I Was Truly Foolish to Give Money to OpenAI

The lawsuit between billionaire Elon Musk and OpenAI’s executives has now elicited an emotional and surprising admission. In his latest testimony in court, Elon Musk candidly regretted his decision to fund the artificial intelligence (AI) company in the past. Musk is known to have been one of the early founders who helped fund OpenAI back in 2015. At that time, he agreed to provide funding because OpenAI was promised to operate purely as a non-profit organisation for the benefit of humanity. However, that promise now feels betrayed, leaving him feeling deeply exploited. “I was truly foolish for giving them free funding to build a startup company,” Musk stated in the courtroom, as reported by KompasTekno from Gizmodo. Musk added that he had poured in “free” funds amounting to $38 million USD (approximately Rp 650 billion) to create what is now a company valued at $800 billion USD. This dispute, dubbed “Musk vs Altman,” essentially revolves around Musk’s disappointment with the company’s change in direction. Initially, Musk accused OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and President Greg Brockman of fraud to persuade him to fund what should have been a purely charitable project. However, the fraud allegation has now been withdrawn, and the focus of his lawsuit has been narrowed to claims of “unjust enrichment” and “breach of charitable trust.” Before the judge, Musk stated that establishing OpenAI as a non-profit in the past gave him a “moral high ground” and a kind of positive “halo effect.” He believed that having a laboratory to develop “super digital intelligence” in the form of a charity was something of great value. “But you can’t just do whatever you want,” Musk said. “They got a ‘good association’ from being a non-profit, then switched to a commercial model,” he complained. Northwestern University law professor Jill Horwitz described the lawsuit as highly confusing.