What you need to know
- Elon Musk has filed a new lawsuit against OpenAI, Sam Altman, and co-founder Greg Brockman.
- Musk claims he was lured to invest in OpenAI by its “fake humanitarian mission.”
- The billionaire claims OpenAI’s latest models have already hit the AGI benchmark, but OpenAI is delaying the finding for financial gain.
Elon Musk is back on OpenAI’s case. The billionaire filed a lawsuit against the ChatGPT maker and its CEO, Sam Altman, for a stark betrayal of its founding agreement — to leverage generative AI to benefit humanity without making profits.
In June, Musk abruptly dropped the lawsuit against OpenAI and its CEO without prejudice. Very little information was provided highlighting Musk’s decision to drop the case against the hot startup. Around the same time, the startup published a blog post including emails from Elon Musk acknowledging the firm required additional funding for AI’s computing needs.
A month and a few weeks later, Musk filed a new lawsuit against OpenAI, Sam Altman, and co-founder Gregory Brockman in a federal court in Northern California (via CNN). The suit cites similar issues highlighted but also claims the ChatGPT maker is involved in fraudulent business deals.
The 83-page-long lawsuit claims that OpenAI leveraged its “fake humanitarian mission” to lure Elon Musk and other key players to invest in its ventures. According to a statement by Elon Musk’s attorney, Marc Toberoff:
“This lawsuit bursts the Defendants’ hot-air philanthropy and holds them accountable for their misrepresentations to Musk and the public. It concerns far more than a $100 billion startup; the future of AGI lies in the balance.”
OpenAI might have already achieved AGI
While speaking to The New York Times, Toberoff indicated the “previous suit lacked teeth, this is a much more forceful lawsuit.” The suit details that Altman and Brockman “manipulated” Musk into co-founding the company with promises of a “safer, more open course than profit-driven tech giants.”
However, the dream was short-lived as OpenAI got closer to achieving AGI (artificial general intelligence). Sam Altman reportedly “flipped the narrative” on OpenAI’s founding mission and cashed in.
Musk has openly criticized Microsoft’s complicated partnership with OpenAI and even indicated that the ChatGPT maker has seemingly transformed into a closed-source de facto subsidiary for Microsoft. These sentiments are echoed in the suit:
“In partnership with Microsoft, Altman established an opaque web of for-profit OpenAI affiliates, engaged in rampant self-dealing, seized OpenAI, Inc.’s Board, and systematically drained the non-profit of its valuable technology and personnel.”
In the suit, Musk claims OpenAI has already attained AGI and is using tactics to delay the announcement for financial gain. The billionaire says OpenAI’s latest models have already hit the AGI benchmarks and are at par or might have surpassed human intelligence. If this is the case, Microsoft’s agreement with OpenAI is “null and void” since its multi-billion dollar investment only gives it access to a share of OpenAI’s profits pre-AGI.
