Elon Musk sued OpenAI, the business that makes ChatGPTs, and its CEO, Sam Altman, among other people, claiming that they had forsaken the company’s initial goal of creating artificial intelligence for the good of humanity rather than for financial gain.
According to the late-night complaint, Musk was initially approached by Altman and OpenAI cofounder Greg Brockman to create an open-source, nonprofit organization.
Attorneys for Musk said in the San Francisco-filed complaint that the Microsoft-backed company’s emphasis on profit-making violated the terms of their agreement. The company’s most sophisticated AI model, GPT-4, was designed and maintained “a complete secret,” they continued.
Requests for comment from Reuters were not immediately answered by Musk, Microsoft, or OpenAI.
Musk left the board of OpenAI in 2018 after cofounding the company in 2015. In October 2022, he acquired Twitter for $44 billion. He is also the owner of SpaceX, a rocketry company, and Tesla, an electric car manufacturer.
The previous board of OpenAI dismissed serial entrepreneur Altman last year, citing the company’s efforts to uphold its goal of creating AI that advances humankind. Altman returned to the company a few days later, this time with a new inaugural board.
March will see the appointment of multiple new board members for OpenAI, according to a Washington Post story published on Thursday.
After launching in November 2022, ChatGPT, an OpenAI chatbot, grew to become the fastest-growing software program globally in just six months. It also spurred the introduction of competing chatbots from Alphabet, Microsoft, and numerous startups that capitalized on the hype to raise billions of dollars in investment.
Since its release, ChatGPT has been used by businesses for a variety of activities, ranging from generating computer code to summarizing documents. This has caused a rush among Big Tech companies to release their own generative AI-based products.
