Musk’s lawyers submitted the filing to drop the months-old case without providing any reason for the decision….reports Asian Lite News
Billionaire businessman Elon Musk has unexpectedly requested a California court to withdraw his legal case against OpenAI and its CEO, Sam Altman.
The case accused them of straying from OpenAI’s founding mission to develop AI for the benefit of humanity.
Musk’s lawyers submitted the filing to drop the months-old case without providing any reason for the decision.
This move came just a day before the court was set to hear OpenAI’s motion to dismiss the case.
The latest filing requested the case’s dismissal “without prejudice,” allowing Elon Musk to potentially reactivate it later.
Musk had filed the lawsuit against OpenAI in February, claiming the company he co-founded in 2015 had shifted from its altruistic goals to profit-making.
OpenAI responded that Musk had supported the idea of a for-profit structure and even proposed a merger with Tesla.
The dispute escalated earlier this week when Apple announced a partnership with OpenAI to enhance Siri with ChatGPT.
Following the announcement, Musk criticised the partnership on his social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, stating, “Apple has no clue what’s actually going on once they hand your data over to OpenAI. They’re selling you down the river.”
SpaceX ex-employees sue Musk
Eight former employees of Elon Musk’s SpaceX sued the company and Musk on Wednesday, alleging they were “wrongfully fired” for raising concerns about “sexual harassment” and “discrimination” in the workplace, reported the New York Times.
The employees were terminated in 2022 after circulating an open letter urging SpaceX executives to condemn Musk’s comments on Twitter, later renamed X, which they deemed “a frequent source of distraction and embarrassment.”
According to the complaint, Musk ordered the terminations upon learning of the letter.
“Our eight brave clients stood up to him and were fired for doing so,” Laurie Burgess, a lawyer representing the former SpaceX employees, said in a statement. “We look forward to holding Musk accountable for his actions at trial.”
The plaintiffs are seeking an unspecified amount of compensatory damages. SpaceX has not responded to the allegations yet.
The lawsuit, filed in California state court in Los Angeles, called SpaceX’s workplace an “Animal House” filled with inappropriate and sexually suggestive behaviour, the NYT reported.
Several plaintiffs said they had experienced harassment from other SpaceX employees that “mimicked Musk’s posts,” which created “a wildly uncomfortable hostile work environment.”
The lawsuit further contends that executives at SpaceX were regularly made aware of grievances about Musk’s explicit social media messages, but that the complaints were routinely ‘dismissed’, even after a “sexual harassment internal audit” conducted by SpaceX’s president and chief operating officer, Gwynne Shotwell.
ALSO READ: Musk threatens to ban iPhones over Apple-OpenAI deal