Elon Musk has initiated legal action against OpenAI and its CEO, Sam Altman, accusing them of breaching their nonprofit agreement.
This legal dispute is being heard in the Superior Court of California in San Francisco County, focusing on OpenAI’s shift away from its initial goal of promoting open-source artificial general intelligence (AGI) for humanity’s benefit.
Musk, an initial supporter and one of the founders of OpenAI, claims that Altman and Greg Brockman (another founder and the current president of OpenAI) persuaded him to fund the startup in 2015 with assurances of its nonprofit status.
In his lawsuit, Musk alleges that OpenAI has deviated from its founding values, especially criticizing its partnership with Microsoft, which he argues places proprietary technology ahead of the commitment to open-source development.
Musk’s legal complaints include accusations of breaking contractual agreements, breaching fiduciary duties, and engaging in unfair competition. He urges OpenAI to return to its non-commercial roots and is seeking a court order to stop the for-profit use of AGI technology.
Central to Musk’s argument is the release of GPT-4 by OpenAI in March 2023, which, according to him, marks a pivot to proprietary models, prioritizing Microsoft’s economic gains over OpenAI’s philanthropic foundation.
Initially established as a nonprofit entity dedicated to AI research in 2015, OpenAI shifted towards a for-profit model in 2020. Presently, the organization is reportedly generating over $2 billion in revenue annually.
Musk, an outspoken advocate for the safe development of AI, is advocating for stringent regulatory oversight of the AI sector. He expresses skepticism about the current board’s technical knowledge at OpenAI and points to the firing and later reappointment of Altman in November 2023 as signs of a strategy overly influenced by Microsoft’s commercial interests.
