6 ms·

Sam Altman Won in Court Against Elon Musk. But, We All Lost

123 points by littlexsparkee 5mo ago

acidhousemcnab 5mo ago
[flagged]
- sanskritical 5mo ago
  no recaptcha / works on tor, unlike archive.is: https://removepaywalls.com/https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-silicon-valley/sam-altman-won-in-court-against-elon-musk-but-really-we-all-lost https://removepaywalls.com/https://www.newyorker.com/news/le...
jdidrirjrjo 5mo ago
[flagged]
- fleroviumna 5mo ago
  [dead]
perilunar 5mo ago
An entertaining and scathing writeup.
thisisauserid 5mo ago
Exquisite prose merely to call two billionaires insufferable.
- metalliqaz 5mo ago
  Are there any more noble uses for exquisite prose?
- deleted 5mo ago
  [deleted]
vlucas 5mo ago
Sam didn't "win" the case in the sense that most people will think of when reading this headline. In the 20th paragraph of the linked article, finally getting to the actual reason: > On Monday, the jury took only two hours to reach its verdict. Musk’s complaint, the panel found, had indeed exceeded the statute of limitations Musk is appealing. This fight is far from over.
- nashashmi 5mo ago
  Lawsuit filed in 2024. Too late for it. AI boomed in 2023. And elon exited in 2021. I hate to say it but Elon lost. And we all lost.
  - choilive 5mo ago
    What do you mean? Pandoras box has already been opened. Even if OpenAI disappears, there will be another one to take its marketshare. The tech is too useful to die
    - nashashmi 5mo ago
      If open ai disappears… or is chained to a guideline, we would be ok.
- epistasis 5mo ago
  This case should have never made it to a jury, there is no case here. The judge was cowed by Musk's fame to even bring this to trial, I think. It's an example of how the justice system works differently for this with more wealth and power. There is no case, just massive ego from a person with massive wealth.
- kryptiskt 5mo ago
  That Musk couldn't even get over the first stumbling block which is the statute of limitations, does not make the win any lesser. It makes it more decisive, since Musk now has to overcome that hurdle before even having a shot at the meat of the case.
rsingel 5mo ago
The kicker on this story is glorious
Curosinono 5mo ago
E.H. promised her investors a magic cure -> sharlatan Sam B. stole money from everyone -> thief Sam A. did what? And Musk wanted to do the same thing. Both agreeded, that a non profit will not make enough money to push the frontier. He is only pissed that he didn't get control of openai and he is now pissed again because he apparently should have done the lawsuite a few years back. Despite him having unlimited money and probably very good laywers I'm not here to defend the richest of the richest, but E.H. and S.B. are complet different storries to OpenAI
- hawkice 5mo ago
  Non-profits are not the property of their donors, but of the general interest, with obligations to the public. It is part of the legal and social obligations of the legal structure of non-profits.
  - Curosinono 5mo ago
    It wasn't illegal so there is some reason why the USA allowed it. And as mentioned, they agreeed that they will not get the capital openai needs, so what did the USA people loose? A company which whouldn't have been able to do what they are known for anyway. Again i'm not protecting the rich, i just don't think there is a real scandal and its not the same as the other 2 the newyorker mentioned
    - hawkice 5mo ago
      Their stated non-profit goal was to benefit all of humanity. Changing OpenAI to benefit their financial backers in a formal sense could be a loss of nearly unbounded value.
      - Curosinono 5mo ago
        As i wrote in my prev argument, they assumed that as non profit, they wouldt' get the capital needed to even be a frontier lab. So nothing to loose if their model wouldn't have worked anyway. And at the current state, its better anyway that China is pushing the non-profit/humantariy aspect of open models.
xbar 5mo ago
A favorite quote: "The dubiousness of Altman’s character is [...] priced into his reputation."
pj_mukh 5mo ago
This is a weird fantasy among the literati that AI is a "scam", that we can "expose" them with lots of palace intrigue coverage and SBF or Elizabeth Holmes them away and then everything will be right in the world. Some of the best models are Chinese and Open-source and so-so good and Sam Altman is wholly irrelevant to them. Some folks are in for a very rude awakening.
- metalliqaz 5mo ago
  Rude how? The fact that Chinese open weight models are useful does not really say anything about whether AI is hyped well beyond its actual worth, or whether the technology will be used for benevolent or nefarious purposes by American oligarchs.
  - pj_mukh 5mo ago
    "AI is hyped well beyond its actual worth, or whether the technology will be used for benevolent or nefarious purposes by American oligarchs." This article is asking none of those questions. It's mostly a high school gossip column about what was said and with what tone and who used Butt pillows by The New Yorker, it reeks of desperation. If they could just find something nefarious on Sam Altman or show him in a bad light that sticks, they could fix it all and make AI go away. My point stands, they're in for a Rude awakening.
- jgalt212 5mo ago
  On a certain level it is a scam. AI slop, vibe coding, tokenmaxxing, blaming employee layoffs on AI, pretty much any comment CEOs make about AI, etc.
  - standardUser 5mo ago
    Jargon isn't a scam. I get more and better work done with AI, to my own satisfaction and to the benefit of my employer. People using dumb terms to describe this doesn't make it less true.
    - 5mo ago
ryandrake 5mo ago
"When elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers." There's really nobody for normal people to root for in this battle. They're fighting over who gets to wield the dick that is going to screw us all.
- alsetmusic 5mo ago
  > There's really nobody for normal people to root for in this battle. I believe the reports that Sam Altman is an egomaniacal liar. But I haven't been privy to any of it other than seeing him hype his company's tech in a clearly dishonest manner. That's not great. I've seen Elon be an active piece of shit, white nationalist, conspiracy promoter, etc, for years. I don't root for Sam Altman. I root against Elon. In a dystopian world where everything is terrible (the one we live in), I can at least take some pleasure in seeing a person I dislike have a bad time. It still makes me angry that he can just waste the time of the courts out of spite. Can't prevent it, might as well find the silver lining.
  - dominotw 5mo ago
    I think paul graham needs to really come clean about why he did this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41034829 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41034829
  - graemep 5mo ago
    > I've seen Elon be an active piece of shit, white nationalist, conspiracy promoter, etc, for years. I don't root for Sam Altman. I root against Elon. A stopped clock is right twice a day Even Elon is sometimes right.
    - dd8601fn 5mo ago
      I know it can be very hard to admit because he’s broadly terrible, but he spent the last 20 years being right on some really, really big gambles, where many experts told us he wouldn’t.
  - _verandaguy 5mo ago
nivekney 5mo ago
"We"? Who "We"?
- moronicles 5mo ago
  [dead]
booleanbetrayal 5mo ago
I believe an upset to Altman and a re-characterization of OpenAI to a charitable stance would have left investors scrambling, and would likely have hastened an unwinding of the AI bubble to some degree. It feels like we'll be on this merry-go-round a good deal longer now.
x0x7 5mo ago
[flagged]
- onemoresoop 5mo ago
  Elon isn’t fighting for the users, that’s absolute nonesense.
- minihoster 5mo ago
  Did an elon stan invoke being obedient to billionaires? Besides the one we all know, there is no other billionaire dickridden harder than elon. There's no terrible behavior that can't be justified as long as the memes keep flowing I guess. Although in this particular round sama is worse...
alper 5mo ago
Will we become Musk's slave or Altman's slave?
rizkimurtadha 5mo ago
[dead]
thelastgallon 5mo ago
Dude has 800+ billion net worth. I think he'll be okay.
- gaws 5mo ago
  It's about pride at this point.
rgbrenner 5mo ago
musk sued long after the statute of limitations because what openai did was only objectionable to musk once he decided to become their competitor. and in this scenario, i’m supposed to root for musk who tried to use the court to harm a competitor who’s winning in the marketplace against xAI? no thanks. if you can’t compete in the marketplace, the court isn’t your backup plan. there’s nothing. positive about the weaponization of the courts.
deleted 5mo ago
[deleted]
nirui 5mo ago
The "benefits all of humanity" narrative was interesting. If Elon Musk remained the silly/goofy outsider character he was, then the narrative that he naively invested in OpenAI for the good of all mankind is somewhat believable. However, he really turned himself a serious shitball in the past few years and did some really harmful things intentionally. Maybe his trying to test the boundaries or something? But it does made his "kindness" somewhat hard to believe. Also, I can't see any outcome where the general labor (which most of us are) can benefit from AI development, given the context that the world is suffering from population decline and economic crisis, which could reduce overall opportunity and at the same time make living harder. After all, AI is different than other tech in that, the end gold for AI is to eliminate all "frictions". What is frictions? Well, say if you want to go to a place, the getting up and leave, the driving, the parking, the walking, that's all friction. In a frictionless world, you want to go to a place, and you already there, it's done right as you finishes your wishing. Here's the thing: as general labors, most services we provide is also to reduce friction, we exchange that for money to survive. That's how we got a share of the wealth of the world. So if there's less friction, then will translate to less opportunity, in that scene, "we all lost" too. BTW: in my (Chinese) education, we were told that when productivity is advanced enough, communism will become the final and only choice of humanity. The silly communists never realized that if productivity is really that advanced, then there's a chance that the life of most people could become some redundant waste to be eliminated.
tim333 5mo ago
>But, Really, We All Lost I'm not so sure. The danger with AI was that one bunch of capitalists got control, monopolised it / used trade secrets to control it, then it gets smarter than humans and said capitalists basically control the world and replace much human labour to grab all the money. Musk partly started OpenAI to guard against Google being in that situation and it has sort of worked in that it's led to a bunch of different companies all competing. The main ones being Google, OpenAI, Anthropic and xAI, those all being kind of OpenAI spin offs except for Google. The case illustrates the leaders can be arseholes so it's best to have competition to keep them under control.
mitchbob 5mo ago
https://archive.ph/LSWjV https://archive.ph/LSWjV

123 points by littlexsparkee 5mo ago

acidhousemcnab 5mo ago

[flagged]

sanskritical 5mo ago
no recaptcha / works on tor, unlike archive.is: https://removepaywalls.com/https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-silicon-valley/sam-altman-won-in-court-against-elon-musk-but-really-we-all-lost https://removepaywalls.com/https://www.newyorker.com/news/le...

jdidrirjrjo 5mo ago

[flagged]

fleroviumna 5mo ago
[dead]

perilunar 5mo ago

An entertaining and scathing writeup.

thisisauserid 5mo ago

Exquisite prose merely to call two billionaires insufferable.

metalliqaz 5mo ago
Are there any more noble uses for exquisite prose?
deleted 5mo ago
[deleted]

vlucas 5mo ago

Sam didn't "win" the case in the sense that most people will think of when reading this headline. In the 20th paragraph of the linked article, finally getting to the actual reason: > On Monday, the jury took only two hours to reach its verdict. Musk’s complaint, the panel found, had indeed exceeded the statute of limitations Musk is appealing. This fight is far from over.

nashashmi 5mo ago
Lawsuit filed in 2024. Too late for it. AI boomed in 2023. And elon exited in 2021. I hate to say it but Elon lost. And we all lost.
- choilive 5mo ago
  What do you mean? Pandoras box has already been opened. Even if OpenAI disappears, there will be another one to take its marketshare. The tech is too useful to die
  - nashashmi 5mo ago
    If open ai disappears… or is chained to a guideline, we would be ok.
epistasis 5mo ago
This case should have never made it to a jury, there is no case here. The judge was cowed by Musk's fame to even bring this to trial, I think. It's an example of how the justice system works differently for this with more wealth and power. There is no case, just massive ego from a person with massive wealth.
kryptiskt 5mo ago
That Musk couldn't even get over the first stumbling block which is the statute of limitations, does not make the win any lesser. It makes it more decisive, since Musk now has to overcome that hurdle before even having a shot at the meat of the case.

rsingel 5mo ago

The kicker on this story is glorious

Curosinono 5mo ago

E.H. promised her investors a magic cure -> sharlatan Sam B. stole money from everyone -> thief Sam A. did what? And Musk wanted to do the same thing. Both agreeded, that a non profit will not make enough money to push the frontier. He is only pissed that he didn't get control of openai and he is now pissed again because he apparently should have done the lawsuite a few years back. Despite him having unlimited money and probably very good laywers I'm not here to defend the richest of the richest, but E.H. and S.B. are complet different storries to OpenAI

hawkice 5mo ago
Non-profits are not the property of their donors, but of the general interest, with obligations to the public. It is part of the legal and social obligations of the legal structure of non-profits.
- Curosinono 5mo ago
  It wasn't illegal so there is some reason why the USA allowed it. And as mentioned, they agreeed that they will not get the capital openai needs, so what did the USA people loose? A company which whouldn't have been able to do what they are known for anyway. Again i'm not protecting the rich, i just don't think there is a real scandal and its not the same as the other 2 the newyorker mentioned
  - hawkice 5mo ago
    Their stated non-profit goal was to benefit all of humanity. Changing OpenAI to benefit their financial backers in a formal sense could be a loss of nearly unbounded value.
    - Curosinono 5mo ago
      As i wrote in my prev argument, they assumed that as non profit, they wouldt' get the capital needed to even be a frontier lab. So nothing to loose if their model wouldn't have worked anyway. And at the current state, its better anyway that China is pushing the non-profit/humantariy aspect of open models.

xbar 5mo ago

A favorite quote: "The dubiousness of Altman’s character is [...] priced into his reputation."

pj_mukh 5mo ago

This is a weird fantasy among the literati that AI is a "scam", that we can "expose" them with lots of palace intrigue coverage and SBF or Elizabeth Holmes them away and then everything will be right in the world. Some of the best models are Chinese and Open-source and so-so good and Sam Altman is wholly irrelevant to them. Some folks are in for a very rude awakening.

metalliqaz 5mo ago
Rude how? The fact that Chinese open weight models are useful does not really say anything about whether AI is hyped well beyond its actual worth, or whether the technology will be used for benevolent or nefarious purposes by American oligarchs.
- pj_mukh 5mo ago
  "AI is hyped well beyond its actual worth, or whether the technology will be used for benevolent or nefarious purposes by American oligarchs." This article is asking none of those questions. It's mostly a high school gossip column about what was said and with what tone and who used Butt pillows by The New Yorker, it reeks of desperation. If they could just find something nefarious on Sam Altman or show him in a bad light that sticks, they could fix it all and make AI go away. My point stands, they're in for a Rude awakening.
jgalt212 5mo ago
On a certain level it is a scam. AI slop, vibe coding, tokenmaxxing, blaming employee layoffs on AI, pretty much any comment CEOs make about AI, etc.
- standardUser 5mo ago
  Jargon isn't a scam. I get more and better work done with AI, to my own satisfaction and to the benefit of my employer. People using dumb terms to describe this doesn't make it less true.
  - 5mo ago

ryandrake 5mo ago

"When elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers." There's really nobody for normal people to root for in this battle. They're fighting over who gets to wield the dick that is going to screw us all.

alsetmusic 5mo ago
> There's really nobody for normal people to root for in this battle. I believe the reports that Sam Altman is an egomaniacal liar. But I haven't been privy to any of it other than seeing him hype his company's tech in a clearly dishonest manner. That's not great. I've seen Elon be an active piece of shit, white nationalist, conspiracy promoter, etc, for years. I don't root for Sam Altman. I root against Elon. In a dystopian world where everything is terrible (the one we live in), I can at least take some pleasure in seeing a person I dislike have a bad time. It still makes me angry that he can just waste the time of the courts out of spite. Can't prevent it, might as well find the silver lining.
- dominotw 5mo ago
  I think paul graham needs to really come clean about why he did this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41034829 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41034829
- graemep 5mo ago
  > I've seen Elon be an active piece of shit, white nationalist, conspiracy promoter, etc, for years. I don't root for Sam Altman. I root against Elon. A stopped clock is right twice a day Even Elon is sometimes right.
  - dd8601fn 5mo ago
    I know it can be very hard to admit because he’s broadly terrible, but he spent the last 20 years being right on some really, really big gambles, where many experts told us he wouldn’t.
- _verandaguy 5mo ago

nivekney 5mo ago

"We"? Who "We"?

moronicles 5mo ago
[dead]

booleanbetrayal 5mo ago

I believe an upset to Altman and a re-characterization of OpenAI to a charitable stance would have left investors scrambling, and would likely have hastened an unwinding of the AI bubble to some degree. It feels like we'll be on this merry-go-round a good deal longer now.

x0x7 5mo ago

[flagged]

onemoresoop 5mo ago
Elon isn’t fighting for the users, that’s absolute nonesense.
minihoster 5mo ago
Did an elon stan invoke being obedient to billionaires? Besides the one we all know, there is no other billionaire dickridden harder than elon. There's no terrible behavior that can't be justified as long as the memes keep flowing I guess. Although in this particular round sama is worse...

alper 5mo ago

Will we become Musk's slave or Altman's slave?

rizkimurtadha 5mo ago

[dead]

thelastgallon 5mo ago

Dude has 800+ billion net worth. I think he'll be okay.

gaws 5mo ago
It's about pride at this point.

rgbrenner 5mo ago

musk sued long after the statute of limitations because what openai did was only objectionable to musk once he decided to become their competitor. and in this scenario, i’m supposed to root for musk who tried to use the court to harm a competitor who’s winning in the marketplace against xAI? no thanks. if you can’t compete in the marketplace, the court isn’t your backup plan. there’s nothing. positive about the weaponization of the courts.

deleted 5mo ago

[deleted]

nirui 5mo ago

The "benefits all of humanity" narrative was interesting. If Elon Musk remained the silly/goofy outsider character he was, then the narrative that he naively invested in OpenAI for the good of all mankind is somewhat believable. However, he really turned himself a serious shitball in the past few years and did some really harmful things intentionally. Maybe his trying to test the boundaries or something? But it does made his "kindness" somewhat hard to believe. Also, I can't see any outcome where the general labor (which most of us are) can benefit from AI development, given the context that the world is suffering from population decline and economic crisis, which could reduce overall opportunity and at the same time make living harder. After all, AI is different than other tech in that, the end gold for AI is to eliminate all "frictions". What is frictions? Well, say if you want to go to a place, the getting up and leave, the driving, the parking, the walking, that's all friction. In a frictionless world, you want to go to a place, and you already there, it's done right as you finishes your wishing. Here's the thing: as general labors, most services we provide is also to reduce friction, we exchange that for money to survive. That's how we got a share of the wealth of the world. So if there's less friction, then will translate to less opportunity, in that scene, "we all lost" too. BTW: in my (Chinese) education, we were told that when productivity is advanced enough, communism will become the final and only choice of humanity. The silly communists never realized that if productivity is really that advanced, then there's a chance that the life of most people could become some redundant waste to be eliminated.

tim333 5mo ago

>But, Really, We All Lost I'm not so sure. The danger with AI was that one bunch of capitalists got control, monopolised it / used trade secrets to control it, then it gets smarter than humans and said capitalists basically control the world and replace much human labour to grab all the money. Musk partly started OpenAI to guard against Google being in that situation and it has sort of worked in that it's led to a bunch of different companies all competing. The main ones being Google, OpenAI, Anthropic and xAI, those all being kind of OpenAI spin offs except for Google. The case illustrates the leaders can be arseholes so it's best to have competition to keep them under control.

mitchbob 5mo ago

https://archive.ph/LSWjV https://archive.ph/LSWjV