Elon Musk sues OpenAI for allegedly prioritising profit over the benefit of humanity

Elon Musk has filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, claiming that the ChatGPT makers have shifted OpenAI to a profit-oriented company because they do not provide information regarding the GPT-4 model. The lawsuit claims that the GPT-4 model is kept and remains a complete secret except for OpenAI and Microsoft. Musk also claims that the absence of scientific publications on the development of the model is driven primarily by commercial considerations rather than prioritizing technology for humanity and alleges that:

“OpenAI, Inc. has been transformed into a closed-source de facto subsidiary of the largest technology company in the world: Microsoft.”

Thus, Musk accuses OpenAI of breaching their founding agreement, which, as stated in the lawsuit, was supposed to use Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) for the benefit of humanity. Musk also requested that OpenAI, its president Gregory Brockman, its CEO Sam Altman, and Microsoft be prevented from profiting off the company’s AGI.

According to the lawsuit, the concept of AGI is to allow researchers to learn more about the potential of AI. Namely, as deep learning algorithms advance, top AI researchers target the development of AGI for broader capabilities. Elon Musk claims that OpenAI has prevented the research community from accessing essential information regarding the development of AI models such as the GPT-4.

Why does it matter?

The outcome of this case could set a precedent regarding the responsibility of AI companies to inform the public about the production of their models. This means it could also set a threshold on what is considered imperative information for the research community and what level of AI goes beyond companies’ right to keep their information confidential.