the pursuit of building cars and rockets and it says a lot that he's been associated with a multitude of ultra-unlikely successes.
Whereas many other billionaires are more directly driven by wealth accumulation, as evidenced by the trappings of extreme wealth which surround them.
> Of course he's not "totally altruistic"; nobody is. Of course he's self-serving; everyone is all the time. Even the most ostensibly selfless acts have a basis in feeling good about selflessness.
But I don't see how your dichotomy makes any sense. There are selfish poor people. There are altruistic poor people. There are selfish wealthy people. And there are altruistic wealthy people (disregarding blanket denials by far left wackos with emotionally derived selective criticisms of capitalism).
All of this goes without saying.
> Eye-rolling conspiracy theories aside, Bill Gates is absolute proof that someone can be an objectively great businessman and objectively highly altruistic.
The biggest and most glaring difference here is that Bill Gates is not on record attempting to take board control of a for profit company which is attempting to make malaria vaccines (of the many public health efforts he is pushing).
> Seems to me that the impusles which got Musk to where he is an obsession with extreme risk taking, combined with sufficient education and clarity of vision to sometimes bend extreme odds in his favour. History is littered with examples of wealth incinerated in the pursuit of building cars and rockets and it says a lot that he's been associated with a multitude of ultra-unlikely successes.
> Whereas many other billionaires are more directly driven by wealth accumulation, as evidenced by the trappings of extreme wealth which surround them.
None of this has anything to do with the merits of the case and really just comes of a Musk-coddling, a favorite pastime here it seems.
The analogy would be if Bill Gates put millions of dollars into a new non-profit entity dedicated to developing new royalty-free malaria drugs. Then after using his money to develop a great malaria drug, they transferred the malaria drug assets into a for-profit entity, sold half of that entity to Pfizer, so that Pfizer can manufacture the drug and sell it to malaria patients in central Africa.
If that happened, I'd be surprised if Bill Gates didn't sue them.
(As for my latter paragraphs, I was replying to something you said which didn't have anything to do with the merits of the case either. I'd like to think you could extend me the same courtesy you extended yourself.)
They are part of his core argument, but not the entire argument. The (imo) shakier part of the argument is that he is entitled to damages even though he doesn't own shares in the company. This is atypical, most of the time you lose that right once you get rid of your shares. It seems like he is arguing that he was misled and sold his shares because of that, which will be hard to prove if true, and even if it is true, isn't really illegal.
I believe at the time it was reported that Musk and the OpenAI board chose to part ways due to his for-profit AI research (in Tesla) posing a conflict of interest to the OpenAI mission.
Hence his argument boils down to "You made me sell my shares because my 'closed' AI research conflicted with your 'open' non-profit ideals. However, you have since stoped to adhere to your mission statement, effectively seizing to publish your research findings and pursuing for-profit goals. As a consequence of this I have lost a bunch of money."
And as nuts as Musk is, I kind of see his point here.
That argument doesn't really hold a lot of water with me to be honest. If I sell (forced or otherwise) my shares in company because it isn't working on tech I agree with, and then they pivot and start working on tech I agree with and their shares pop, I am not entitled to sue them for damages.
In the scenario you described above, you would be entitled to sue for damages if you sold shares in a company under false pretenses because the other owners deceived you.
Imagine being the part-owner of a bread focused bakery. You tell the other owners that you think the business should focus on pastries – even if everybody agrees that bread products are more important – as pastries make more money (that money can in turn be invested into the bread business).
The other owners hard disagree and ask you to leave the company, because a) that does not fit into their bread-centric mission and b) you own a pastry-supplier in town and would obviously be profiting from this move. So you sell your shares and move on, no harm no foul.
But what if they then turn around and start producing pastries, claiming it's only doing so to financially support their bread business? What if they start entering lucrative deals with other pastry-suppliers and effectively stop making bread?
In this case I would argue that you would be entitled to some portion of your foregone gains. You sold your stock while being under the impression that the company would never go into the direction which you deem is the *only viable one*, only to find out that they did exactly what you suggested after you left.
> ... because it isn't working on tech I agree with, ...
Please notice that this is not what happened. They all agreed on the tech to be researched. The only disagreement was the business model and company structure required to fund the research.
> under false pretenses because the other owners deceived you.
Even your bread/pastry scenario doesn’t quite make this part clear. And this is what will be difficult to prove - did OpenAI know and discuss a rug-pull of “we willingly plan to say we’re going to be doing non-profit work, but actually our plan is to be a for-profit company”.
If their pivot was pre-meditated then I could see Musk having a case, but if they pivoted purely from market factors and realizing they wouldn’t be able to cut it as a non-profit, I’d think he’s SOL
But please reread the comment which is the root of this discussion:
> The (imo) shakier part of the argument is that he is entitled to damages even though he doesn't own shares in the company.
I was never arguing that Musk is entitled to damages. I am merely arguing that it is possible to not own the shares of a company and be entitled to damages. Whether Musk specifically is owed damages is something a judge has to decide.
In the exact case above, you would have to prove intentional deceit (which is quite difficult to do) and even then that isn't actually illegal on its face a lot of the time in non publically traded companies. Further, the timeline isn't as compressed as your comment suggests, if the bread focused bakery pivoted to pastries 4-5 years after you sold your stake in it I do not agree that you would be entitled to damages at all, businesses can and should be allowed to pivot. Selling stock under the impression that a company wouldn't go in a direction you expect, is a normal part of investment and there is nothing wrong with it, people make bad bets all the time.
IANAL but I don't think that intentional deceit is necessary to prove Musk's case, negligent misrepresentation might suffice. And I agree that the judge ultimately has to rule whether or not the time-period between the ousting and pivot is reasonable; this decision would probably be based on precedence, the specifics of the case and the judges opinions.
However, please remember your comment which is the root of this discussion:
> The (imo) shakier part of the argument is that he is entitled to damages even though he doesn't own shares in the company.
I was never arguing that Musk is entitled to damages. I am merely arguing that it is possible to not own the shares of a company and be entitled to damages.
I think some believe Elon's argument is BS because Elon claims to be upset about OpenAI charging for their work. However, internal communications/texts show he wanted to do the same thing. So it seems like sour grapes that he isn't the one in charge.
I detailed my understanding of this case in a sibling-comment to this one, but I think the fact that he wanted to "do the same thing" (read: use the for-profit engine to fund AI research) only makes his case stronger!
If I understand correctly, the OpenAI board asked Musk to remove himself and sell his stake as his for-profit pursuits conflicted with the mission of open, non-profit research. But after he left, they started a for-profit subsidiary and did exactly what they didn't want him doing. I could see how a judge might side with him.
Because me and everyone else here really hates Elon Musk.
> You say it raised legitimate questions about their non-profit status and lack of non-profit related activity.
As soon as OpenAI accepted that investment from Microsoft it has only been used as a for-profit proxy to have their own ‘DeepMind’ to bring down Google which they have tried for years with Bing and the Scroogled campaigns.
OpenAI is now no better than Google DeepMind and both are as closed and secretive and OpenAI ditched from their charter and non-profit status and continues to make excuses for not giving back their research.
People seem to imagine that Errol Musk is dead and Elon got a big inheritance from his daddy's estate. In fact Errol is still very much alive, became bankrupt sometime in the 1990s, and is now a deadbeat living off financial support from his sons.
Was there ever an emerald mine? Maybe. Though nobody has been able to find a scrap of evidence for it. Literally the only "evidence" is Errol's own boasts, which is that he bought a half-share of a Zambian mine for 100k ZAR ($50k USD). Hardly the stuff generational empires are made of.
The Zambian mine is the emerald mine everyone is talking about. From Walter Isaacson's biography:
> [Errol and a Zambian busienessman] agreed on a price [for Errol's plane], and instead of taking a payment in cash, Errol was given a portion of the emeralds produced at three small mines that the entrepreneur owned in Zambia. [...]
> Errol, who never had an ownership stake in the mine, expanded his trade by importing raw emeralds and having them cut in Johannesburg. "Many people came to me with stolen parcels," he says. "On trips overseas I would sell emeralds to jewelers. It was a cloak-and-dagger thing, because none of it was legal." After producing profits of roughly $210,000, his emerald business collapsed in the 1980s when the Russians created an artificial emerald in the lab. He lost all of his emerald earnings.
Yes, all entirely consistent with what I said. Errol has told this story many times, including to Walter. But that’s all there is — a story. Is it true? Doesn’t seem particularly consequential even if true. $600k is a lot of money, but it’s hardly unimaginable wealth.
Wonder if it would be possible to somehow trace the origin of that emerald to where it came from. Anyway its probably the Musk Family office that was the winning bidder so we may never find out now.
I don't know why this guy keeps having emeralds come up in his life. This auction is hilarious given that he repeatedly denies having anything to do with Emeralds. In fact the origin of the Emerald story is Elon himself, in a Forbes article that has since been scrubbed from the internet.
EM: Company death – not succeeding with the company – causes me a lot more stress than physical danger. But I've been in physical danger before. The funny thing is I've not actually been that nervous. In South Africa, my father had a private plane we'd fly in incredibly dangerous weather and barely make it back. This is going to sound slightly crazy, but my father also had a share in an Emerald mine in Zambia. I was 15 and really wanted to go with him but didn't realize how dangerous it was. I couldn't find my passport so I ended up grabbing my brother's – which turned out to be six months overdue! So we had this planeload of contraband and an overdue passport from another person. There were AK-47s all over the place and I'm thinking, "Man, this could really go bad."
I've no doubt Errol told Elon that the mine existed. I've no doubt that Elon believed it when he was 15 years old, and believed it as recently as 2014. And maybe it did exist, or maybe it was a Nigerian Prince scam and Errol, embarrassed to admit he was duped, never recanted that claim. Who knows.
Meanwhile, there's still no trace of this supposed mine. You'd think with all of the obsession people have with this mythical origin story, someone would have found it by now.
if you bought 50k USD worth of $AAPL in 1990, by conservative estimates they will be worth 560 million USD worth today.
I'd argue, that's generational stuff right there.
