Elon Musk has filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, its co-founders Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, and affiliated entities, accusing the ChatGPT maker of breaching their original contractual agreements by abandoning its founding mission as a non-profit focused on developing AI to benefit humanity in favor of pursuing profits.
The lawsuit, filed in a San Francisco court on Thursday, stems from Musk’s role as a co-founder and early backer of OpenAI in 2015. Musk claims that Altman and Brockman convinced him to help found and provide initial funding for the startup based on promises that it would remain a non-profit entity devoted to countering the potential threats posed by large tech firms like Google gaining a monopolistic edge in artificial intelligence research.
Under the original agreements made when the company was established, OpenAI was legally required to make its AI technology “freely available” to the public rather than monetizing it for profit. However, Musk alleges that after taking investment from Microsoft totaling around $13 billion, OpenAI has shifted toward a for-profit model focused on commercializing and maximizing revenues from its AGI research, rather than prioritizing the ethical advancement of AI technology for humanity’s benefit.
The Lawsuit Alleges OpenAI Has Become a ‘De Facto Subsidiary’ of Microsoft
Musk’s lawsuit argues that OpenAI has effectively become a “closed-source de facto subsidiary of the largest technology company in the world”, Microsoft, rather than upholding its founding ideals. It accuses OpenAI’s new board and leadership of orienting the company’s AGI research in order to maximize profits for Microsoft, rather than for broadly beneficial purposes.
Musk was an early and substantial donor to OpenAI during its initial non-profit phase, contributing over $44 million between 2016 and 2020. He also served briefly on the startup’s board before departing in 2018 over disagreements about its direction. The lawsuit highlights that Musk declined offers of an ownership stake in OpenAI once it transitioned to a for-profit model, as he objected to the change on principle.
At the heart of the lawsuit is OpenAI’s development of the ChatGPT conversational AI, which debuted in late 2022 and sparked fierce competition in the AI space overnight. Musk and his lawsuit argue that ChatGPT and the forthcoming GPT-4 model constitute artificial general intelligence (AGI) advanced enough to replicate broad human cognitive abilities.
By licensing such powerful AGI systems to Microsoft for commercial exploitation rather than making them freely available, Musk claims OpenAI and its leadership have improperly betrayed their original charters and agreements to use such technologies only for the benefit of humanity as a whole.
Lawsuit Seeks Court Intervention to Enforce OpenAI’s Original Non-Profit Mission
To compel OpenAI back towards its founding ideals, Musk and his legal team are seeking court orders to enforce the startup’s original non-profit charter. This includes blocking OpenAI executives and Microsoft from profiting from the monetization of technologies like GPT-4 developed under its non-profit watch.
The suit also requests judicial rulings that advanced AI systems constitute AGI not subject to typical licensing deals. Beyond injunctions forcing OpenAI’s hand, Musk is also seeking accounting and potential restitution of donations intended to fund public-minded AI research, should the court find OpenAI now operates chiefly for private gain.
Evidence highlighted includes a 2021 interview where Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella stated that “if OpenAI disappeared tomorrow…we have all the IP rights and all the capability. We have the people, we have the compute, we have the data, we have everything. We are below them, above them, around them.” Musk argues this demonstrates the extent to which OpenAI has become aligned with Microsoft’s commercial interests.
The lawsuit alleges that after returning to OpenAI’s leadership, Sam Altman engineered changes to the board and recruited new members with more experience in for-profit enterprises and little expertise in AI ethics and safety. This enabled the shift away from OpenAI’s original charter towards a Microsoft-led profit focus.
Musk’s lawsuit represents a dramatic escalation of the simmering tensions between the Tesla and SpaceX CEO and the research lab he helped establish to responsibly advance artificial intelligence. The suit alleges in stark terms that OpenAI and its leaders have betrayed their founding ideals and agreements with Musk by locking up and profiting from AI capabilities like ChatGPT that should benefit humanity inclusively.
With Musk and OpenAI poised to shape the future trajectory of AI, the lawsuit is likely just the opening salvo in what promises to be a fierce legal battle over the soul of the field. The case and its outcome could influence whether revolutionary AI capabilities remain walled off within big tech firms or live up to Musk’s original vision of AI developed ethically in service of humanity as a whole.
