Elon Musk has sued OpenAI, its co-founders Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, and its affiliated entities, alleging the ChatGPT makers have breached their original contractual agreements by pursuing profits as a substitute of the nonprofit’s founding mission to develop AI that advantages humanity.
Musk, a co-founder and early backer of OpenAI, claims Altman and Brockman convinced him to assist found and bankroll the startup in 2015 with guarantees it could be a nonprofit focused on countering the competitive threat from Google. The founding agreement required OpenAI to make its technology “freely available” to the general public, the lawsuit alleges.
The lawsuit, filed in a court in San Francisco late Thursday, says that OpenAI, the world’s most precious AI startup, has shifted to a for-profit model focused on commercializing its AGI research after partnering with Microsoft, the world’s most precious company, which has invested about $13 billion into the startup.
“In point of fact, nevertheless, OpenAI, Inc. has been transformed right into a closed-source de facto subsidiary of the biggest technology company on the planet: Microsoft. Under its latest board, it will not be just developing but is definitely refining an AGI to maximise profits for Microsoft, moderately than for the good thing about humanity,” the lawsuit adds. “This was a stark betrayal of the Founding Agreement.”
The lawsuit follows Musk airing concerns about OpenAI’s shift in priorities previously 12 months. In line with the legal criticism, Musk donated over $44 million to the nonprofit between 2016 and September 2020. For the primary several years, he was the biggest contributor to OpenAI, the lawsuit adds. Musk, who left OpenAI’s board in 2018, has been offered a stake within the for-profit arm of the startup but has refused to simply accept it over a principled stand, he said earlier.
X, the social network owned by Musk, last 12 months launched Grok, a rival to ChatGPT.
Altman has also addressed a few of Musk’s concerns previously, including the close ties with Microsoft. “I just like the dude. I feel he’s totally mistaken about these items,” he said of Musk’s criticisms at a conference last 12 months. “He can type of say whatever he wants but I’m like happy with what we’re doing and I feel we’re going to make a positive contribution to the world and I attempt to stay above all that.”
OpenAI’s launch of ChatGPT in late 2022 sparked an AI arms race, with rivals still scrambling to match its uncannily human-like responses. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella landed a gloved jab at the remainder of the industry last month. “We now have one of the best model today … even with all of the hoopla, one 12 months after, GPT4 is best,” he said. “We’re waiting for the competition to reach. It can arrive, I’m sure, but the very fact [is] that we have now the … leading LLM on the market.”
An email exchange between Musk and Altman, presented as evidence within the lawsuit. Image Credits: TechCrunch/screenshot
The Thursday lawsuit alleges close alignment between Microsoft and OpenAI, citing a recent interview with Nadella. Amid a dramatic leadership shake-up at OpenAI late last 12 months, Nadella stated that if “OpenAI disappeared tomorrow … we have now all of the IP rights and all the aptitude. We now have the people, we have now the compute, we have now the info, we have now all the pieces. We’re below them, above them, around them.” The lawsuit presents this as evidence that OpenAI has strongly served Microsoft’s interests.
The lawsuit also centers around OpenAI’s GPT-4, which Musk claims constitutes AGI — an AI whose intelligence is at par, if not higher, than humans. He alleges OpenAI and Microsoft have improperly licensed GPT-4 despite agreeing that OpenAI’s AGI capabilities would remain dedicated to humanity.
Through the lawsuit, Musk is searching for to compel OpenAI to stick to its original mission and bar them from monetizing technologies developed under its nonprofit for the good thing about OpenAI executives or partners like Microsoft.
The suit also requests the court rule that AI systems like GPT-4 and other advanced models in development constitute artificial general intelligence that reaches beyond licensing agreements. Along with injunctions forcing OpenAI’s hand, Musk asks for accounting and potential restitution of donations meant to fund its public-minded research should the court find it now operates for personal gain.
“Mr. Altman hand-picked a brand new Board that lacks similar technical expertise or any substantial background in AI governance, which the previous board had by design. Mr. D’Angelo, a tech CEO and entrepreneur, was the one member of the previous board to stay after Mr. Altman’s return. The brand new Board consisted of members with more experience in profit-centric enterprises or politics than in AI ethics and governance,” the lawsuit adds.
