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Elon Musk Sues OpenAI. They Make Fun Of Him And Hire Wachtell.

OpenAI isn't the side whose brief reads like it was written by ChatGPT...

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(Photo by Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for The Met Museum/Vogue)

Most stories involving a lawsuit and some made up AI contractual language have to do with a lawyer not doing their due diligence and checking a ChatGPT error. This time, it looks like the error is between the keyboard and chair — Elon wants to sue OpenAI, and they say that he’s the one hallucinating! From CNN:

OpenAI came out swinging in a new legal filing responding to the lawsuit Musk filed against it last month, calling the billionaire’s “incoherent” claims “frivolous,” “extraordinary” and “a fiction.”

I love a good mess at Elon’s expense! Few things would chip at Elon’s ego quite like an expose at the hands of Wachtell. That’s right, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman made the brilliant decision to hire Elon’s favorite firm to skimp on paying to knock him down a few pegs. Elon’s express reason for filing the suit is that OpenAI allegedly breached a founding agreement to operate as a non-profit, but OpenAI says the agreement he’s referring to never happened. The onus should be heavy on Musk here — really does seem like something that should have been written down somewhere. Without some concrete proof of what he’s talking about, OpenAI’s explanation of what’s actually happening here makes a lot more sense:

OpenAI last week pushed back on Musk’s claims in a blog post suggesting, essentially, that Musk is jealous that he is no longer involved with the company as it has become a leader in the AI arms race. The blog post included emails that Musk had previously sent to other OpenAI cofounders, including one from 2018 in which Musk told company executives that OpenAI should sell itself to Tesla to remain competitive. The company refused, and Musk left OpenAI later that year.

You have to give it up for consistency! A hard no in 2018 was enough to send Elon packing within a year. That tracks with Linda Yaccarino being named as CEO of Twitter within a year of a clear majority of users giving Musk the boot for his role as King Twit. Once he saw quantitative proof that the average Twitter denizen isn’t as enamored with the smell of his own farts as he was, Musk decided to do damage control and only consider votes from blue-checked accounts moving forward. He blamed it on fake accounts, but he didn’t fool anyone by saving face. OpenAI’s framing of what would happen if the lawsuit actually goes to trial looks like Musk could be headed for even more embarrassment:

“Were this case to proceed to discovery, the evidence would show that Musk supported a for-profit structure for OpenAI, to be controlled by Musk himself, and dropped the project when his wishes were not followed. Seeing the remarkable technological advances OpenAI has achieved, Musk now wants that success for himself,” the filing states.

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Onward to discovery! Considering the firm’s history with Musk, he’d better tell his “hardcore” litigation department to prepare to fight a firm with an understandable chip on its shoulder.

OpenAI Ridicules Elon Musk’s ‘Incoherent’ Lawsuit [CNN]

Chris Williams became a social media manager and assistant editor for Above the Law in June 2021. Prior to joining the staff, he moonlighted as a minor Memelord™ in the Facebook group Law School Memes for Edgy T14s.  He endured Missouri long enough to graduate from Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. He is a former boatbuilder who cannot swim, a published author on critical race theory, philosophy, and humor, and has a love for cycling that occasionally annoys his peers. You can reach him by email at cwilliams@abovethelaw.com and by tweet at @WritesForRent.

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