Musk is trying to force OpenAI to stick to its original mission of “benefiting humanity.”
Musk is at odds with OpenAI again. This time, Musk did not just repost the video to say something, but demanded real money compensation from OpenAI. The claims included breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duty, and unfair business practices. In addition, he also asked OpenAI to resume open source and continue its development. Develop in the direction of “benefiting mankind rather than profit”.
In response, OpenAI “categorically disagrees” with the lawsuit filed by Musk.
According to Bloomberg, citing an internal OpenAI memo, the company’s chief strategy officer Jason Kwon refuted Musk’s statement that OpenAI became a “de facto subsidiary” of Microsoft and suggested that Musk’s accusation may stem from his failure to continue to participate in the company. Regrettably ; in another memo obtained by Bloomberg, Altman called Musk his hero and said he misses the person he knew “who competed with others by building better technology.”
Kwon noted in the memo that the company’s mission is to “ensure that AGI benefits all mankind.” He also said that OpenAI is independent and competes directly with Microsoft. In addition, Kwon also mentioned that the company is cooperating with investigations by government agencies, which may be related to the company’s board of directors briefly ousting CEO Altman in November last year.
Altman dug out a 2019 tweet on La is really disgusting. Be someone who is on the side of climate and innovation, not someone who wants to make money on puts.
Plus, history shows that betting against Elon is usually a mistake…the best product usually wins. “
Musk’s comments on OpenAI have become increasingly sharp over the past year, reaching a new peak after the release of Sora. On February 18, three days after the release of Sora, Musk commented on OpenAI’s achievements on Real World Video for about a year.” He forwarded a video of Tesla’s autonomous driving director introducing AI simulated driving, demonstrating Tesla AI’s technology in generating multi-angle driving scenarios.
But it’s hard to tell whether the criticism is simply about OpenAI ’s growing shift from the nonprofit he co-founded to a company, or its potential competition with Tesla. Shortly after the above comments, he said on X that he had been granted shares in OpenAI, but because it was unclear “whether there was a moral hazard” in accepting these shares, Musk chose to refuse. Shortly thereafter, he took OpenAI to court and asked it to transform back into a non-profit organization.
01. OpenAI, from benefiting mankind to becoming a closed-source subsidiary of Microsoft?
“OpenAI has transformed into a de facto closed-source subsidiary of Microsoft, the world’s largest technology company,” Musk’s lawyers wrote in a filing in a San Francisco court on Thursday.
According to the US Court News Service CNS, Musk filed a lawsuit in San Francisco Superior Court on Thursday, claiming that OpenAI and its CEO Altman violated an agreement reached when the company was founded to promote artificial intelligence technology to benefit mankind. Non-profit development.
Musk filed claims against OpenAI, including breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duty and unfair business practices, and asked the company to return to open source. In addition, he requested an injunction to prevent OpenAI, its president Gregory Brockman and CEO Sam Altman (co-defendants in the case) and Microsoft from obtaining legal benefits from the case. Profit from the company’s artificial general intelligence technology (AGI).
Much of the lawsuit concerns Microsoft’s significant influence on OpenAI and its own economic position. Musk previously announced that he would sue Microsoft, accusing the latter of stealing content from his social media company X to train Microsoft’s artificial intelligence tools.
The content of this lawsuit mainly focuses on the following points:
Risks of AGI
Founding Agreement of OpenAI, Inc.
Violation of Founding Agreement in 2023
Musk worries about AGI falling into the wrong hands
Musk played a key role in getting OpenAI off the ground
Altman and Brockman reiterated founding agreement
OpenAI’s corporate structure continues to change
The development of OpenAI technology – from AI to AGI
Musk said in the lawsuit, “To this day, OpenAI’s website still claims that its charter is to ensure that AGI benefits all mankind. However, in fact, OpenAI has transformed into a closed-source subsidiary of Microsoft, the world’s largest technology company. In the new Under the leadership of the board of directors, it is not only developing, but actually improving AGI, but the goal is no longer to benefit mankind, but to maximize Microsoft’s profits.”
Musk pointed out that GPT-4, which OpenAI will release in 2023, already has reasoning capabilities that exceed the average human level. During this period, “Mr. Altman made OpenAI completely contrary to its ultimate mission and historical practice and no longer open to the public.” Open its technology and knowledge”, and said, “The internal details of GPT-4 are only known by OpenAI; as for the information and beliefs, only Microsoft knows. Therefore, GPT-4 is now actually the opposite of ‘open artificial intelligence'”, Musk The lawsuit states, “It became closed for business reasons. If OpenAI made the technology available to the public for free as it once demanded of itself, Microsoft would not be able to make a fortune by selling GPT-4 to the public.”
Musk said that although GPT-4 was developed by OpenAI with contributions from the plaintiffs and others, and its original purpose was to benefit mankind, it has now actually become Microsoft’s proprietary algorithm and is integrated into its Office software suite , “as proprietary technology that maximizes profits for the world’s largest companies.”
Musk also talked about Altman’s firing as CEO in 2023 and his subsequent reinstatement. Musk said Altman’s ouster prompted Microsoft to step in and force the resignations of board members who were trying to oust him. Additionally, the current board members are no longer scientists and researchers who support and understand this technology.
“OpenAI’s original well-designed non-profit structure has now been replaced by a purely profit-oriented CEO and a board of directors who are not good at AGI and AI public policy. The board now even has an observer seat reserved specifically for Microsoft. “, Musk said.
02. AGI, an existential threat or a source of profit and power?
Musk was one of the co-founders of OpenAI, which at the time was a non-profit organization dedicated to safely building AGI – an artificial intelligence capable of the same level of intelligence as humans or even higher. Musk claims Altman and Brockman convinced him to help found and fund the startup in 2015 with the promise that it would be a nonprofit focused on countering competitive threats from Google.
In 2018, Musk left OpenAI’s board of directors. In March 2019, OpenAI established a for-profit unit, OpenAI LP (later became OpenAI Global, LLC), a move that allowed OpenAI to raise billions of dollars in external investment and acquire some of the attributes of a technology startup, such as Ability to provide equity incentives to employees.
That’s when things started to change. It is through this unit that Microsoft invested approximately $13 billion in OpenAI, an investment that is currently under review by competition regulators in the United States, the European Union, and the United Kingdom.
The indictment shows that between 2016 and September 2020, Musk donated a total of more than $44 million to OpenAI. He also rented the company’s initial office space in San Francisco and paid monthly fees; Musk personally participated Recruited Google’s top research scientist Ilya Sutskever as the chief scientist of OpenAI.
The lawsuit adds that the new board of directors brought in after Altman’s reinstatement did not have the expertise to determine whether the company had achieved AGI, so Musk is asking the court to rule that AI systems like GPT-4 and other advanced models under development have indeed constituted AGI beyond the licensing agreement, and if a court finds that OpenAI is now operating for private benefit, Musk’s previous donations intended to fund its public benefit research will be subject to accounting and may require the return of these donations. In addition, Musk has previously said that he had been offered a stake in OpenAI’s for-profit unit, but refused to accept it due to ethical concerns.
Altman was fired by OpenAI’s former board of directors in November, which said it was trying to defend the company’s mission of developing artificial intelligence that benefits humanity. Altman then announced that he would join Microsoft as the new head of Microsoft’s artificial intelligence department, but soon Altman returned to OpenAI with a new initial board of directors. The suit said the series of changes demonstrated Microsoft’s “significant influence” over the company. Musk said the conflict between the board of directors and Altman stemmed from the development of GPT-4 and the potential next iteration of AGI technology, which in his view could endanger public safety.
However, the lawsuit filed by Musk did not name Microsoft as a defendant, but Microsoft has had exclusive licensing rights to the OpenAI GPT-3 language model since 2020. In order to protect its exclusive licensing position, Microsoft claimed that GPT-4 has not yet achieved artificial general intelligence (AGI). In addition, Microsoft President Brad Smith stated this week that although Microsoft has a close cooperative relationship with OpenAI, “Microsoft does not control OpenAI.”
“Some like Musk see AGI as an existential threat, while others see AGI as a source of profit and power,” the lawsuit states. But in July last year, Musk also announced the launch of his own artificial intelligence company xAI, so “this case was filed to force OpenAI to abide by the founding agreement and return to its mission of developing AGI for the benefit of humanity, not for the individual defendants.” and the interests of the world’s largest technology companies”, is that really the case?
Reference links:
https://www.courthousenews.com/elon-musk-sues-openai-over-ai-threat/ ,CNS
https://www.courthousenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/musk-v-altman-openai-complaint-sf.pdf , CNS
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/mar/01/elon-musk-sues-open-ai-profit-power-microsoft-sam-altman , theGuardian
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