- Liv McMahon
- technology reporter
Elon Musk is suing OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT, for violating the principles he agreed to when he helped found it in 2015.
The lawsuit has also been filed against OpenAI boss Sam Altman, alleging that the company has strayed from its original nonprofit and open source mission.
The company says it is focused on “maximizing profits” for its major investor, Microsoft, rather than trying to “benefit humanity,” which was its original purpose.
OpenAI has been contacted for comment.
The company was founded with the goal of building AI that can perform any task humanly possible, known as artificial general intelligence (AGI).
Also, since it was established as a non-profit company, it was not intended to make a profit.
The lawsuit filed in San Francisco says it was under these conditions that Musk agreed to form OpenAI with Altman and co-founder Greg Brockman.
He left after three years.
“This lawsuit will force OpenAI to abide by its founding agreement and return to its mission of developing AGI for the benefit of humanity, not for the personal benefit of individual defendants or the world’s largest technology companies.” ” the lawsuit states.
The filing follows drama at OpenAI’s board meeting in November 2023, when U.S. regulators began investigating ChatGPT creators over whether investors were misled, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday. It was carried out after reporting.
At the time, the board accused Altman of failing to “communicate consistently and openly” and said it had “lost confidence” in his leadership as a result.
In a post on X (formerly Twitter), Musk said he was “very concerned” about the situation.
His lawyers say in the lawsuit that these “startling developments” highlight Microsoft’s growing influence over the company.
“The company’s technology, including GPT-4, is closed source primarily to serve Microsoft’s proprietary commercial interests,” the company said.
Microsoft’s initial $1 billion backing to OpenAI in 2019 came shortly after the AI company, which previously operated as a nonprofit, announced a new “restricted interest” structure that would allow investments in OpenAI. was.
The partnership is currently being reviewed by regulators in the UK, EU and US.
To understand some of the background behind this, it helps to know a little about the philosophy that some tech billionaires, including Elon Musk, are said to favor. It’s called “effective altruism.”
It has very high ambitions to identify the world’s most pressing problems and try to solve them (this is a very basic explanation, but if you’re a billionaire you’ll understand why it’s useful) ). It’s not about personal or commercial gain.
If OpenAI was founded with that principle at its core, you can see why Mr. Musk, and indeed some of the company’s executives, were dissatisfied when the company launched a profit division a few years later. .
Indeed, around the time of Sam Altman’s dramatic ouster, there were some whispers that the board was concerned about the growing power of the for-profit sector.
If this goes to court, it could be an epic battle between the two tech giants, but neither one particularly needs a financial victory.
It could be a battle between ideology and the real world, or ultimately a battle for supremacy between two men with extraordinary global influence.
Preparing popcorn…
The lawsuit also alleges that details about the design of OpenAI’s latest AI model, GPT-4, were kept secret.
“In terms of information and belief, this secrecy is primarily driven by commercial considerations rather than security,” the report said.
Musk announced his AI startup called xAI in July 2023, saying its mission was to “understand reality.”
Musk’s lawyers have said that, among other desired outcomes of the lawsuit, they want OpenAI to be ordered to continue to share information about its AI developments with the public.
Microsoft declined to comment.
