Elon Musk sues OpenAI company

2024-03-01 21:30:00, Tech CNA

Elon Musk is suing the company OpenAI and its founder, CEO Sam Altman, for what he calls a betrayal of the purpose of serving humanity, serving personal gain instead.

In the lawsuit filed in San Francisco Superior Court, the billionaire Musk said that when he funded the creation of the OpenAI company, he had reached an agreement with Mr. Altman and the company's president, Greg Bockman, to keep the artificial intelligence company in the form of an organization. non-profit that would create technology for the public good.

Under the founding agreement, the OpenAI company would also make its code publicly available, rather than exploiting it exclusively for the company's private benefit, the lawsuit said.

However, by entering into a close relationship with the Microsoft corporation, the Open AI company and its senior executives "set fire" to the agreement and "alienated" the company's mission, according to Mr. Musk's lawsuit.

The OpenAI company declined to comment Friday on the lawsuit.

“OpenAI, Inc. has been de facto transformed into a subsidiary closed to the public of the world's largest technology company: Microsoft," the lawsuit filed Thursday said. "According to its new Board, it is not only producing but improving an artificial intelligence (AGI) product to maximize profits for Microsoft, rather than benefiting humanity."

Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) systems can perform as well as humans, and perhaps even better, for a variety of tasks.

Mr. Musk's lawsuit is based on breach of contract, breach of trust and unfair business practices. Mr. Musk is also seeking an injunction from the court that would stop Microsoft from profiting from the company's OpenAI technology.

Sam Altman

Mr. Musk was an early investor in OpenAI when it was founded in 2015 and co-chaired its board, along with Mr. Altman. In Mr. Musk's lawsuit, it is said that he invested "tens of millions" of dollars for the research laboratory of this non-profit entity.

Mr. Musk resigned from the board in early 2018. At the time, the OpenAI company said the change would prevent a conflict of interest, while the Tesla chief was recruiting talented employees in the field of artificial intelligence to create driving technology. automatic electric car that this company produces. "This will eliminate potential future conflict for Elon," said an OpenAI company post in February 2018. Since that time, Mr. Musk has also said he had disagreements about the direction the new company was taking, but he continued to donate funds to this non-profit entity.

Later that year, the OpenAI company filed paperwork to create a for-profit subsidiary and began shifting most of its staff to the business, but retained a non-profit board of directors to govern the company. Microsoft made its first $1 billion investment in the company in 2019, and the following year signed an agreement that gave the software giant exclusive rights to artificial intelligence prototypes. This license is supposed to expire when OpenAI has fully achieved artificial intelligence, according to the company's own announcements.

The public debut of the ChatGPT program in late 2022 gave the OpenAI company worldwide fame and helped spark a race among technology companies to capitalize on public interest in the technology.

When its board suddenly fired Mr. Altman as CEO, for reasons that have not yet been disclosed, it was Microsoft that helped bring Mr. Altman back as CEO and the subsequent resignation of most of the old board. Mr. Musk's lawsuit states that these changes caused the "overnight collapse" of the system of checks and balances that protected the mission of this non-profit entity.

One of Mr. Musk's claims is that the leaders of this non-profit organization have not fulfilled their obligations to implement its mission. However, Dana Brakman Reiser, a professor at Brooklyn Law School, is skeptical that Mr. Musk has the proper grounds to make this claim.

"It would be very worrying if every person who cares about a charity, or donates to it, could suddenly sue its leaders and officials, saying 'you're not doing what I think is the right thing for them. run this nonprofit,'” she said. In general, only the other managers, or e.g. an attorney general can file such a lawsuit, she said.

Even if Mr. Musk has invested in the nonprofit entity, his main complaint seems to be that the organization is making excessive profits in violation of its mission, which includes making its technology available to the public.

"I am interested in non-profit entities following the mission they have decided and not being captured by others for reasons of profit. This is a real concern," said Mrs. Brakman Reiser. "Whether Elon Musk is the right person to make this claim, I'm not too sure about that."

Regardless of the legal basis of these claims, a heated courtroom debate between Mr. Musk and Mr. Altman would offer the public a glimpse into the internal debates and decision-making at OpenAI, although the company's lawyers are expected to fight to keep it confidential. a piece of documentation.

"The reveal will be epic," investor Chamath Palihapitiya wrote Friday on the X platform, owned by Mr. Musk, who responded with a "Yes" — his only public comment so far on the matter./ VOA