Musk's Side: "OpenAI Shares Should Be Publicly Auctioned"
Musk Blocks OpenAI's Transition to For-Profit Corporation
Debate Over Whether It's Rival Check or Concern Over Threat to Humanity
WSJ: "Musk's Grok App Released on Apple App Store"
However, Musk Consistently Upholds Philosophy of Human Survival
Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, who has been actively blocking OpenAI's transition to a for-profit corporation, has reportedly urged authorities to force an auction of OpenAI's shares.
According to U.S. economic media such as Biz Journals on the 9th (local time), Mark Toberoff, Musk's CEO attorney, recently requested the attorneys general of California and Delaware to put OpenAI's business shares up for auction. In a letter sent to the investigative authorities, Toberoff stated that he is "making the request on behalf of large AI investors who wish to participate in a public competitive bidding for OpenAI's shares."
The plan is to cause disruption to OpenAI's push for a for-profit corporation through the auction of its shares. Since February last year, Musk has been continuously requesting the court to issue a preliminary injunction to block OpenAI's transition to a for-profit corporation. OpenAI, which is leading the global generative AI companies, officially announced at the end of last year that it would restructure its corporate structure into a public benefit corporation (RBC). OpenAI plans to accelerate the development of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) by attracting large-scale investments through this, but concerns have grown inside and outside the industry given that OpenAI was established in 2015 with the goal of safe AI development.
Opinions are divided on whether Musk's blocking is a competitive check from rivals or pressure regarding OpenAI's violation of public interest that could pose a threat to humanity.
Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, stated on his blog on the 6th, "OpenAI now definitely knows how to build AGI," and "we have begun to shift our goal toward true superintelligence." As a leader in AGI technology development, Altman's remarks suggest that the emergence of genuine superintelligence is imminent. In a Bloomberg interview released on the 5th, Altman also emphasized that their technology scored 87.5% on the AGI Challenge, a test evaluating how close AI is to AGI, and predicted that AGI would be developed during Donald Trump's second term in office.
Musk co-founded OpenAI with Altman but parted ways in 2018. In 2023, he established xAI and launched the AI chatbot 'Grok,' entering into competition with OpenAI. Grok was distributed through X (formerly Twitter), a social networking service owned by Musk, but recently, it was confirmed by The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) that an independent Grok app was launched on the Apple App Store. WSJ analyzed that the app was released to catch up with industry leaders like OpenAI.
There is still a significant difference in scale between the two companies. OpenAI successfully raised $6.6 billion last October with a corporate valuation of $157 billion (approximately 229 trillion KRW). In contrast, xAI raised $6 billion last month, and its corporate value is estimated to have just surpassed $40 billion (approximately 58 trillion KRW).
Meanwhile, some interpret Musk's blocking of OpenAI's commercialization as a sincere warning about the superintelligence that humanity must prepare for. Musk is concretizing plans for human migration to Mars through SpaceX, and last year, he was the only major AI industry figure to support the AI regulation bill (SB-1047) proposed by the California legislature, consistently maintaining a philosophy centered on human survival.
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