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My own thoughts: If I had been on the jury, I would have found against Musk on every point. His lawyers created a “3 phases of doubt” to try and sidestep the
by granzymes 5mo ago
My own thoughts:
If I had been on the jury, I would have found against Musk on every point.
His lawyers created a “3 phases of doubt” to try and sidestep the statute of limitations, but it was clearly bogus and he was on notice of OpenAI creating a for-profit in 2019.
Musk was perfectly happy to have OpenAI be a for-profit, a non-profit with an attached for-profit (the current structure), or even just absorbed into Tesla. His complaints fell flat for me given the number of emails where he said that a non-profit was likely a mistake.
This is technical, but Musk clearly never created a charitable trust, which was a precondition for his claims. His funds were donated for general use by OpenAI, not for any specific use that would allow him to claim breach of charitable trust. Also, all of his funds were spent by no later than 2020 which is before his alleged breach in 2023.
Musk unreasonably delayed bringing this case until the success of ChatGPT and starting a competing AI company, and he had unclean hands because he attempted to sabotage OpenAI repeatedly by poaching its key staff while on the board.
- DoesntMatter22 5mo agoMusk should have just made another company and then he’d have another 500 billion but he had that mistake and now it’s over. Then again we’ll see how well open ai does over the long term
- granzymes 5mo agoEvidence at trial showed that Musk attempted to pursue AGI at Tesla starting in 2017 before he left the board of OpenAI. He was unsuccessful in that endeavor and later restarted his efforts in xAI after the success of ChatGPT.
- big_toast 5mo agoMusk leaves the board in 2018 I think. And something happens in DX-754 where they've pivoted to AI in SpaceX around then too. I had a lot of trouble telling what "AI" meant in late 2017 at Tesla. --- Sept 1, 2017 DX-669: Funding paused confirmation. Elon is still on the board for a while. DX-707 specifies the board as of Sept 26, 2017, and even suggests adding Shivon, Jared, Sam Teller. Jan 31, 2018 DX-748: Elon is still discussing things with Greg. Elon: "The only paths I can think of are a major expansion of OpenAI and a major expansion of Tesla AI. Perhaps both simultaneously" Feb 3, 2018 DX-754: Sam Teller says Elon "just suggested we use SpaceX email for AI stuff so switching over to that" Feb 4, 2018 DX-755: Sam Teller and Shivon Zilis discuss disabling Openai Feb 20, 2018 DX-770: Elon officially leaves board (first document I see specifying)
- andrei_says_ 5mo agoI sometimes wonder, what does one need a second 500 billion that the first 500 billion is not enough for?
- knicholes 5mo agoGetting to Mars, it would seem.
- hdndjsbbs 5mo agoDoes anyone seriously still believe this? I thought as a society we had realized Musk is simply BSing whatever he feels like until it becomes untenable.
- JumpCrisscross 5mo ago> Does anyone seriously still believe this? I do. It’s not his singular focus. But he continues to personally invest himself in pushing the boundaries of human spacefaring capability. That goal seems more meaningful to him that it does to e.g. Bezos, who seems to have a rocket company to look cool.
- nixon_why69 5mo agoHe slashed tons of basic science funding under DOGE. At one point he was probably sincere but he's been consumed by culture war slop.
- JumpCrisscross 5mo agoSee: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48186106 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48186106
- nixon_why69 5mo agoYeah, but slashing basic science funding isn't a "yes, and", it's more of a "no, but". It goes directly against trying to get to mars.
- this_user 5mo agoThis is not about money for him, this was always about control. When they wouldn't give him complete control over the project, he pulled out and probably expected OAI to fold without his support. But they survived, and he eventually realised that he had made a huge mistake by giving up all of his influence over SOTA AI research.
- jongjong 5mo agoI think this is missing the main point that Musk was never the owner of OpenAI, neither was Sam, nor the employees. The owners are the American people. I presume Musk got a tax rebate from his donation, courtesy of the taxpayer; so did every other donor. The fact is, OpenAI was a non-profit belonging to the public and it was appropriated by the donors... Who already got their tax cuts. This is setting a precedent that if you donate a certain amount of money to a charity, you can later convert it to a for-profit and claim to be an owner of the charity... On the basis of 'donations' which you got a tax rebate from. Very convenient. OpenAI donors should have created a new, separate, for-profit entity completely distinct from OpenAI, with a different name, poached the original employees, implemented all the logic from scratch, collected all the training data from scratch... This would have been correct. Basically what Anthropic did seems more like the correct way.
- marcus_holmes 5mo agoI don't understand your reasoning here. You seem to be suggesting that non-profits are owned by the American people? Is there some part of this that I'm missing where this was true of OpenAI at some point?
- jongjong 5mo agoI'm using the term 'owners' loosely here, but this is a much more reasonable interpretation than the interpretation that the donors are the owners.
- marcus_holmes 5mo agoI don't think you understand how non-profits work. Essentially they are exactly the same as for-profits, except they can't issue dividends. Ownership works exactly the same as for-profit companies. A cynical take is that non-profits are for-salary; they still pay their owners, just using other means. edit: no, my bad, apparently I misunderstood how non-profits work in the USA. Thanks for the correction :)
- 5mo ago
- DeusExMachina 5mo agoAs I read around, this lawsuit raised an important question: can a non-profit become a for-profit company? To that extent, what Musk was happy or unhappy with is irrelevant. What is actually allowed by the law is more important. However, it seems that the lawsuit was not phrased that way and Musk just looked for damages to himself. In that frame it's not much of a surprise that things ended this way.
- andy_ppp 5mo agoWould Musk have standing for asking that question about non-profit to for profit companies? I think this would be a role for the government rather than a private individual and the Trump admin is not exactly fond of enforcing regulations.
- DeusExMachina 5mo agoIt does not matter what standing Musk has, the question is the important part, not the asker. You can accuse him of hipocrisy and that still makes no difference. He can still be the vehicle for the question to be asked. The role of the government is to make the laws, and to apply them when violation are reported. It is also to regulate new situations as they arise, for example, if a court decides the law allows a non-profit to become a for-profit and that is deemed as not desirable, new laws can be passed to amend that. It is the government roles, however, to going around to aks hypothetical questions before they are risen by someone, as there are too many possible hypotheticals, most never materialize, and that would be a conflict of interest. In that case Musk is as good as a vehicle as anyone else because he is bringing to the court a real-life problem that needs to be decided. The Trump admin is not fond of enforcing regulations as the Biden admin was not fond of enforcing other regulations. That shows you can't expect the govenment to take that role since it's discretionary.
- ryan_j_naughton 5mo agoThere is a reason standing exists. We don't want a society where anyone can litigate the ill-defined "important questions of society" at will. I agree with you that this is an important question. I disagree with you that, "Musk is as good as a vehicle as anyone else because he is bringing to the court a real-life problem that needs to be decided" Standing is itself a very important and critical concept. If anyone could sue over any “important” public issue without standing, courts would be asked to referee disputes that are normally handled by elections, legislation, agency rulemaking, oversight hearings, and public debate. We don't want the courts to be such arbiters of so many matters and want their purview to be more narrow by design.
- j16sdiz 5mo ago> If I had been on the jury, I would have found ... No, you wouldn't. The case was thrown out of court before you have any chance to comment or decide on that. Jury don't randomly "found" something. The court ask questions, the Jury answers those.
- trainfromkansas 5mo agoJuries are the "finders of fact". That's the phrase often used anyway.
- j16sdiz 5mo agoHow Jury in USA work is: Judge ask a question, Jury tell the count what they found the "fact" is, based on what is presented in court. They just can't "found" something when they are not asked. If you tell the count you found something because you saw something outside the court, that would consider invalid.
- trainfromkansas 5mo agoPractically speaking, since the jury is composed of multiple individuals, they're set up to express their "findings" via a strictly parameterized form where they check boxes or give numerical inputs. In its more colloquial sense, I can see why you prefer to call that "answering" questions rather than "finding" facts. However, it's silly to quibble over the parent thread's author's usage of "found" when it's the dominant phrasing used in the legal system.
- IAmBroom 5mo agoIt's even more preposterous that you can predetermine what a stranger would have done on that jury.
- j16sdiz 5mo agoI am saying the rule in court won't allow that. The problem is: As a jury, you can't answer the question you ain't asked. In this case, they jury was instructed to answer a YES/NO question. They can say YES/NO or (sometimes, can't decide). They just can't answer something else. If they do, that is either disregarded, or consider the jury misunderstood the instruction. You just don't understand how the jury system works.