Elon Musk wanted ‘complete control’ over company: OpenAI

New Delhi: Sam Altman-run OpenAI has hit back at Elon Musk’s lawsuit against it, saying the company had discussed a for-profit structure to pursue the mission, but “Musk wanted us to Merge with Tesla or hand them full control”. The ChatGPIT creator alleged in a blog post that Musk wanted “majority shares, control over the board of directors, and the title of CEO.” Amidst these discussions “they stopped the funding”.
OpenAI co-founders Greg Brockman, Ilya Sutskever, John Shulman, Sam Altman, and Wojciech Zaremba said that “We could not agree on for-profit terms with Alan because we felt that it was too much for any individual to have complete control over OpenAI. It’s against the mission.” Musk parted ways with OpenAI, saying “Google/DeepMind needs a relevant competitor and he’s going to do it himself. He’s going to help us find our way.”
After this the billionaire suggested merging OpenAI with Tesla. Musk soon decided to leave OpenAI, “saying that our chances of success were zero, and he planned to build a competing AGI within Tesla”. Musk sent an email to OpenAI in December 2018, saying, “Even raising several hundred million will not be enough. This requires billions of dollars per year immediately or forget it”. OpenAI said it is focused on “advancing its mission and there is a long way to go”. Musk alleges in his lawsuit that OpenAI has become “a closed-source de facto subsidiary” of Microsoft.