Elon Musk is in the process of suing OpenAI because he believes that the company is not living up to the philosophy of developing open artificial intelligence for humanity. In the case, he marked the company CEO Sam Altman and President Gregory Brockman as defendants. While Microsoft has been mentioned a lot in the case, the company was not indicated as a defendant.
Why is Elon Musk suing OpenAI?
This case came a little bit out of left field. You would expect Elon Musk to sue OpenAI if the company was scraping data from X or if ChatGPT generated mean comments about the billionaire. However, that’s not the case. In fact, it appears that Musk is suing OpenAI for being closed off. He believes that OpenAI’s original vision was to craft open-source artificial intelligence for the betterment of humanity. He claims that OpenAI’s current state constitutes a breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duties, and unfair business practices.
“OpenAI, Inc. has been transformed into a closed-source de facto subsidiary of the largest technology company in the world: Microsoft,” Elon Musk says in his suit, “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.”
Even though Microsoft is not a defendant, the company is brought up a lot. Musk brings into question OpenAI’s true motives for developing artificial intelligence. He says that, rather than being an open-source non-profit company developing AI technology for humanity, it’s basically become a company developing AI just to line Microsoft’s pockets.
Microsoft’s role
A big part of the case has to do with Microsoft’s influence over OpenAI. Microsoft is one of the biggest companies in the world. Elon Musk claims that Microsoft’s motives are only to maximize profits. He feels that this has skewed OpenAI’s endeavors. So, instead of developing artificial intelligence tools to help push humanity forward, the company is, allegedly, being pushed to be a profit machine for Microsoft.
The company has an observer seat on OpenAI’s nonprofit board. While the company does have a seat on the board, Microsoft does not have any control over company decisions. Also, Microsoft gained exclusive rights to OpenAI’s GPT-3 technology back in 2020, a full two years before the generative AI explosion.
The board
In the suit, one thing that Elon Musk brings up is the fact that the current non-profit board members are no longer scientists. Up until late last year, OpenAI’s nonprofit board consisted of AI researchers and scientists. However, the board was replaced after the firing and subsequent rehiring of Sam Altman in November 2023. Musk says that the board members now consist of people who are driven by profit rather than the development of AI technology for all.
Musk says, “OpenAI, Inc.’s once carefully crafted non-profit structure was replaced by a purely profit-driven CEO and a Board with inferior technical expertise in AGI and AI public policy. The board now has an observer seat reserved solely for Microsoft,”
OpenAI isn’t so “Open”
Another thing that Elon Musk complains about is the fact that OpenAI isn’t developing open-source artificial intelligence. Rather, the code powering ChatGPT is behind closed doors known only to OpenAI. He also says that Microsoft could also have insight into OpenAI’s internal details as well. In the case, Elon Musk wants OpenAI to make its source code public. So, if Elon Musk ends up winning the case, that could be a possibility. Suddenly making its code open source would be a huge ask for open AI. Also, if that were to happen, we’re pretty certain that both companies, OpenAI and Microsoft, would push back hard.
Details are still scarce
This lawsuit was filed on Friday, March 1st, so it’s still fresh. We’re not sure if Musk will be able to take this to court. As of now, neither Elon Musk nor OpenAI have commented on the lawsuit.
2024-03-01 15:06:03