Musk v. Altman Could Completely Shake Up The Dynamics Of The AI Race

A WIRED reader asks, What does the potential outcome

of this trial mean for the thousands

of businesses that are currently using OpenAI's API

and other AI services to prop up their own businesses?

Yeah, I mean, it's a really good question that

I actually don't think people have fully grappled

with the consequence that OpenAI could

effectively go away as a company because of this trial.

I mean, that is what Musk has suggested as a remedy

for what he alleges to be a decade of wrongdoing

by Sam Altman and Greg Brockman.

He's saying that they basically have created a company

out of a nonprofit and wants to turn them into a nonprofit.

The API that you're referencing that you're right,

thousands of businesses are using right now.

That is a product.

That was the first product of OpenAI's business,

and that would also go away if OpenAI

was to cease existing as a for-profit company.

In terms of the competition dynamics

with the rest of the AI industry,

you have to acknowledge that OpenAI is the world leader

in AI right now.

There's some case to be made that Anthropic is

closely, you know, edging them out.

Perhaps in coding and enterprise,

they are actually winning in some ways.

But I mean, this would completely shake up

the dynamics of the AI race.

It would basically take it from there being four

leading AI companies with Google, xAI, Anthropic,

and OpenAI to there being three.

And I think we've seen already in the last week that

Anthropic, xAI Elon's company, and Google DeepMind,

they seem increasingly willing to work with each other

in interesting ways whereas OpenAI is

kind of off on its own island here.

So this would really change the dynamic.

Yeah, I feel like we've written a fair amount of just how

incestuous this industry has gotten and the kind of like

circular deals, so I think, you know, OpenAI is really tied

to both the rest of the tech industry at this point,

but it also has a huge impact on like the US economy

that I think we're all going to be watching pretty closely.