Elon Musk sues OpenAI and Sam Altman – 03/01/2024 – Tech

Elon Musk filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman alleging that the ChatGPT owner’s multibillion-dollar alliance with Microsoft compromised the startup’s original purpose of building artificial intelligence systems for the benefit of humanity.

“OpenAI has been transformed into a de facto closed-source subsidiary of the largest technology company in the world: Microsoft,” Musk’s lawyers wrote in a petition issued to a San Francisco court on Thursday (29).

“Under its new board, it is not just developing, but refining an AGI [inteligência artificial geral] to maximize Microsoft’s profits, not for the benefit of humanity.” AGI is an AI with the same level of intelligence as humans, or even higher.

Musk says the goal of the lawsuit is to “force” OpenAI to fulfill its founding agreement to build technology that doesn’t simply benefit individuals like Altman and corporations like Microsoft.

When contacted, OpenAI declined to comment. Representatives for Musk and Microsoft did not respond until the publication of this report.

The tech billionaire co-founded OpenAI in 2015. In the legal filing, Musk said he donated a total of $44 million to the group.

The Tesla chief left the OpenAI board in 2018 after disagreements with Altman over the direction of the research. A year later, the group established a for-profit arm, through which Microsoft invested about $13 billion.

The alliance is being reviewed by competition regulators in the US, the European Union and the United Kingdom. Microsoft President Brad Smith said this week that the companies are “very important partners” but that “Microsoft does not control OpenAI.”

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) issued subpoenas to OpenAI executives in November as part of an investigation into whether Altman had misled his investors, according to people familiar with the matter.

That investigation began shortly after OpenAI’s board fired Altman as CEO only to reinstate him days later. A new board has since been instituted, including former Salesforce executive Bret Taylor as chairman.

An independent law firm, WilmerHale, is conducting an internal review into the former board’s allegations against Sam Altman.

Following the launch of ChatGPT in late 2022, OpenAI has become a leader in generative AI — software that can produce text, images and code in seconds — which analysts believe will revolutionize industries around the world. Microsoft’s rivals, such as Google and Amazon, are also investing heavily in developing the technology.

In the court filing, Musk’s lawyers write that OpenAI’s founding agreement requires the startup to make its “technology openly available to the public,” but instead it has been used “as proprietary technology to maximize profits” for Microsoft.

Musk’s claims are based on the fact that if OpenAI makes a discovery that leads to the creation of AGI, Microsoft will not own the rights to the revolutionary technology.

He added that OpenAI’s new board lacks the qualifications necessary to determine “whether and when OpenAI achieved AGI — and therefore to assess whether it developed an algorithm that is outside the scope of Microsoft’s license.”

The lawsuit also seeks a decision from the courts on whether technologies like GPT 4 — OpenAI’s latest AI model — can already be considered AGI.