Elon Musk on Thursday sued ChatGPT’s creator OpenAI and co-founders Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, alleging the company breached its founding agreement and served the interests of its major investors rather than humanity as a whole. He accused them of trying to maximize their profits. Musk was a co-founder of OpenAI, but left the company in 2018.
The lawsuit, filed Thursday in San Francisco Superior Court, focused on OpenAI’s relationship with Microsoft.
Elon Musk, owner of Tesla and the X (formerly Twitter) platform. Photo credit: Beata Zawrzel/NurPhoto, Getty Images
“Under the new board, [OpenAI] We’re not just developing, we’re actually improving AGI [Artificial General Intelligence] “This is not for the benefit of humanity, but to maximize Microsoft’s profits,” the filing states.
Related: Microsoft invests billions in ChatGPT developer OpenAI
In the lawsuit, Musk highlighted his role in how OpenAI was founded, saying he was approached by Altman and Brockman in 2015 to create an open source nonprofit company to benefit humanity. . The lawsuit alleges that OpenAI “ignited the founding agreement” last year when it released its latest version, GPT-4, which the lawsuit refers to as a Microsoft product.
Related: Salesforce CEO tried his best to poach OpenAI talent, and now Sam Altman is back.
Musk asked the court to make OpenAI’s research and technology available to the public and to prevent Microsoft and OpenAI executives from profiting financially from it.
OpenAI’s $13 billion, multi-year partnership with Microsoft is among those that U.S. and British regulators are preparing to investigate. Microsoft owns a 49% stake in OpenAI’s commercial arm, allowing it to take advantage of OpenAI’s advances in products such as Word, Excel, and Outlook.
Related: OpenAI introduces new governance model for AI safety monitoring
Last year, Musk launched his own AI company called xAI, which competes directly with OpenAI’s products. xAI has already secured $500 million from investors.
