Tesla leader and X owner Elon Musk has filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, Sam Altman and Greg Brockman for allegedly setting "aflame" the organization's original not-for-profit, open-source mission.
Musk co-founded OpenAI alongside Altman, Brockman and others in 2015 as a nonprofit research organization that would purportedly work towards developing advanced artificial intelligence models for the benefit of humanity.
The most advanced type of AI models which can outperform human intelligence, in theory, are commonly referred to as advanced general intelligence, or AGI.
In Musk's complaint, which was filed in San Francisco Superior Court on Thursday, he alleges that OpenAI, Altman, Brockman and others have breached the original terms of OpenAI's incorporation.
"In 2023, Defendants Mr. Altman, Mr. Brockman, and OpenAI set the Founding Agreement aflame," the complaint says.
What happened in 2023? OpenAI released GPT-4, an update to its foundational AI model which powers its chatbot known as ChatGPT.
Musk alleges in the complaint that GPT-4 "is an AGI algorithm." He further alleges that an unreleased project called Q* (pronounced Q-star), reported by Reuters in late November, "has an even stronger claim to AGI."
The complaints claims the advanced state of OpenAI's technology place it outside of the licensing agreement that Microsoft has with OpenAI.
In 2020, "OpenAI entered into an agreement with Microsoft, exclusively licensing to Microsoft its Generative Pre-Trained Transformer (GPT)-3 language model. However, OpenAI published a detailed paper describing the internals and training data for GPT-3, enabling the community to create similar models themselves. And, most critically, the Microsoft license only applied to OpenAI’s pre-AGI technology. Microsoft obtained no rights to AGI. And it was up to OpenAI, Inc.’s nonprofit Board, not Microsoft, to determine when OpenAI attained AGI," the complaint says.
Microsoft is mentioned 68 times but not named as a defendant in the complaint.
The complaint also alleges that the new board of directors appointed in the wake of Altman's brief ouster "lack substantial AI expertise and, on information and belief, are ill equipped by design to make an independent determination of whether and when OpenAI has attained AGI — and hence when it has developed an algorithm that is outside the scope of Microsoft’s license."
I've reached out to OpenAI for comment.
Musk, a founding board member and substantial early donor to OpenAI, ended his involvement with the organization in 2018 after losing an internal power struggle, according to a report from Semafor.
Semafor's report also claimed that Musk was concerned that OpenAI's research wasn't advancing fast enough, and when Musk failed to take control of OpenAI, he walked away and reneged on donating hundreds of millions in previously committed funding.
In the complaint, Musk requests "restitution and/or disgorgement" of any funding OpenAI received while engaging in alleged "unfair and improper" business practices.
Musk also asks the court in his complaint to:
- declare that GPT-4 and Q* are AGI technology that fall "outside the scope of OpenAI’s license to Microsoft";
- order OpenAI to make its research and technology public;
- and prohibit Alman, Brockman, Microsoft and others from financially benefiting from OpenAI and its assets.
Altman has previously stated he has no financial stake in OpenAI.
On Friday, Bloomberg News reported that the news organization had determined Altman's estimated wealth to be $2 billion, a figure that does not include a stake in OpenAI.
The SEC reportedly opened an investigation into OpenAI last year after the organization's board directors attempted to fire Altman, the New York Times reported on Wednesday. Only one of those directors, Quora CEO Adam D'Angelo, remains on the reconstituted board.
Musk has his own share of legal troubles. He and X, the company formerly known as Twitter which he bought in 2022 for $44 billion and rebranded, are also facing two lawsuits regarding more than $500 million in unpaid severance obligations. Settlement negotiations in those cases failed this week, Reuters reported on Thursday.
Another Musk-owned company is facing a racial discrimination lawsuit.
Thousands of Black workers are suing Tesla for alleged discrimination in a case that was originally filed in 2017. A Superior Court judge in Alameda County ruled on Thursday that the case can proceed, Reuters reported.
