Elon Musk is taking legal action against OpenAI, the artificial intelligence company he co-founded, over allegations it has strayed from its original mission. The Tesla and SpaceX CEO has filed a lawsuit accusing OpenAI of breaching the foundational contract that established it as a non-profit working to develop AI for the benefit of humanity, not profit.
According to the lawsuit filed in California, Musk was instrumental in getting OpenAI off the ground back in 2015, providing significant funding under the condition it would remain a non-profit dedicated to open-sourcing its AI technology to prevent any one entity from monopolizing it. But Musk claims OpenAI has violated that founding agreement by effectively becoming a “closed-source de facto subsidiary” of Microsoft.
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Elon Musk Launches Legal Battle Against OpenAI
The heart of the issue seems to be OpenAI’s 2020 exclusive licensing deal that allowed Microsoft to leverage the company’s powerful GPT-3 language model. Musk alleges OpenAI is now developing advanced artificial general intelligence (AGI) technologies like GPT-4 and the mysterious “Q*” model primarily to boost Microsoft’s profits rather than for the good of the world.
The lawsuit seeks court rulings that would define GPT-4 and Q* as true AGI systems required to be open-sourced, not exclusively licensed to Microsoft. It also aims to compel OpenAI to freely release all its technology to the public per its original non-profit charter.
The legal battle comes amid growing tensions over OpenAI’s direction under CEO Sam Altman. He was briefly fired after concealing Q*’s potential superintelligence, nearly causing a staff exodus. Altman also controversially stated $7 trillion is needed to overhaul computing for the AI era, drawing skepticism even from Nvidia’s CEO.
Whether Musk’s lawsuit succeeds remains to be seen. But the billionaire appears determined to rein in what he sees as OpenAI’s dangerous shift toward closed, monopolistic AI development solely for profit.
