Musk sues Openai, CEO over alleged priority shift

Elon Musk sued Openai and chief executive Sam Altman, alleging they have breached the artificial intelligence startup’s founding agreement by putting profit ahead of benefiting humanity.

The 52-year-old billionaire, who was a co-founder of Openai but no longer owns a stake, said in a suit filed late Thursday in San Francisco that the company’s close relationship with Microsoft Corp. has undermined its original mission of creating open-source technology that wouldn’t be subject to corporate priorities.

Musk, who is also CEO of Tesla Inc., has been among the most outspoken about the dangers of AI and artificial general intelligence. The release of Openai’s CHATGPT more than a year ago popularized advances in AI technology and raised concerns about the risks surrounding the race to develop AGI, where computers are as smart as an average human.

“To this day, Openai Inc.’s website continues to profess that its charter is to ensure that AGI ‘benefits all of humanity,’ ” the lawsuit said. “In reality, however, Openai Inc. has been transformed into a closed-source de facto subsidiary of the largest technology company in the world: Microsoft.”

Spokespeople for Openai and Musk did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Musk, the world’s richest person, helped establish Openai in 2015 but stepped away from the company some two years later over philosophical differences about how to profit from the technology. In addition to leading Tesla, he owns the social network X and is raising money for an AI venture he founded called XAI that features its own Chatgpt-type chatbot, Grok.

In the filing, Musk took aim at the restructuring of Openai’s leadership last year, a tumultuous period during which Altman was ousted as CEO and then quickly reinstated with support from Microsoft. Musk argued in the suit that Altman, Openai president Greg Brockman and Microsoft worked together to oust the majority of the startup’s board, who had been responsible for enforcing its original mission of developing technology for the benefit of humanity.

Since introducing CHATGPT and GPT-4, the large language model that powers the chatbot, Openai has set off a wave of AI adoption. Microsoft has been one of the most aggressive in incorporating the technology into its cloud and enterprise services.

“Altman hand-picked a new board that lacks similar technical expertise or any substantial background in AI governance, which the previous board had by design,” the lawsuit said. “The new Board consisted of members with more experience in profit-centric enterprises or politics than in AI ethics and governance. They were also reportedly ‘big fans of Altman.’”