OpenAI, the creator of the generative AI app ChatGPT, has countered Elon Musk’s claims that it had abandoned its mission. On 29 February 2024, Musk filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, challenging its for-profit stance and claiming that the company deserted its mission to develop artificial intelligence (AI) that benefits humanity.
OpenAI says Elon Musk backed its for-profit evolution
In a blog post on its website, the AI enterprise responded, saying that Musk, as one of its co-founders, supported a for-profit structure and even suggested a merger with Tesla, Inc. (TSLA). Musk alleges that OpenAI’s focus is on generating profits for its partners and major investor, Microsoft Corporation (MSFT).
Musk claims that when he backed OpenAI as a startup, he secured an agreement with the company to remain a non-profit that creates technology beneficial to the general public. The lawsuit centres on the breach of this agreement and requests an injunction to stop anyone, including Microsoft, gaining financial benefits from the technologies.
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Five OpenAI leaders, including CEO Sam Altman, disclosed communications between Musk and the company in their blog. The company said:
The mission of OpenAI is to ensure AGI benefits all of humanity, which means both building safe and beneficial AGI and helping create broadly distributed benefits.
In this ‘tech war’, Musk hit back and said in a post on X that OpenAI should change its name to ClosedAI.
The company commented:
We’re sad that it’s come to this with someone whom we’ve deeply admired – someone who inspired us to aim higher, then told us we would fail, started a competitor, and then sued us when we started making meaningful progress towards OpenAI’s mission without him.
