What is the origin of the conflict between Open AI and Elon Musk?

Last week, Tesla CEO Elon Musk sued Open AI and its CEO Sam Altman for breach of contract. Musk co-founded the ChatGPT company in 2015 but has since left and created his own AI firm.

According to Musk, the company abandoned its original mission of being a non-profit company when it sought to gain profit by teaming up with Microsoft for $13 billion.

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Open AI strikes back

In retaliation, Open AI published a blog post that featured a series of emails from the days when the SpaceX CEO was still part of the company. The released communication suggests that the billionaire was aware of and supported plans to form a body that would generate profit.

The company said that they realized that a non-profit company would not be able to sustain their efforts to develop artificial general intelligence (AGI), and that in 2017 they had agreed on the for-profit model.

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Open AI: Musk wanted to have absolute control of the company

The ChatGPT company said that Musk wanted to be CEO and have complete control over the company or merge with Tesla.

“Elon forwarded us an email suggesting that OpenAI should ‘attach to Tesla as its cash cow’... ‘Tesla is the only path that could even hope to hold a candle to Google’”, read the post.

Open AI said they could not give in to Musk’s demand as it went against their mission of avoiding any one person from controlling the company absolutely.

“We’re sad that it’s come to this with someone whom we’ve deeply admired - someone who inspired us to aim higher, then told us we would fail, started a competitor, and then sued us when we started making meaningful progress towards OpenAI’s mission without him,” according to the blog post.

Open AI’s other co-founders have said they will move to dismiss all of Musk’s allegations.