Musk battles OpenAI’s for-profit push

Welcome, AI enthusiasts.

The Elon Musk and OpenAI legal drama is back for Round 4 — and this time, the billionaire is adding Microsoft and former board members to the combination.

Will these latest allegations put a roadblock in the trail of OpenAI’s transformation right into a for-profit powerhouse? Let’s get into it…

In today’s AI rundown:

• Musk seeks to dam OpenAI’s for-profit transition

• DeepMind proposes ‘Socratic learning’ for AI self-improvement

• Find out how to connect Claude to the Web

• Adobe unveils AI-powered sound generation system

• 5 recent AI tools & 5 recent AI jobs

• More AI & tech news

Read time: 4 minutes

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

ELON MUSK & OPENAI

🙅🏻‍♂️ Musk seeks to dam OpenAI’s for-profit transition

The Rundown: Elon Musk just filed a preliminary injunction to stop OpenAI’s planned transition to a completely for-profit business structure, escalating the continuing legal battle and marking the fourth legal motion from the previous co-founder and AI rival.

The main points:

• The injunction seeks to stop OpenAI from converting its structure and transferring assets to preserve the corporate’s original ‘non-profit character.’

• Multiple parties are targeted, including OpenAI, Sam Altman, Microsoft, and former board members — citing improper sharing of competitive information.

• The motion also points to OpenAI’s ‘self-dealing,’ reminiscent of using Stripe as its payment processor, during which Altman has ‘material financial investments.’

• Musk also alleges that OpenAI has discouraged investors from backing its competitors like xAI through restrictive investment terms.

• OpenAI called Musk’s fourth legal motion a “recycling of the identical baseless complaints” and “without merit.”

Why it matters: The Musk and OpenAI saga continues. While Elon’s actions have been viewed as vindictive up to now, OpenAI’s convoluted structure and intertwined dealings aren’t any stranger to scrutiny. With the AI leader rushing to secure its $150B+ valuation and shut investments, the injunction could throw a wrench in its plans.

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GOOGLE DEEPMIND

🧠 DeepMind’s ‘Socratic learning’ for AI self-improvement

The Rundown: Google DeepMind researchers just introduced a framework called ‘Boundless Socratic Learning’ that would enable AI systems to enhance themselves through language-based interactions without requiring external data or human feedback.

The main points:

• The approach relies on ‘language games,’ structured interactions between AI agents that provide learning opportunities and built-in feedback mechanisms.

• The system generates its own training scenarios and evaluates its performance through game-based metrics and rewards.

• The researchers outline three levels of AI self-improvement: basic learning input/output learning, game selection, and potential code self-modification.

• This framework could enable open-ended improvement beyond an AI’s initial training, limited only by time and compute resources.

Why it matters: The highest AI labs all discuss models eventually training themselves — and this framework outlines a blueprint for the way systems can proceed improving without human intervention even after initial training. The challenge will likely be maintaining alignment with human goals as models begin handling their very own self-improvement.

AI TRAINING

🌐 Find out how to connect Claude to the Web

The Rundown: Claude’s recent MCP feature permits you to connect Claude to the web using Brave Search API, enabling real-time information access and up-to-date responses.

Step-by-step:

1. Download the newest Claude desktop app and create an account.

2. Get your free Brave Search API key (2,000 monthly requests).

3. Configure Claude’s config_file together with your API key (you’ll be able to copy/paste the code from here).

4. Restart and test with a current events query.

Pro tip: At all times append “search the web” to queries requiring real-time information for best results!

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• Transcribe technical phrases like “Q4 revenue goal $3M” with precision

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ADOBE

🧪 Adobe unveils AI-powered sound generation system

The Rundown: Adobe researchers just revealed MultiFoley, an AI system that robotically generates synchronized post-production sound effects for videos through text prompts, reference audio, or existing sound clips.

The main points:

• The system produces high-quality 48kHz audio that precisely syncs with on-screen motion, achieving a synchronization accuracy of just 0.8 seconds.

• MultiFoley was trained on a combined dataset of each web videos and skilled sound effect libraries to enable full-bandwidth audio generation.

• Users can transform sounds creatively — for instance, turning a cat’s meow right into a lion’s roar — while still maintaining timing with the video.

• MultiFoley achieves higher synchronization accuracy levels than previous models and rates significantly higher across categories in a user study.

Why it matters: While the quirky videos of Foley artists using all styles of items to craft custom audio are a wild a part of video production, AI’s time in skilled sound design is here. Creating custom, synced soundtracks and effects is about to be as easy as typing to a chatbot — opening entirely recent possibilities for creative workflows.

NEW TOOLS & JOBS

Trending AI Tools

• 🎁 Confetti – AI-powered gifting to shut more deals effortlessly*

• 📣 Muku AI – AI influencer agency that creates UGC video ads with AI avatars

• ⚙️ DataFuel – Turn web sites into LLM-ready data and scrape entire knowledge bases in a single query

• 💼 Elastyc – Match talent with job roles in seconds with AI

• 🗣️ Kroto – Record and translate video guides in 60+ languages with AI

Recent AI Job Opportunities

• 🏢 Meta – Business Development Manager, AI Partnerships

• 🧠 OpenAI – Research Engineer, ChatGPT RLHF

• 💼 Superannotate – Vice President of Sales

• 📊 Waymo – Finance Operations Manager, Procure to Pay

• 📈 Dataiku – Senior Data Scientist

  *Sponsored listing

QUICK HITS

AI image startup Black Forest Labs is reportedly in discussions to raise a $200M funding round led by A16z, which might value the four-month-old company at over $1B.

A bunch of Canadian media giants filed a joint lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging copyright infringement of reports content used to coach the corporate’s AI models.

Meta reportedly plans to construct a $10B subsea cable system spanning 40,000+ kilometers to support growing web traffic and AI initiatives.

OpenAI Policy Frontiers lead Rosie Campbell announced her departure from the corporate, citing ‘unsettling shifts’ and culture losses throughout the startup.

A brand new study from WIRED found that over half of longer English posts on LinkedIn at the moment are AI-generated, aligning with the platform’s increasing embrace of AI writing tools.

A brand new AI-powered Death Clock app predicts individual death dates using data from longevity studies with 53M participants, using details about a user’s eating regimen, exercise, and stress levels.

THAT’S A WRAP

See you soon,

Rowan, Joey, Zach, and Alvaro—aka The Rundown Team