Lawyers acting on behalf of Tesla boss Elon Musk have filed a lawsuit against OpenAI. Naming the CEO and the president of OpenAI, Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, respectively. The crux of the Superior Court of California suit is the allegation that OpenAI’s founding agreement has been breached. Summing up the case in non-legalese terms, Musk is irritated that Altman and Brockman switched OpenAI from a non-profit to a for-profit organization despite assurances they would not. Musk also raises concerns about unchecked Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) being “a grave threat to humanity.”
Elon Musk was the co-founder and an early backer of OpenAI, dating back to 2015. We recently highlighted this fact as new images of Jensen Huang’s visit to the then-budding AI company to donate the world’s first DGX-1 server were shared on social media. Musk reminds us of this early work in the lawsuit and claims a “crucial role” in nurturing OpenAI. However, a chasm started to form between the leadership of OpenAI and Musk from 2017 to 2019, after disagreements over a perceived change of direction at the pioneering artificial intelligence non-profit.
