Elon Musk has filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and Sam Altman for allegedly abandoning a non-profit mission

Elon Musk, co-founder of OpenAI, has filed a lawsuit against the company, his fellow founders, related companies, and unspecified others. He claims that, by pursuing profits, they are violating OpenAI’s status as a non-profit and its founding contractual agreements to develop AI “for the benefit of humanity.”

the suit It claims that OpenAI has become a “de facto closed-source subsidiary” of Microsoft, which has invested $13 billion and holds a 49 percent stake. Microsoft uses OpenAI technology to power generative AI tools like Copilot.

According to the filing, under OpenAI’s current board of directors, it is allegedly developing and improving artificial general intelligence (AGI) “to maximize Microsoft’s profits, not for the benefit of humanity. This was a blatant betrayal of the founding agreement.”

The lawsuit defines artificial general intelligence as “a machine with the intelligence to perform a wide range of tasks like a human.” Musk argues in the lawsuit that GPT-4, which is allegedly “better at thinking than ordinary humans,” serves as artificial general intelligence and is a “de facto Microsoft-owned algorithm.”

Musk has long expressed concerns about artificial general intelligence. He claims that theoretical technology poses a “serious threat to humanity,” especially “in the hands of a closed, for-profit company like Google.”

According to the filing, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and fellow founder Greg Brockman convinced Musk to help them start the nonprofit and fund its early operations in an effort to counter Google’s advances in artificial general intelligence (AGI) through DeepMind. He noted that their initial agreement calls for OpenAI’s technology to be “freely available” to the public. Musk claims to have donated $44 million to the nonprofit between 2016 and 2020 (he resigned as an OpenAI board member in 2018). like TechCrunch According to reports, Musk previously said he was offered a stake in for-profit startup OpenAI, but turned it down due to a “principled stance.”

Muskl, of course, has some skin in the game. Since the public debut of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in November 2022, there has been a battle between the tech giants to provide the best generative AI tools. Musk joined this rat race when his artificial intelligence company, xAI, rolled out ChatGPT competitor Grok to Premium+ subscribers on his social network X last year.

When Altman quickly returned to power after OpenAI’s board shockingly fired him in November, he reportedly installed a new group of directors who were less technically minded and more business-focused. Microsoft was appointed as a non-voting observer. “The new board consists of members with more experience in profit-focused organizations or politics than in AI ethics and governance,” the lawsuit claims.

The lawsuit accuses the defendants of breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duty, and unfair business practices. Musk is seeking a jury trial and a verdict that would force OpenAI to stick to its original nonprofit mission. He also wants to prevent it from monetizing technology it developed as a nonprofit for OpenAI leadership as well as Microsoft and other partners.

Competition regulators in the US, UK and EU are said to be considering an OpenAI partnership with Microsoft. He was I reported this week The Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating whether OpenAI misled investors. Several news organizations have sued OpenAI and Microsoft as well, alleging that ChatGPT is repurposing their work “verbatim or near-verbatim” without attribution, violating their copyrights in the process.

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