Artificial intelligence
Musk is suing ChatGPT developer OpenAI
Elon Musk, who left OpenAI after a few years, has long criticized the company. photo
© Susan Walsh/AP/dpa
Musk left OpenAI soon after it was founded. But he has problems with the further development of the company. Now he’s going to court.
Tech billionaire Elon Musk is escalating his feud with ChatGPT developer company OpenAI and its boss Sam Altman with a lawsuit. The essence is that OpenAI, co-founded by Musk in 2015, has deviated from the agreed path of being a non-profit company whose research in artificial intelligence should benefit humanity.
Major investor Microsoft in particular is now benefiting from this, according to the lawsuit filed in San Francisco. This is a “flagrant violation” of the original founding agreement.
Musk, who left OpenAI after a few years, has long criticized OpenAI and Altman. Last year he founded his own AI company called X.AI, whose chatbot Grok competes with ChatGPT – while warning about the dangers of artificial intelligence. Musk sees the difference from other developers in the fact that his AI should look for the “truth”. Musk supports the political positions of the American right, complains about alleged racism against white people and rails against the “woke brain virus” that is destroying humanity. The term “woke” often summarizes efforts and attitudes against discrimination.
Musk pointed out in the lawsuit that OpenAI was expressly founded as a counterweight to the tandem of Google and the AI company DeepMind, which was acquired by the Internet company. The trigger was the idea that artificial intelligence, with its potential dangers, should not be left to profit-oriented companies. This is specifically about so-called general artificial intelligence, which can not only carry out individual, narrow tasks better than humans, but is generally superior to them. Musk claims that he came up with the name OpenAI.
According to the lawsuit, he sees a particular turning point in the failed attempt by the OpenAI board of directors to remove Altman as boss. Microsoft, as a billion-dollar donor, used its influence so that Altman could return to the top. The new board members do not have any in-depth expertise in artificial intelligence. Now it is the case that OpenAI is “not only developing but refining a general artificial intelligence in order to maximize Microsoft’s profits – instead of for the benefit of humanity,” the lawsuit said. There was initially no response from OpenAI to the lawsuit.