Musk Suing OpenAI for Abandoning Founding Mission

Facts

• Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk on Thursday filed a lawsuit against OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and his company for allegedly abandoning their mission to develop artificial intelligence 'for the benefit of humanity.'¹
• Musk was a co-founder of OpenAI in 2015 but stepped down from its board after calling AI 'potentially more dangerous than nukes.'¹
• In the suit, Musk claims that Altman and his fellow co-founder, Greg Brockman, broke their promise that OpenAI would be a nonprofit aimed at countering Google's competitive threat by making its technology 'freely available' to the public.²
• Musk is also accusing the ChatGPT creator of becoming a 'closed-source de facto subsidiary' of Microsoft, focused on maximizing profit.³
• In addition, Musk is accusing OpenAI of violating its fiduciary duty and using unfair business practices.⁴
• Musk has long voiced his concern about AI as an imminent threat to humanity and has criticized OpenAI’s agreement with Microsoft, which includes $13B for a 49% stake in the company. He's asking for a court order requiring OpenAI to follow its original mission.⁵

Sources: ¹CNBC, ²TechCrunch, ³Verge, ⁴ZeroHedge and ⁵New York Post.

Narratives

• Narrative A, as provided by Bloomberg. Musk's criticism of OpenAI is 100% right. OpenAI has branded itself as a company that will responsibly lead the world into the AI generation in the safest way possible, but it has become beholden to Microsoft. Altman has seemingly thrown his convictions away in order to benefit Microsoft financially and Musk is holding him accountable.
• Narrative B, as provided by Futurism. This suit is not in good faith and Musk is wrong for criticizing OpenAI for chasing profits at the same time he's creating his own for-profit AI venture. He's using this lawsuit as part of a dispute with former OpenAI co-founders, which suggests this legal action is less about the future of AI technology.

Predictions