Top line
Elon Musk for follow-up OpenAI, creator of ChatGPT, and its CEO Sam Altman on Thursday for undermining the company’s original goal of developing open source artificial general intelligence that would “benefit humanity” in favor of maximizing profits, thereby expanding a long-standing divide between the two co-founders over the future of a company that now sits at the heart of Silicon Valley and the AI revolution.
Elon Musk sued Sam Altman and OpenAI.
Highlights
In court documents filed in San Francisco Superior Court, Musk claimed that Altman and Greg Brockman, another OpenAI co-founder, approached him in 2015 about starting a nonprofit organization to develop AI “for the benefit of humanity” rather than enriching it. shareholders.
Its work would rival leading AI labs like Google/DeepMind and, barring security concerns, would be Open source– freely and publicly available for anyone to use, modify and distribute – the principles, according to Musk, were then enshrined in OpenAI’s founding agreement.
Altman, Brockman and OpenAI have since reneged on that agreement by restricting access to their technology in order to “maximize profits,” Musk’s lawyers claimed, citing breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duty and unfair competition. and asking the court to force him to return. to open source and prevent the company and its named founders, as well as backer Microsoft, from profiting from the technology.
OpenAI’s close relationship with Microsoft, which has invested billions in the company and uses its AI models in its products, illustrates this shift toward closed-source profit-seeking, Musk says, with secrecy about the technology being now “primarily driven by commercial considerations, not by commercial considerations.” security.”
The billionaire claimed that Microsoft “is about to make a fortune” by selling its most recent AI model, GPT-4, to the public, calling it “Microsoft’s de facto proprietary algorithm” and “the opposite of “open AI” and something like that. this would “not be possible” if OpenAI made its technology freely available to the public “as it is required to do”.
OpenAI and Microsoft did not immediately respond to Forbes’ request for comment.
Tangent
Musk’s lawyers focused part of their argument on Altman’s radical departure from OpenAI, and his subsequent return, last year, something made possible through the company’s partnership. unusual structure as a non-profit organization. The company’s board of directors was restructured following Altman’s ouster, including the addition of Microsoft with an observer seat. Under the new board, Musk claimed that OpenAI “is not just developing but actually refining an AGI to maximize Microsoft’s profits, rather than for the benefit of humanity.” “The company’s once carefully designed nonprofit structure has been replaced by a purely profit-driven CEO and a board of directors with inferior technical expertise in public policy on AGI and ‘AI,’ Musk said in court documents.
What we don’t know
The main goal of OpenAI is to develop artificial general intelligence, AGI, a category of AI that differs from specialized functions like driving or playing chess and can instead perform at a high level in a wide range of tasks cognitive. Whether some of the most advanced AI models produced today, such as the GPT-4 that underpins ChatGPT or Google’s Gemini, are among the earliest forms of AGI is a matter of debate. Musk said in the lawsuit that he believes GPT-4 “is an AGI algorithm” and therefore should be “expressly outside the scope” of Microsoft’s license with OpenAI, which applies only to the technology pre-AGI of the company. Musk said another model developed by OpenAI, Q* (Q Star), would have “an even stronger AGI claim.” However, he said the secrecy surrounding all of OpenAI’s new technologies makes it difficult to evaluate them externally, adding that the new board is “ill-equipped by design” to assess whether the technology has met that threshold. “The entire development of OpenAI is now shrouded in secrecy and the public only has rumors and isolated fragments of communications to understand what might be released next.”
Key context
Musk, Altman and Brockman were all co-founders of OpenAI and court documents claim that Musk was a “driving force” behind its creation, contributing the majority of funds in the early years. The billionaire take a step away from the company in 2018, although court documents indicate he contributed financially until the end of 2020, around the time the company reached a deal with Microsoft. Musk’s departure reportedly followed a failed takeover attempt and conflicts of interest with his other companies. Musk has publicly criticized OpenAI and Altman for allegedly prioritizing profits over AI safety, a major issue motivating the company’s founding. Musk is one of the most high-profile figures in the industry warning of technology’s potential to wipe out humanity. Musk launched a separate AI company, xAI, last year in an effort to stay competitive in the rapidly evolving AI field. The company’s first product, an AI chatbot called Grok, was designed as a rebel alternative to OpenAI’s ChatGPT generative AI chatbot, the launch of which sparked a race among companies to launch similar products such as Google’s. Gemini (formerly Bard) for creating text, images and videos.
Forbes Rating
We estimate Elon Musk’s worth at $210 billion. His fortune, which comes largely from a series of companies he co-founded and runs, including electric car maker Tesla, rocket company SpaceX and brain implant company Neuralink, is makes him the second richest person in the world. It is led by French luxury titan Bernard Arnault, who is worth an estimated $229.4 billion, and followed by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who is worth an estimated $197.7 billion.
Further reading
