Elon Musk sued OpenAI and its executive director Sam Altman which, he claims, is a betrayal of the ChatGPT creator's fundamental goals of benefit humanity, rather than seeking financial benefits.
In a lawsuit filed in San Francisco Superior Courtbillionaire Musk said that when he funded the creation of OpenAI, he struck a deal with Altman and Greg Brockmanpresident of the company, for maintain the artificial intelligence company as a non-profit organization that would develop technology to benefit the population.
Under that funding agreement, OpenAI will also would open its code rather than control it for any private company to make a profit, the lawsuit states.
However, by establishing a close relationship with Microsoft, OpenAI and its top executives have “burned” that agreement and “perverted” the company's mission, Musk claimed in the lawsuit.
OpenAI declined to comment on the lawsuit on Friday.
“OpenAI, Inc. has been transformed into a de facto closed-source subsidiary of the world's largest technology company: Microsoft,” reads the lawsuit filed Thursday. “With this new board of directors, you are not just developing, but in fact, refining an IAG to maximize Microsoft's profits, rather than for the benefit of humanity.”
The acronym AGI refers to artificial general intelligence, which is general-purpose AI systems that can perform as well as, or even better than, humans on a wide variety of tasks.
Musk has sued the company for breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duties and unfair business practices. It also wants an injunction to be issued to prevent anyone, including Microsoft, from profiting from OpenAI's technology.
Musk was one of the first investors in OpenAI when it was founded in 2015 and co-chaired its board of directors along with Altman. Musk's lawsuit notes that he invested “tens of millions” of dollars in the nonprofit research lab.
Musk resigned from the board of directors in early 2018 in a move that OpenAI indicated at the time would avoid conflicts of interest, as the Tesla CEO was recruiting AI talent to develop self-driving technology at the electric car maker.