This Sunday’s cartoon is inspired by the ongoing legal battle between Elon Musk and Sam Altman, arguably two of the people I despise the most in the entire world.
For those of you unaware, Musk is suing Altman for turning OpenAI, one of the leading A.I. companies in the world, into a for-profit corporation, when originally it was put together as a non-profit institute using the money of several donors—one of them being Elon Musk. Not only that, but over the years Musk has been notorious for issuing public warnings against the dangers of developing what is currently called ‘Artificial General Intelligence’ (AGI) since many computer scientists fear once AGI surpasses human-level intelligence, it would escape any restrictions we might try to impose on it for control, with all the Sci-Fi doomsday implications that could ensue.
So, from that point of view, one would be inclined to side with Musk, were it not for the reason that Musk is currently on the race to develop AGI first, through his company xAI. So it doesn’t take much digging to realize the whole point of the lawsuit is not philanthropic protection of mankind from the evil AI corporation, but the shrewd removal of a direct competitor through legal machinations.
And so far Musk’s plan —like most of them— has backfired spectacularly.
Again, this is not about picking sides: I think both Altman and Musk are despicable human beings with no regards for the amount of harm their technologies could unleash unto the world. But it is kinda funny to see these two douchebags butt heads in court.
