OpenAI co-founder Elon Musk sued the company, his fellow co-founders, associated companies, and other unnamed individuals. He claims that by chasing profits, they are violating OpenAI's status as a nonprofit organization and its fundamental contractual agreements to develop ai “for the benefit of humanity.”
Costume alleges that OpenAI has become a “de facto closed source subsidiary” of Microsoft, which has invested $13 billion and owns a 49 percent stake. Microsoft uses OpenAI technology to power generative ai tools like Copilot.
According to the filing, under OpenAI's current board of directors, it is allegedly developing and refining an artificial general intelligence (AGI) “to maximize Microsoft's profits, rather than benefit humanity. “This was a blatant betrayal of the Founding Agreement.”
The lawsuit defines AGI as “a machine that has intelligence for a wide variety of tasks like a human.” Musk argues in the lawsuit that GPT-4, which is supposedly “better at reasoning than average humans,” is equivalent to AGI and is “a de facto algorithm owned by Microsoft.”
Musk has long expressed concerns about AGI. He claims that the theoretical technology poses “a serious threat to humanity,” particularly “in the hands of a closed, for-profit company like Google.”
According to the filing, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and fellow co-founder Greg Brockman persuaded Musk to help them start the nonprofit and fund its early operations in a bid to counter Google's advances. in the AGI space with DeepMind. He noted that their initial agreement called for OpenAI's technology to be “freely available” to the public. Musk claims to have donated $44 million to the nonprofit between 2016 and 2020 (he resigned as an OpenAI board member in 2018). As TechCrunch Musk previously reportedly said he was offered a stake in OpenAI's for-profit subsidiary, but turned it down due to “a principled stance.”
Muskl, of course, has some skin in the game. Since the public debut of OpenAI's ChatGPT in November 2022, there has been a battle between tech giants to offer the best generative ai tools. Musk joined that rat race when his artificial intelligence company, xAI, launched ChatGPT rival Grok for Premium+ subscribers on its X social network last year.
When Altman quickly returned to power after OpenAI's board surprisingly fired him in November, he is said to have appointed a new group of directors that are less technically minded and more business-focused. Microsoft was designated a non-voting observer. “The new board was made up of members with more experience in profit-focused companies or politics than ai ethics and governance,” the lawsuit alleges.
The lawsuit accuses the defendants of breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duty and unfair business practices. Musk is seeking a jury trial and ruling that forces OpenAI to stick to its original nonprofit mission. He also wants to be prohibited from monetizing technology he developed as a nonprofit to benefit OpenAI's leadership, as well as Microsoft and other partners.
Competition regulators in the US, UK and European Union are said to be examining OpenAI's partnership with Microsoft. Was reported this week that the Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating whether OpenAI misled investors. Several news organizations have also sued OpenAI and Microsoft, alleging that ChatGPT reuses their work “verbatim or near verbatim” without attribution, infringing their copyrights in the process.
In a couple of internal notes seen by BloombergOpenAI said it “categorically disagrees” with the lawsuit Musk has filed. Chief strategy officer Jason Kwon denied that OpenAI has become a “de facto subsidiary” of Microsoft and said Musk's claims “may be due to his regret at not being involved with the company today.” Altman also said in another memo that Musk is his hero and that he misses the person he knew who competed with others by building better technology.
Update, March 2, 2023, 1:47 am ET: This story has been updated to include OpenAI's internal memos about the lawsuit.
This article contains affiliate links; If you click on that link and make a purchase, we may earn a commission.
