Elon Musk Sues OpenAI Again
After withdrawing a similar lawsuit earlier this year, Elon Musk, for the second time, has sued OpenAI and its CEO, Sam Altman, for what he describes as falling away from the 'founding agreement' of the nonprofit he helped cofound in 2015....
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Facts
- After withdrawing a similar lawsuit earlier this year, Elon Musk, for the second time, has sued OpenAI and its CEO, Sam Altman, for what he describes as falling away from the 'founding agreement' of the nonprofit he helped cofound in 2015.[1]
- This lawsuit claims that after he left OpenAI's board in 2018, the organization and 'namesake objective,' to which he 'lent his name' and 'invested significant time, tens of millions of dollars in seed capital, and recruited top AI scientists' for, were 'betrayed by Altman and his accomplices.'[2]
- It argues that Altman and fellow co-founder Greg Brockman broke the founding agreement 'that the nonprofit structure guaranteed neutrality and a focus on safety and openness for the benefit of humanity, not shareholder value.'[3]
- The suit also asks the court to revoke OpenAI's licensing agreement with Microsoft, which gives the tech company exclusive access to the code for OpenAI's chatbot GPT-4.[4]
- After Musk left in 2018, Altman created separate for-profit entities alongside the original nonprofit, which the lawsuit claims were used for 'profiting from the nonprofit’s assets' through a 'shell game.'[4]
- While Musk's second lawsuit claims Altman and Brockman 'deceived' him by 'preying on [his] humanitarian concern about the existential dangers posed by artificial intelligence,' OpenAI has previously sought to debunk those claims by posting emails allegedly proving Musk was also in favor of making OpenAI for-profit.[5]
Sources: [1]Guardian, [2]FOX News, [3]Wsj, [4]The Hollywood Reporter and [5]Euronews.
Narratives
- Narrative A, as provided by Local News Matters. While no one knows the exact truth of this case, Musk has made a compelling argument against OpenAI. If he's telling the truth, he, Brockman, and Altman originally created OpenAI to combat the growing powers of for-profit Google by building their own system with limitations. Unfortunately, Altman shifted his focus solely toward profit, ended ChatGPT's open source nature, teamed up with Microsoft, and pushed technological advancements with no care for how it will impact human beings.
- Narrative B, as provided by Openai. It's remarkable that Elon Musk will try this lawsuit again, given the publicly available evidence against him. While Musk claims Altman is responsible for going private, it was actually he who wanted to do so, but his demand was to merge it with Tesla and give him sole control. Musk is also on the record agreeing with his former partners that open source doesn't mean all the science behind AGI should be open source. Musk was a true believer in OpenAI's altruistic mission before he was blinded by his own greed.
