Elon Musk is suing ChatGPT makers OpenAI, its co-founders Sam Altman and Greg Brockman and affiliated entities, alleging that they have betrayed an agreement to develop the technology toward the benefit of humanity over profits.
In the suit filed on Thursday night in San Francisco Superior Court, Musk claims OpenAI's relationship with Microsoft has compromised the company's original dedication to public, open source artificial general intelligence.
"OpenAI, Inc. has been transformed into a closed-source de facto subsidiary of the largest technology company in the world: Microsoft. Under its new board, it is not just developing but is actually refining an AGI to maximize profits for Microsoft, rather than for the benefit of humanity," Musk says in the suit.
Musk claims Altman and Brockman convinced him to help found and bankroll the startup in 2015, and promised it would be a non-profit focused on countering the competitive threat from Google. The founding agreement required OpenAI to make its technology “freely available” to the public, the lawsuit alleges.
Musk is bringing claims including breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duty and unfair business practices against OpenAI and asks for the company to revert back to open source.
He is also requesting an injunction to prevent OpenAI, Gregory Brockman, Sam Altman, and Microsoft from profiting from the company's artificial general intelligence technology.
Musk also says that artificial general intelligence, a type of AI developed to autonomously perform on the cognitive level of humans, has been OpenAI's main goal and is demonstrated in its GPT-4.
GPT-4 was released in March 2023, but Musk says that it remains a closed model, in contrast to previous iterations – a move driven by commercial considerations rather the interests of humanity.
"The internal details of GPT-4 are known only to OpenAI and, on information and belief, to Microsoft. GPT-4 is hence the opposite of 'open AI’," Musk says in the suit. "And it is closed for proprietary commercial reasons: Microsoft stands to make a fortune selling GPT-4 to the public, which would not be possible if OpenAI – as it is required to do – makes the technology freely available to the public."
"Contrary to the Founding Agreement, Defendants have chosen to use GPT-4 not for the benefit of humanity, but as proprietary technology to maximize profits for literally the largest company in the world," he adds.
The Standard has approached Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, Elon Musk and Microsoft for comment.
