Elon Musk sues OpenAI and Sam Altman over ‘betrayal’ of nonprofit AI mission

Image credits: Michael Kovacs/Vanity Fair/Getty Images

Elon Musk accused OpenAI and its co-founders of ChatGPT of violating their original contractual agreement by pursuing profit rather than the nonprofit’s founding mission of developing AI to benefit humanity. Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, and their related organizations.

Musk, a co-founder and early backer of OpenAI, convinced Altman and Brockman to help found and fund the startup in 2015 to counter competitive threats from Google. It claims to have promised to become a nonprofit organization focused on. The founding agreement required OpenAI to make its technology “freely available” to the public, the complaint alleges.

The lawsuit, filed late Thursday in a San Francisco court, comes after OpenAI, the world’s most valuable AI startup, is focused on commercializing its AGI research after partnering with Microsoft, the world’s most valuable company. The company says that it has shifted to a commercial model. It invested about $13 billion in the startup.

“But in reality, OpenAI, Inc. has turned into a closed-source de facto subsidiary of the world’s largest technology company, Microsoft. “We are not only developing AGI to maximize the value of our products, we are actually improving it,” the lawsuit adds. “This was a clear betrayal of the founding agreement.”

The lawsuit comes after Musk raised concerns about OpenAI’s shifting priorities over the past year. According to the complaint, Musk donated more than $44 million to the nonprofit from 2016 to September 2020. He was OpenAI’s largest donor for the first few years, the complaint adds. Musk, who retired from OpenAI’s board in 2018, was offered a stake in the startup’s commercial arm, but he refused, citing his principled position, he said earlier.

Social network X, owned by Musk, launched Grok last year, a rival to ChatGPT.

Altman has also addressed some of Musk’s concerns in the past, including his close ties to Microsoft. “I like the guy, and I think he’s completely wrong on this,” he said at a conference last year regarding Musk’s criticism. “He can say whatever he wants, but I’m proud of what we’re doing and I think we make a positive contribution to the world. And I’m going above and beyond all of that.” I am trying to do so.”

OpenAI’s announcement of ChatGPT in late 2022 sparked an AI arms race, with rivals still racing to counter its eerily human-like responses. Last month, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella attacked the entire industry with his gloves on. “We have the best model today…even if it’s a big deal, in a year’s time GPT4 will be better,” he said. “We’re waiting for the competition to start. I’m sure it will arrive, but it’s not really [is] We have…an industry-leading LLM. ”

Email exchanges between Musk and Altman submitted as evidence in the lawsuit.

Thursday’s lawsuit alleges close collaboration between Microsoft and OpenAI, citing a recent interview with Nadella. Late last year, amid OpenAI’s dramatic leadership transformation, Nadella said: “If OpenAI were to disappear tomorrow…we have all the intellectual property rights and all the capabilities. We have the people, we have the compute, we have the data, we have it all. . We are below them, above them, and around them.” The lawsuit presents this as evidence that OpenAI has strongly served Microsoft’s interests.

The lawsuit also focuses on OpenAI’s GPT-4, which Musk claims constitutes AGI (AI with intelligence equal to or greater than that of humans). He claims that OpenAI and Microsoft improperly licensed GPT-4 despite agreeing that OpenAI’s AGI capabilities will continue to serve humanity.

Through his lawsuit, Musk is demanding that OpenAI adhere to its original mission and prohibit monetization of technology developed non-commercially for the benefit of OpenAI executives and partners such as Microsoft.

The lawsuit also asks the court to hold that AI systems like GPT-4 and other advanced models in development constitute artificial general intelligence beyond licensing agreements. In addition to enforcing an injunction against OpenAI, Mr. Musk also announced that if a court finds that OpenAI is currently operating for private profit, he will be able to use it to fund research for public interest purposes. We are seeking accounting treatment for donations made and the possibility of refunds.

“Mr. Altman has hand-picked a new board that intentionally lacks the same technical expertise or substantial background in AI governance that the previous board possessed.” Mr. D’Angelo was the only member of the previous board to remain after Mr. Altman’s return.The new board is comprised of members with more experience in business and politics, which are more focused on profit than AI ethics and governance. ”, the complaint adds.