Elon Musk sues OpenAI, wants it to go nonprofit again
Elon Musk has filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, arguing it has breached its contract and that it should go open source, and become a non-profit organization again.
OpenAI started out as a nonprofit in 2015, with Musk being one of the key investors. But in 2019, it transitioned to a for-profit company, and in 2023, shortly after launching the extremely popular ChatGPT AI chatbot, it received a massive, $10 billion investment from Microsoft.
Musk, who previously expressed his dissatisfaction both with OpenAI's transition into a for-profit company and the way it made powerful AI products available to the general public, has now formalized his complaints in the form of a lawsuit, filed Thursday night in the San Francisco Superior Court.
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In the lawsuit, Musk argues that OpenAI co-founders Sam Altman and Greg Brockman agreed on OpenAI being a nonprofit developing AGI (artificial general intelligence) as open-source, and "for the benefit of humanity."
"In reality, however, OpenAI, Inc. has been transformed into a closed-source de facto subsidiary of the largest technology company in the world: Microsoft," the lawsuit states.
Much of the lawsuit focuses on OpenAI's most powerful language model, GPT-4, which it claims is "better at reasoning than average humans." But instead of being open-source software, GPT-4 is now "closed-source primarily to serve the proprietary commercial interests of Microsoft."
The lawsuit further alleges that, following Altman's firing and near-immediate re-hiring in November last year, which led to resignation of most of OpenAI's board members, a new board was "hand-picked by Mr. Altman and blessed by Microsoft."
"The new Board members lack substantial AI expertise and, on information and belief, are ill equipped by design to make an independent determination of whether and when OpenAI has attained AGI—and hence when it has developed an algorithm that is outside the scope of Microsoft’s license," the lawsuit states.
Musk thus asks the court to issue an order that would force OpenAI to revert to being a nonprofit which creates open-source software, as well as prohibit Altman and Brockman from utilizing OpenAI or its assets for their financial benefits, or the benefits of Microsoft or other persons or entities. The suit further asks of the court to determine whether "GPT-4 constitutes Artificial General Intelligence and is thereby outside the scope of OpenAI’s license to Microsoft."
Mashable has reached out to OpenAI for comment, but has not yet heard back.
Stan is a Senior Editor at Mashable, where he has worked since 2007. He's got more battery-powered gadgets and band t-shirts than you. He writes about the next groundbreaking thing. Typically, this is a phone, a coin, or a car. His ultimate goal is to know something about everything.
