Elon Musk Sues OpenAI, Accusing Them of Abandoning Non-Profit Mission for Profit
Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, filed a lawsuit today against OpenAI, a leading company for research and development of artificial intelligence. The suit accuses OpenAI of having violated the original deal by not prioritizing ethical and non-profit development in AI.
The legal claim was made at a court in San Francisco regarding OpenAI’s latest natural language model referred to as GPT-4. This petition alleges that this model became commercialized together with Microsoft.
The tech billionaire who had previously been sitting on the board of directors for OpenAI says that it has diverted from its open-source, not-for-profit objectives. The suit argues that OpenAI is now focused on profit-making through deals with Microsoft which have seen the software giant pour billions into the research lab.
According to Musk’s claim, their new product GPT-4 violates the first contract they signed with his rival firm. He asserts that this accord provided any AGI capabilities made by OpenAI should be without any commerce motive but purely nonprofit ones directed towards human welfare.
The lawsuit goes further to outline several specific causes of action including breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duty and unfair business practices. It insists that initially, these researches were “open, providing free and public access” to designs, models and code.
The case further holds that Microsoft’s funding had only been for OpenAI’s pre-AGI technology and did not give it any AGI rights. Musk feels that whether OpenAI had ever reached AGI or not was entirely at the mercy of the organization’s non-profit board but not Microsoft.
Musk wants to force OpenAI “to stick to its original goal and mission of building AGI which will be used to help humanity in general and not for the benefit of a few people and one big multinational.” This legal battle underscores the current debate on ethical AI development.
OpenAI on their part argues that through this affiliation with Microsoft, they can proceed to do cutting edge research while also ensuring ethical development.
