The CEO of OpenAI and creator of ChatGPT, Sam Altman, have been sued by Elon Musk, who claims that they betrayed the startup’s initial goal of creating AI for the common good rather than for financial gain.
The billionaire has long been opposed to the firm he co-founded and has become the public face of generative AI, in part because of the billions of dollars in funding from Microsoft (MSFT.O). The lawsuit, which was filed late Thursday in San Francisco, is the climax of his long-simmering hostility.
According to Musk, who claimed a violation of contract, Altman and co-founder Greg Brockman approached him in 2015 with the idea of creating an open source, non-profit company; however, since then, the startup’s priority has shifted to making money.
If the complaint is to be believed, when Musk recounted the establishment of OpenAI, he and the other two guys had decided to develop artificial general intelligence (AGI), the idea that computers could perform human-level activities for the benefit of all people.
Musk was concerned that Google (GOOGL.O) was creating AGI for financial gain and posed serious concerns; OpenAI would compete with them.
Rather, the lawsuit claimed that in 2023, OpenAI “set the founding agreement aflame” by releasing its most powerful language model GPT-4, which was effectively a Microsoft product.
Musk wants a judge to tell OpenAI to stop keeping its assets, like GPT-4, for Microsoft’s or anybody else’s financial benefit and to make all of its research and technology publicly available.
The billionaire is also requesting a decision that GPT-4 and an advanced new technology called Q* are not part of Microsoft’s license to OpenAI since they are artificial general intelligence.
Musk resigned from his position as a board member of OpenAI in 2018 and has often advocated for the regulation of artificial intelligence. Musk is the CEO of Tesla (TSLA.O), SpaceX (a rocket manufacturer), and Twitter (which he acquired for $44 billion in October 2022).
