Elon Musk has filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and some of his company co-founders, claiming the company deviated from its original principles in favor of “maximizing profits” for Microsoft (first reported by the BBC). Open AI is best known for ChatGPT and its largest investor by far is Microsoft, which has invested billions of dollars in a long-term partnership with the company since 2019 and demonstrated its level of control by taking a leading role last year Altman is fired and then rehired from the OpenAI board.
Musk founded OpenAI with Sam Altman and Greg Brockman (including Peter Thiel) in 2015 to create artificial general intelligence (AGI), with the three agreeing on certain principles for the company inspired by the opposite of Google. OpenAI’s work would be “for the benefit of humanity,” it would be non-profit, and it would make its technology freely available. Musk would leave OpenAI in 2018.
The new lawsuit says that Musk only agreed to co-found OpenAI because it was on those terms, but that the company is now focused on profits rather than those principles. The lawsuit states:
“This case is filed to force OpenAI to abide by the founding agreement and return to its mission of developing AGI for the benefit of humanity, not for the personal benefit of the individual defendants and the largest technology company in the world.”
OpenAI's structure changed in 2019 when the non-profit organization created a for-profit subsidiary that, while limited, still allows for the inflow of significant funds. Microsoft invested $1 billion that same year, and although the numbers are somewhat unclear, it is estimated that the company invested over $13 billion. To state the obvious: Microsoft is doing this because it believes there is gold there.
The lawsuit also takes aim at the controversy surrounding Altman's firing last year. OpenAI's board sidelined its CEO in November last year on the cryptic grounds that he had not been “continuously open in his communications.” I like to imagine that Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella had just taken a long sip of coffee before hearing the news, because in a most unusual move, Microsoft walked in and said: it would hire Altman and basically the majority of OpenAI's workforce (who largely supported Altman). Faced with this kind of resistance from its single largest investor, the OpenAI board threw in the towel and within days of his firing Altman was back.
Musk's lawyers describe these “amazing developments” as evidence of the influence Microsoft now has over OpenAI (a relationship already under scrutiny by EU and US regulators). The lawsuit goes on to say that OpenAI's “technology, including GPT-4, is primarily closed-source technology to serve Microsoft's proprietary commercial interests.” […] This secrecy is based primarily on commercial considerations and not on security.”
Making matters worse is that Musk founded another AI start-up, xAI, last year, although the company's only public product so far is a chatbot called Grok, which is designed more along Musk's own model: It's supposed to be funny, but it is a little frightening.
Musk's lawsuit alleges breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duty and unfair business practices and asks for many things: he wants OpenAI to return to its original nonprofit roots and wants OpenAI to be legally required to release its open source solutions The AI is making progress, and oh yeah, he wants some money too. At this point, you may be wondering about the billionaire troll's true motives. After all, Musk now has his own competitor to OpenAI, and things aren't looking particularly rosy for some of his other ventures.
On the other hand, Musk is undeniably right. OpenAI was founded on certain principles that he said its co-founders abandoned by accepting Microsoft's investments and GPT-4 was not open source, which “put the founding agreement in turmoil.” The lawsuit says OpenAI is now “a closed-source, de facto subsidiary of the largest technology company in the world: Microsoft.” Under its new board, the company is not only developing an AGI, but is actually refining it to maximize profits for Microsoft for the benefit of humanity.”
The lawsuit focuses on AGI's potential “threat to humanity” and how Microsoft instead sees it “as a source of profit and power.” So that Google doesn't feel left out, there is also room for a few tries. Musk's lawyers say AGI in the hands of such tech companies poses a “particularly acute and harmful threat” to us meatbags. It also moves on from GPT-4, mentioning the much-rumored Q*, an OpenAI project that is said to be light years beyond ChatGPT's capabilities, and claims that OpenAI does not have the expertise to know whether it is developing Skynet or not.
At the time of Altman's firing, there was much dispute over the reasons for it, with both Q*'s potential capabilities and OpenAI's profit-making arm being the most persistent rumors; But thanks to the way it went down, there were few outside the boardroom itself who knew the truth.
Maybe this will bring it to light, but either way it's going to be a clash of the titans. Both sides in this dispute can afford all the lawyers in the world, and the stakes are not only enormous, but also ideological: What exactly was OpenAI founded for? And is Musk actually in the right here? We'll certainly find out, although I'm just reminded of Alien vs. Predator's immortal slogan: Whoever wins, we lose.
