OpenAI Leadership refutes Elon Musk’s allegations in staff memos

OpenAI’s top executives have rejected Elon Musk’s claims in a lawsuit, emphasizing that the company remains independent, committed to benefiting humanity, and has not achieved artificial general intelligence in its products. Musk’s allegations, including GPT-4 being an AGI, OpenAI abandoning its mission, and acting as a Microsoft subsidiary, were refuted by OpenAI’s chief strategy officer and CEO in internal memos

Jason Kwon, the Chief Strategy Officer of OpenAI, disproved in a memo the notions that GPT-4 is AGI, the firm is a de facto subsidiary of Microsoft, and that OpenAI needs to make its technology publicly accessible in order to accomplish its goals. 

Kwon says that although GPT-4 is capable of performing a large number of activities, he made it clear that the machine’s labor-to-human ratio in the economy is still quite high, which means that GPT-4 is not considered AGI. He also insisted on the fact that ‘an AGI will be a highly autonomous system capable enough to devise novel solutions to longstanding challenges — GPT-4 can’t do that’.

Furthermore, Musk’s claims about Microsoft’s ownership of OpenAI have already been denied by Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. Nadella made it clear in an interview that OpenAI is run independently and is governed by a nonprofit board, highlighting Microsoft’s non-controlling stake in the company and the importance of their shared business relationship. The main goal of this collaboration is to advance AI technology in a way that supports OpenAI’s objective without gaining undue power or influence. Kwon, in his memo, emphasised on the fact that  ‘OpenAI is the creator of ChatGPT and ChatGPT for Enterprise, while Microsoft offers Copilot and Copilot for Microsoft 365’.

In response to the assertion that OpenAI has given up on its goal of advancing humankind, Kwon provided specifics about the company’s strategy for implementing moral and social responsibility, obtaining the necessary capital, and ensuring the technology’s beneficial impacts by ensuring that cutting-edge research is broadly available through APIs and products. Kwon assures that they are able to ‘attract the necessary capital, make the technology broadly usable, and also provide guardrails as required by society and conscience’.