The big winner in Elon Musk’s suit against OpenAI and Microsoft — hypocrisy
If ever there were a lawsuit in which a jury and judge should have ruled against both the accuser and the defendants, Elon Musk’s suit against OpenAI and Microsoft was it. The high-profile legal battle pitted the world’s richest man against a company worth more than $3 trillion, another that might soon launch a $1 trillion IPO, and tech execs claiming to have only the good of the world in mind, not mere filthy lucre, while they develop a technology some fear could eventually destroy humankind. The lawsuit was eventually thrown out, but only on technical grounds. Meanwhile, unregulated AI marches on, with Musk, OpenAI and Microsoft all getting richer. The only winner in this suit was hypocrisy. Here’s why. Back to the beginning To understand how this unfolded, we need to go back to OpenAI’s beginnings. The company was founded by current CEO Sam Altman, Musk and others in 2015 — back when AI was a niche technology, used primarily for image and speech recognition, robotics, and experimen