Elon Musk has taken legal action against the prominent A.I. start-up, alleging that its focus on profits and commercial interests has overshadowed its primary mission of contributing to the betterment of humanity.
Elon Musk Files Lawsuit Against OpenAI, Alleging Deviation from Non-profit Mission
Elon Musk, co-founder of OpenAI, has filed a lawsuit against the organization and its CEO, Sam Altman, alleging a deviation from OpenAI’s initial non-profit mission. Musk contends that Altman has prioritized profit-making over the original goal of developing AI for the public good and freely sharing research with the public.
The legal action further claims that OpenAI’s focus on financial gains for Altman and Microsoft, a significant investor with a $13 billion stake in OpenAI’s for-profit division, has led to a lack of transparency regarding GPT-4, the company’s latest and most powerful language model. Additionally, Musk is seeking the return of his $44 million in donations to OpenAI.
To this day, OpenAI, Inc.’s website continues to profess that its charter is to ensure that AGI [Artificial General Intelligence] ‘benefits all of humanity.’ In reality, however, OpenAI, Inc. has shifted into a closed-source de facto subsidiary of the largest technology company in the world: Microsoft,” states in the lawsuit. “Under its new Board, it is not just developing but is actually refining an AGI to maximize profits for Microsoft, rather than for the benefit of humanity.
The legal action initiated by Elon Musk against OpenAI doesn’t come as a surprise, given his ongoing dissatisfaction with the organization. Musk has consistently questioned the legality of establishing OpenAI as a non-profit and then leveraging its intellectual property for profit. As far back as February 2023, Musk voiced his discontent, declaring that the current state of OpenAI was “[n]ot what I intended at all.”
Elon Musk’s Integral Role in OpenAI’s Formation and Evolution
In the narrative of OpenAI’s inception, Elon Musk’s pivotal role in its creation and financing takes centre stage, as underscored by Musk’s legal representatives. The lawsuit emphasizes that Sam Altman approached Musk in 2015 to establish an AI lab that could rival Google’s DeepMind, then at the forefront of the AI race.
Together with OpenAI President Greg Brockman, Musk and Altman founded the non-profit organization, with Musk contributing $15 million in 2016 and covering its initial San Francisco office expenses. Musk also played a crucial role in recruiting OpenAI’s former chief scientist, Ilya Sutskever, from Google.
The prospect of transitioning OpenAI from a non-profit foundation to a for-profit entity reportedly arose in 2017. According to the legal complaint, Brockman and others proposed the idea to Musk, who unequivocally rejected it.
“[E]ither go do something on your own or continue with OpenAI as a non-profit,” Musk asserted during that time. “I will no longer fund OpenAI until you have made a firm commitment to stay or I’m just being a fool who is essentially providing free funding to a startup. Discussions are over.”
Altman concurred with Musk’s stance in his response, expressing his continued enthusiasm for the non-profit structure. Although Musk relinquished his co-chair position in 2018 and reduced his donations, he maintained involvement in the project. Despite Musk’s earlier opposition, OpenAI eventually established a for-profit arm in 2019.
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