SILICON PUT-DOWN

Elon Musk Throws Tech Tantrum Over ‘Swindler of the Century’

Musk invested heavily in Sam Altman’s game-changing OpenAI company when it was set to be open source and non-profit. He is now furious that Altman has a new vision.

The world’s richest man, Elon Musk, has pilloried tech industry rival and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman amid reports that the latter’s artificial intelligence non-profit is weighing a moneymaking turn.

Reuters reported Wednesday that the ChatGPT maker is working on plans to shift to a for-profit benefit corporation and remove control from its non-profit board.

Bloomberg reported that OpenAI is also entertaining giving Altman a 7 percent stake in the for-profit entity, which could boost his net worth by $10 billion, based on a $150 billion valuation being discussed.

OpenAI’s chief technology officer, Mira Murati, resigned abruptly on Wednesday, while Reuters noted that another top executive, president Greg Brockman, has been on leave.

Co-founder and top scientist Ilya Sutskever quit earlier this year—he joined a mutiny against Altman last year before changing his mind and welcoming him back five days after he was deposed.

“You can’t just convert a non-profit into a for-profit,” Musk posted on X, the social media network he acquired in 2022 when it was known as Twitter. “That is illegal.”

Reuters reported that OpenAI’s plan is still being hashed out with lawyers and investors—who could stand to benefit if a cap on returns is lifted—and that the OpenAI non-profit entity will still exist, holding a minority stake in the new for-profit venture.

“We remain focused on building AI that benefits everyone, and we’re working with our board to ensure that we’re best positioned to succeed in our mission,” an OpenAI spokesperson told Reuters. “The non-profit is core to our mission and will continue to exist.”

Musk, who is also the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, helped cofound OpenAI in 2015 and was one of its biggest donors. He says he invested in the belief that the algorithm would remain open source and the company would operate as a not-for-profit enterprise.

Musk quit the company in 2018, citing a conflict with Tesla's development of AI for self-driving cars and clearly built up a fierce grudge against his ex-colleague.

He went on to call Altman the “swindler of the century” and compared him to Littlefinger, or Lord Petyr Baelish, the scheming and petty antagonist in George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire fantasy novels and their adapted Game of Thrones television series.

Musk is also tangled in legal fisticuffs with OpenAI—last month, he revived a lawsuit alleging the company breached its founding contract by prioritizing commercial interests over its nonprofit mission.

Critics have raised alarm that for-profit development of artificial intelligence could pose a danger to the economy and even the world since firms will be incentivized to prioritize earnings over safety concerns.

Geoffrey Hinton, the deep learning pioneer known as the “Godfather of AI,” told the MIT Technology Review that he quit his job at Google last year because he is scared about the new generation of large language models—notably OpenAI’s GPT-4—and the existential risk posed by the future development of artificial intelligence.

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Sean Craig

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