Very angry with OpenAI, which he accuses of having betrayed its initial mission, Elon Musk attacks the company and its founder. The billionaire, who has since launched his own OpenAI competitor, is doing everything to harm the creator of ChatGPT.
“The greatest trial in the history of humanity”. According to Elon Musk’s somewhat hardcore fans, the Tesla boss’s complaint against OpenAI, Sam Altman, Greg Brockman and other OpenAI associates could change the future of artificial intelligence. In reality, it’s more of a revenge story.
Created in 2015 by Sam Altman and Elon Musk as a non-profit association, OpenAI became a real company in 2019, a year after Elon Musk left following a management conflict. A transformation that Elon Musk did not digest, officially for ethical reasons, but also because he let the AI revolution pass. With his complaint, Elon Musk hopes to harm OpenAI, while he has become its competitor with xAI, which develops the Grok chatbot.
Elon Musk is pissed at Microsoft
In Elon Musk’s sights: the alliance between Microsoft and OpenAI. The software giant owns 49% of the company, which allows it to integrate its innovations into its products (what it calls Microsoft Copilot). Elon Musk recalls that the initial objective of OpenAI should never have resulted in such an alliance, which just makes OpenAI a cash machine.
“Today, the OpenAI website continues to assert that its charter is to ensure that artificial intelligence “benefits all of humanity.” In reality, OpenAI has transformed itself into a closed-source subsidiary of the largest technology company in the world: Microsoft. indicates the complaint, available on the California court website (46 pages).
In his complaint, Elon Musk questions the dismissal of Sam Altman at the end of 2023, which led to his return a few days later. The billionaire says he fears that all this has only served to strengthen Sam Altman and Microsoft’s control over the OpenAI board, eliminating elements that wanted an open OpenAI. We must nevertheless keep one essential element in mind: during this period, Elon Musk contributed to disinformation by deliberately accusing people, without any justification.
“Mr. Altman hand-picked a new board lacking similar technical expertise or substantial AI governance experience that the previous board possessed” indicate lawyers Elon Musk.
What are Elon Musk’s demands? It’s hard to imagine justice forcing OpenAI to become a non-profit entity again, since it has the right to make a profit if it wishes. Either way, this attack will waste time for OpenAI, which will have to defend itself legally. Elon Musk undoubtedly wants to slow down OpenAI and annoy his rival Altman, whom he has regularly had in his sights for several months. Grok, its “anti-woke” ChatGPT competitor, is struggling to attract as many people as OpenAI’s product.
“From the founding of OpenAI 2015, until September 2020, the complainant (Elon Musk) has contributed tens of millions of dollars, provided critical advice on research directions, and played a key role in recruiting world-class talent to OpenAI, in exchange for and consideration of the Founding Agreement, to know that: OpenAI would be a non-profit organization developing general AI for the good of humanity, not a for-profit company seeking to maximize shareholder profits. indicates the complaint, which confirms that Elon Musk still has not digested the explosion of OpenAI.
In Elon Musk’s hopes, there is in particular the idea that justice could force GPT-4 to be open-source, and therefore independent of Microsoft. Elon Musk also hopes to recover money for his betrayed investment. The lawsuit also refers to Q*, the multimodal model that Elon Musk is very concerned about (but which several AI researchers describe as harmless).
“The new board is made up of members with more experience in for-profit business or politics than in AI ethics and governance. It seems they are also ‘big Altman fans’.” says Elon Musk, who really seems to make it a personal matter. Could this lawsuit really hurt OpenAI? Or is it just a way to get people talking about him?
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