Does “injecting chaos into the proceedings” sound like something Elon Musk of all people would do during a lawsuit? Well I hope you’re sitting down because he’s being accused of doing just that in a court filing from OpenAI reported by Bloomberg on Saturday.
Earlier this week, Musk amended his lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft. He's still seeking an eye-popping $134 billion for allegedly engaging in what he characterizes as fraud by switching from non-profit to for-profit status. Now, however, he's asking for potential damages to be paid not to him, the richest person in the world, but instead to OpenAI's nonprofit.
He also wants Sam Altman, the company’s CEO, and Greg Brockman, its president, to be tossed out.
OpenAI says this is Musk “trying to recast his public narrative about his lawsuit.” Indeed it is a significant change to how the story might be framed. Rather than a zillionaire seeking yet another giant sum of money, it becomes a zillionaire seeking to restore the corporate structure of a firm he was allegedly wronged by.
OpenAI characterized Musk making such a move just weeks before a trial set to start later this month as a “legal ambush,” that is “legally improper and factually unsupported.” The filing also says, “Musk’s proposed amendment would require the presentation of different evidence and different witnesses than the case he sponsored until three days ago.”
(Score: 4, Insightful) by RamiK on Thursday April 16, @11:27AM (1 child)
( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judgement_of_Solomon [wikipedia.org] )
I know this is just Musk trying to hurt OpenAI so Gork improves market share... But OpenAI blinking when arguing on technicalities and refusing to revert back to non-profit isn't exactly them being all that innocent either.
A pox on both houses seems fitting.
compiling...
(Score: 5, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Thursday April 16, @12:58PM
It's all about public opinion:
> Rather than a zillionaire seeking yet another giant sum of money, it becomes a zillionaire seeking to restore the corporate structure of a firm he was allegedly wronged by.
Somebody got through to him that the former path was so unwinnable as to be dismissed at a very early stage. This approach gives it more legs in court, more play in the press - maybe it's still unwinnable but it's going to draw out the argument.
🌻🌻🌻🌻✌️ [google.com]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Mojibake Tengu on Thursday April 16, @01:36PM (16 children)
One fundamental systemic flaw of any closed economy model is, while the greed has no limits, ownership may only be limited, by the relevant closure of said economy.
That's provable and does not depend on rule set of a legal structure of society.
That means, in limit case when one person owns everything and other persons own nothing, they become absolutely dependent on his preferred boon distribution model.
Such economy becomes completely useless to them population people.
Then, their best strategy at that moment is to sabotage economy or get rid of owner guy and his lackeys and restart the chaos from scratch.
This happens again and again every time when society begins to converge to this limit by shrinking the set of wealthy owners.
What's actually needed to prevent this for future is righteous control distribution model. An operating system for society.
The kinder you are, the easier it is for wicked people to morally coerce you.
(Score: 2, Informative) by khallow on Thursday April 16, @02:33PM (15 children)
Is consideration of a closed system relevant to us? For example, everyone involved in AI are young - the oldest company involved, Microsoft, is only 51 years old. That means the entirety of the field was invented from scratch in a human lifetime. Creation of substantial things to own is a sign of an open system, right?
But even when systems are closed for real, it's extremely hard for anyone to own everything. After all, every time the owner trades with someone, then the other party gets something to own. You'd have to shut down trade as well.
Is that happening? Last I checked, there was a massive increase [soylentnews.org] in wealth among most of humanity (such as two thirds of humanity increasing their standard of living substantially in a recent 20 year period or the continuing decline in the number of people who are at the most extreme level of poverty). Perhaps we have your righteous control distribution model right under your nose?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 16, @03:57PM (1 child)
Yeah, might makes right. It's nature's way.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 16, @05:02PM
As long as your definition of "might" is infinitely flexible.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Thursday April 16, @05:02PM (12 children)
>the oldest company involved, Microsoft, is only 51 years old
51 is ancient at the current levels of market control and wealth extraction. Microsoft has collected over $1T in revenue in just the last 5 years. Total US Federal tax revenue for 2025 was barely over $5T.
What's the hue and cry among the well heeled when capital gains taxes are raised 4%? MSFT is collecting roughly 4% of the total US Federal tax revenue from all sources.
🌻🌻🌻🌻✌️ [google.com]
(Score: 2, Informative) by khallow on Thursday April 16, @07:16PM (11 children)
Aside from being numbers allegedly of similar size, what is the connection? If hypothetically the top business only collected half as much in revenue, should we halve federal government tax revenue?
So the US federal government is 25 times as bad as Microsoft for extracting wealth? And wouldn't rapid growth of business indicate lack of closure?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Thursday April 16, @07:56PM (10 children)
> If hypothetically the top business only collected half as much in revenue
then their customers would have that money to spend on other things, instead of their investor-owners.
The Fortune 500 collected ~$20T in revenue in 2024. In your own terms: ~$10T not taken from their customers would be like getting their federal taxes 200% refunded.
> So the US federal government is 25 times as bad as Microsoft for extracting wealth?
The US federal government provides infinitely more value to me than Microsoft - Microsoft is in negative value delivered to me territory and has been for 20+ years. My employer has paid over $60K to Microsoft for "seat licenses" in the past 12 years that have done virtually nothing for me - in those 12 years I might have pulled 3 or 4 licenses to unlock Windows on systems I would have rather installed Linux on, but for whatever reason we have M$ inside, so: boop, here's your developers' copy license for that variant (which takes an additional 15+ minutes to look up to get the right license for the right version from the right portal that moves every few years), so, in addition to charging effectively $15K per licensed copy of Windows I have installed, they also needlessly wasted an hour of my time in just that operation - this is completely glossing over whatever they pay for Office 365 subscriptions for me and my time that Outlook and Teams wastes in return.
🌻🌻🌻🌻✌️ [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday April 18, @12:59AM (5 children)
Keep in mind that bizarre as it may seem, spending on Microsoft is voluntary while spending on US taxes is involuntary. Sure, you can choose to not pay your taxes, but then you end up with the intriguing problem of men with guns figuring out how to get those taxes from you one way or another.
"Revenue" not "profit". I could adjust my bookkeeping so that I had $20T in revenue too, but there would be $20T in some sort of cost too that would zero that all out.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday April 18, @01:20AM (4 children)
>I could adjust my bookkeeping so that I had $20T in revenue too
I doubt the $T club would allow you to do that.
When the accountants weren't all liars, revenue means that other - unrelated - parties are giving you money for something. I know you know how to cook those books, and I suspect much book cooking does exist in the Fortune 500 (and the Federal Government as well), but in a transparent, not needlessly complicated accounting without obfuscated misleading definitions: Revenue is money coming from others.
🌻🌻🌻🌻✌️ [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday April 18, @02:26AM (3 children)
They wouldn't have a say.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday April 18, @02:49AM (2 children)
If you start publicly reporting $20T in revenue I bet they will.
🌻🌻🌻🌻✌️ [google.com]
(Score: 0, Redundant) by khallow on Saturday April 18, @03:04AM (1 child)
So what? Still would happen.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday April 18, @03:21AM
Next you can tell us how you bought your own NFT for $20M.
🌻🌻🌻🌻✌️ [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday April 18, @01:05AM (3 children)
So you're not paying for the thing that does nothing for you? I imagine well over 99% of the spending in the world is of that sort. In comparison, how much do you think you've spent on Trump's wars on Venezuela and Iran (and counting)? I gather it's something like $1000 per US citizen so far - several thousand dollars in involuntary spending spread over your family, right? There's this huge difference between spending by another party that doesn't benefit you, and spending of your money on stuff that doesn't benefit you (and might actively harm you down the road, who knows?).
(Score: 3, Touché) by JoeMerchant on Saturday April 18, @01:47AM (2 children)
>So you're not paying for the thing that does nothing for you?
In this sense, I very much _am_ paying for the revenue Microsoft extracts from my employer for no real benefit to themselves. That is a cost of my employment, it reduces the profits of my division, it increases the costs of my department, it increases the risk layoffs in my department, it may well hasten the reality of my layoff should that ever come to pass. However, trying to point this $5K per year waste out to my management is a fruitless exercise, lost as noise in their Billion dollar revenue discussions. Meanwhile "margins are tight due to market conditions" for the last 6 years, so travel budget is slashed to 10% of pre-pandemic levels, expense approvals are tighter than ever, new product development projects are strangled down to a trickle (concerning when your entire department is tasked with new product development) - but try to bring up $5K per year of waste? Read the room: nobody wants to hear about that.
> how much do you think you've spent on Trump's wars on Venezuela and Iran (and counting)?
Far too much. Google says $31M per day for Venezuela, spread that out over 350M people (because my tax burden falls somewhere near average), and we're at $0.089 per day.
Google says Iran is a bit more: $28B in the first 39 days, personal bill $80 so far, or about $2.05 per day. We're talking about hitting Cuba next, I'll guess that one will be closer to $0.05 per day - can probably share assets with the Venezuela operation fairly efficiently.
$5000 per year? $13.69 per day, or over 6x as much as the three wars put together. You might say Microsoft is hitting me, via my company, with the taxes of 19 simultaneous global conflicts, consistently every day for the past 13 years.
>I gather it's something like $1000 per US citizen so far
That would be on the order of $350B so far. I beleive you are gathering some future speculation and projection accounting on that, but even if you are correct, that's 1/5th of my personal zero value M$ tax. The media brainwash that reaches between my eyes and ears leads me to believe there is no benefit to me or the U.S. from these wars, but I understand there's another side out there that believes it's of dramatic strategic importance and will reap wonderful boons for generations to come. M$ - what I see benefitting from M$ most directly is my next door neighbor who did corporate sales for them for 20 years - he's running around with him and his whole family tanked up on SSRIs, carrying two massively expensive homes simultaneously for 18 months "to give them time to move all their stuff over" - fighting with his $100K solar panel installation contractors - enjoying the brand new Porsche he always wanted while his kids waffle about whether they want to go to Ivy League colleges or just stay home and forget about school. He's incapable of repairing a PVC water supply line to his home (by-product of the solar install project trenching), but apparently he was what M$ was looking for in corporate sales for 20 years, until they unceremoniously dumped him.
>and spending of your money on stuff that doesn't benefit you (and might actively harm you down the road, who knows?).
Who knows? Indeed. I was ultra-pissed off at Reagan-Bush (their administrative agenda more than the individual human beings, though Bush Sr. was a spooky fuck) - and yet, they also seemed to successfully shut down the Cold War.
There's some Stephen King inspired movie or series or something out there with the premise of a time traveler who averts the assassination of JFK - gotta be a good thing, right? Well, Stephen King writes imaginative horror-fiction, so it's not much of a spoiler to say: in his imagination stopping the JFK assassination actually made things much much worse.
🌻🌻🌻🌻✌️ [google.com]
(Score: 1, Disagree) by khallow on Saturday April 18, @02:35AM (1 child)
So you're not paying.
BBC sez [bbc.com] otherwise.
Or at least be present when the Cold War ended.
Two things: it's fiction, and it wouldn't sell if it was a good thing. If I write a story about utopia, it has to have a worm somewhere in the apple. Else it'd be boring. This is the prime limitation of story.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday April 18, @03:18AM
>Or at least be present when the Cold War ended.
That's the cheap shot, however - they made significant policy shifts which hadl significant impact on the USSR and 10 years later it happened... I'm sure previous administrations laid plenty of ground work, but the 1980s were tougher on the USSR because of the policy changes, in addition to their Afghanistan foot gun action.
And where did Bush Jr go? It's like a mashup Bojack Horseman / Seinfeld / Arrested Development plot spread over decades.
🌻🌻🌻🌻✌️ [google.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by ElizabethGreene on Thursday April 16, @02:43PM
The full text of the amendment is here: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.433688/gov.uscourts.cand.433688.459.0_1.pdf [courtlistener.com].
My IANAL ignorant understanding is that the things Musk has to prove (or OpenAI disprove) are the "Claims", and none of those have changed. The only thing that's changed is the "Relief", the solution he's proposed to the harms of the claims.
Could someone with actual legal knowledge assert if that's correct and/or if this is lawyer+press wiggle tactics?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by VLM on Thursday April 16, @08:14PM
Legally this is an interesting case for FOSS and FOSS-alike orgs.
Because of elon derrangement syndrome that'll overshadow the actual case.
Technically its possible to convert something like Debian or FreeBSD into a non-FOSS for profit company. Someone might call your bluff if you try it, and may or may not succeed in stopping you.
Its pretty scammy regardless of legality or "getting away with it". It was supposed to be a non-profit but the $$$ appeared so suddenly it seems like everyone but Elon wants them to go full on closed source.
Just the corporate structure diagram on wikipedia is wild, take a look.