KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Elon Musk has sued OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman, alleging they have breached the company’s founding mission.
- The lawsuit, filed late Thursday in San Francisco, alleges that OpenAI has been prioritizing profit over seeking benefits to humanity.
- Musk, who launched his own AI company xAI in 2023, left OpenAI’s board of directors in 2018.
Elon Musk has sued OpenAI and chief executive Sam Altman, among others, alleging they have breached the company’s founding mission when it was set up in 2015 by putting profits over seeking benefits to humanity.
According to the lawsuit, filed late Thursday in San Francisco, the Tesla CEO said OpenAI’s close relationship with Microsoft (MSFT) had abandoned the company’s original principles of creating open-source technology that wouldn’t be subject to its commercial priorities. Microsoft is the largest shareholder in OpenAI, the artificial intelligence (AI) behind the viral chatbot ChatGPT.
“To this day, OpenAI, Inc.’s website continues to profess that its charter is to ensure that AGI ‘benefits all of humanity,’” the filing says. “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 also alleges that OpenAI has concealed the design of its most advanced AI model, GPT-4.
“GPT-4’s internal design was kept and remains a complete secret except to OpenAI—and, on information and belief, Microsoft,” the filing notes. “There are no scientific publications describing the design of GPT-4.”
Musk, who launched his own AI company xAI in 2023, left OpenAI’s board of directors in 2018.
In an interview with CNBC Friday, former Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Jay Clayton said that while Musk is “arguably a competitor with OpenAI,” the lawsuit raises a valid question, asking whether OpenAI’s governance has moved too far from its core mission.
“The question, I think, that the lawsuit says is: Have they engaged with commercial actors, Microsoft in this case, have they gone too far in giving them something where the promise of open and benefit of humanity is being lost?” Clayton said.
Musk has been vocal about regulating the industry in recent years and has argued that poorly built AI could have catastrophic consequences for humanity. He signed an open letter calling for a six-month pause on AI development models while regulators and companies assess the risk of the technology last year.
Altman, meanwhile, has ties to Microsoft. He was hired to lead Microsoft’s artificial intelligence research team after he was suddenly fired by OpenAI’s former board. He returned as OpenAI’s CEO just days after that ouster.