OpenAI lawsuit overview:
- Who: Elon Musk filed a lawsuit against Samuel Altman, Gregory Brockman and Open AI entities.
- Why: Musk claims the defendants broke their promise to run OpenAI as a nonprofit to utilize artificial intelligence development “for the benefit of humanity.”
- Where: The Elon Musk lawsuit was filed in the Superior Court of California, County of San Francisco.
Elon Musk filed an OpenAI lawsuit against Samuel Altman, Gregory Brockman and OpenAI entities for allegedly breaking their promise to run OpenAI as a nonprofit developing Artificial General Intelligence “for the benefit of humanity,” Law360 reports.
“Mr. Musk has long recognized that AGI poses a grave threat to humanity — perhaps the greatest existential threat we face today,” the Elon Musk lawsuit says.
Musk is concerned about the potential effects AGI could have on our economy, which the Musk lawsuit says is currently “based around the fact that humans work together and come up with the best solutions to a hard task.”
If machines develop the ability to solve problems better than humans, the OpenAI lawsuit argues the machine will become more “economically useful” than humans.
“But where some like Mr. Musk see an existential threat in AGI, others see AGI as a source of profit and power,” the lawsuit alleges.
Elon Musk lawsuit claims defendants set OpenAI founding agreement ‘aflame’
In 2015, Musk says Altman suggested they team up to form a nonprofit artificial intelligence lab that would develop an open-source AGI lab to compete with Google’s for-profit AGI development.
Altman, Brockman and Musk reportedly memorialized OpenAI’s founding agreement in December 2015, which affirmed that the corporation would use open source technology.
OpenAI initially provided free and public access to code, designs and models. However, the Elon Musk lawsuit claims Altman, Brockman and OpenAI “set the founding agreement aflame” in 2023 with the launch of GPT-4, OpenAI’s most powerful language model.
Musk says Altman departed from OpenAI’s original mission of making its technology available to the public and kept the GPT-4 technology secret for commercial reasons. OpenAI entered a business relationship with Microsoft Corp. and allowed GPT-4 to become Microsoft’s proprietary algorithm, the Elon Musk lawsuit alleges.
“This case is filed to compel OpenAI to adhere to the founding agreement and return to its mission to develop AGI for the benefit of humanity, not to personally benefit the individual defendants and the largest technology company in the world,” the OpenAI lawsuit says.
The Elon Musk lawsuit asserts claims for breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duty, promissory estoppel and unfair competition.
X Corp., formerly known as Twitter Inc., was recently hit with a class action lawsuit alleging it terminated female and older employees at a higher rate after Elon Musk took over the company in 2022.
What do you think about the OpenAI lawsuit? Tell us your thoughts in the comments.
Musk is represented by Morgan Chu, Alan Heinrich, Iian Jablon, Abigail Sellers, Justin Koo and Henry White of Irell & Manella LLP.
The Elon Musk OpenAI lawsuit is Elon Musk v. Samuel Altman, et al., Case No. CGC-24-612747, in the Superior Court of California, County of San Francisco.
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2 thoughts onElon Musk files OpenAI lawsuit alleging company violated founding principles, mission
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I completely agree with musk. This is going to get out of hand.