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OpenAI co-founder Elon Musk has sued the company, his fellow co-founders, affiliated companies, and other unidentified companies. He claims that by pursuing profits, they are violating OpenAI’s status as a nonprofit organization and a fundamental contractual agreement to develop AI “for the benefit of humanity.”
suit OpenAI claims to have become a “closed-source de facto subsidiary” of Microsoft, which has invested $13 billion and owns a 49% stake. Microsoft uses OpenAI technology to power generative AI tools such as Copilot.
The filing says that under OpenAI’s current board of directors, the company is “developing and refining artificial general intelligence (AGI) to maximize Microsoft’s profits, not for the benefit of humanity.” It is said that This was a clear betrayal of the founding agreement. ”
The lawsuit defines AGI as “machines with the intelligence to perform a variety of tasks similar to humans.” Musk claims in his lawsuit that GPT-4, which is said to be “better at reasoning than the average human,” is equivalent to AGI and is “de facto Microsoft’s proprietary algorithm.”
Musk has long expressed concerns about AGI. He argues that the technology theory envisions “serious threats to humanity,” especially “if it falls into the hands of private, commercial companies like Google.”
According to the filing, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and fellow co-founder Greg Brockman persuaded Musk to use DeepMind to counter Google’s advances in AGI. , who convinced them to help fund the creation and initial operations of the nonprofit organization. He noted that the original agreement called for OpenAI’s technology to be “freely available” to the public. Musk claims to have donated $44 million to the nonprofit between 2016 and 2020 (Musk resigned from OpenAI’s board in 2018).as tech crunch According to reports, Musk previously said he was offered a stake in OpenAI’s commercial subsidiary, but rejected it citing a “principled position.”
Of course, Maskle has skin in the game. Since the public launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in November 2022, the battle to provide the best generative AI tools has been ongoing among tech giants. Musk joined that race last year when his AI company, his xAI, opened up his ChatGPT rival Grok to his Premium+ subscribers of his X social network. .
After OpenAI’s board shockingly fired Mr. Altman in November, Mr. Altman quickly returned to power and appointed a new group of directors that were less technically oriented and more business-focused. It is said that he did. Microsoft was appointed as a non-voting observer. “The new board consisted of members with more experience in business and politics, which are more focused on profit than AI ethics and governance,” the complaint alleges.
The lawsuit accuses the defendants of breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duty, and unfair business practices. Musk is seeking a jury trial and a ruling that would force OpenAI to stick to its original nonprofit mission. He also wants to ban the monetization of technology developed non-commercially for the benefit of OpenAI leaders, Microsoft and other partners.
Competition regulators in the US, UK and European Union are said to be considering a partnership between OpenAI and Microsoft.it was reported this week The Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating whether OpenAI misled investors. Several news organizations have sued OpenAI and Microsoft as well, alleging that ChatGPT is reusing their copyrighted works “as is or nearly as is” without attribution and infringing copyrights in the process. woke up.
In some internal memos reviewed by bloomberg, OpenAI said it “categorically disagrees” with the lawsuit filed by Musk. Chief Strategy Officer Jason Kwon denied that OpenAI had become a “de facto subsidiary” of Microsoft, saying Musk’s claims ” [his] “I regret not being more involved with the company today,” Altman said in a separate note, calling Musk his hero and an acquaintance of his who was competing with other companies by building better technology. He also said that he misses it.
Updated March 2, 2023, 1:47 a.m. ET: This article has been updated to include OpenAI’s internal memo regarding the lawsuit.
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