In a new lawsuit against OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman, Elon Musk claims the artificial intelligence company has abandoned its founding mission of putting humanity over profit.
Musk said the institute’s early goals were forgotten as it spun off into a for-profit entity and Redmond-based Microsoft became a major investor. Part of OpenAI’s original mission was an agreement that the board of directors would not commercialize products that he deemed AGI (artificial general intelligence). In technology terms, AGI refers to the point at which machines exceed the capabilities of the human brain.
Musk previously co-chaired OpenAI’s nonprofit board, which oversees its commercial operations, which has been a source of tension in the past.
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Musk filed his lawsuit in a San Francisco court on February 29, and OpenAI pushed back on Musk’s claims in a blog post last week. The company said Musk was fully committed to creating a for-profit business before retiring from the company’s board in 2018.
Musk has also been critical of OpenAI, accusing its ChatGPT of liberal bias. In July, Musk launched his own AI startup called xAI to provide an alternative.
Karen Wise, a technology writer for the New York Times, said Musk’s lawsuit weaponizes the research of Microsoft, which is now a major backer of OpenAI. KUOW’s Soundside spoke with Weise about whether this lawsuit is serious business or just sour grapes for a startup.
As reported in the New York Times, Wise said a recent study by Microsoft claims that GPT-4 may have shown a “spark of AGI.”
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“Elon is basically saying that Microsoft is saying, ‘We’ve achieved AGI,'” Wise said. “OpenAI has therefore commercialized his GPT-4 model, thereby going against this mission.”
Musk said in his lawsuit that if the OpenAI board determines that AGI has been reached, something that should benefit humanity should not be commercialized.
OpenAI pushed back against Musk’s claims. The company says GPT-4 has not reached AGI, despite studies claiming otherwise.
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Chief Strategy Officer Jason Kwon addressed the issue in a message to OpenAI employees: “Importantly, AGI will be a highly autonomous system capable of devising novel solutions to long-standing challenges. GPT-4 cannot do that.”
Click the play button above to listen to Soundside’s full interview with Karen Wise.
