The original intention of "non-profit". Openai executives deny the accusations.
Reuters reported on March 1 that the lawsuit was filed in California Superior Court later on February 29. Musk sued OpenAI for breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duty and unfair business practices. He also hopes that the court will issue an injunction to prohibit any company, including Microsoft, from benefiting from OpenAI technology.
On January 8, 2023, a woman experienced smart technology at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, USA. Xinhua News Agency (Photo by Zeng Hui)
Musk accused Altman of breach of contract in the lawsuit, saying that Altman and OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman originally joined Musk to start a non-profit sex company, but this company is now focused on making profits.
When OpenAI was founded in 2015, Musk was an early investor and co-chaired the board of directors with Altman. In the lawsuit, Musk said he invested "tens of millions" of dollars in the nonprofit company.
Musk resigned from the OpenAI board of directors in early 2018. OpenAI said at the time that the move was to prevent conflicts of interest because Musk was recruiting artificial intelligence talents to develop autonomous driving technology for Tesla. According to a February 2018 blog post by OpenAI, "This will eliminate potential future conflicts for Musk." Musk later said he disagreed with the startup's direction but continued to provide it with funding.
Later in 2018, OpenAI filed documents to form a for-profit division and began transferring most of its employees to that division, but retained a nonprofit board of directors to govern the company. Microsoft invested its first $1 billion in the company in 2019 and signed an agreement the following year giving Microsoft exclusive rights to the OpenAI artificial intelligence model. The company said that once OpenAI achieves general artificial intelligence, Microsoft's license to exclusive rights to OpenAI's artificial intelligence models will expire. At the end of last year, Altman was suddenly fired by the board of directors for reasons that have not yet been fully disclosed. He then joined Microsoft and returned to OpenAI to take up his original position just a few days later, leading to the resignation of most of the old board members.
This is the Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, Washington, USA, taken on November 14, 2019. Photo by Xinhua News Agency reporter Qin Lang
Musk said in the lawsuit that the changes caused the checks and balances that protect the nonprofit mission to "collapse overnight."
The US axios news website reported on March 1, citing a memo, that OpenAI executives denied several allegations made by Musk in the lawsuit. "This is never going to be easy," Altman said, adding that similar lawsuits will continue.
According to Reuters, Musk has not yet commented on the lawsuit.
Musk announced the establishment of x.ai company in July last year, mainly engaged in artificial intelligence business. In November last year, x.ai launched its first artificial intelligence model grok, which can connect to Musk’s social media platform x (formerly Twitter) in real time, aiming to compete with openai and others.
Some legal experts say Musk's breach of contract claim, based in part on an email between Musk and Altman, may not hold up in court. Giuseppe Sett, president and co-founder of
market research company toggleai, said that Musk has repeatedly called for the regulation of artificial intelligence since exiting OpenAI, but this "will not have any impact on the development of artificial intelligence inside or outside OpenAI. "And this could be seen as Musk wanting to take a stake in a company that he actually founded but doesn't own any shares of." (Liu Xi)
(Source: Xinhua News Agency)
