Elon Musk sued OpenAI and Sam Altman for "betraying" the nonprofit's AI mission

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Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk has filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, its co-founders Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, and affiliated entities for abandoning the startup's original nonprofit mission.

Here's What We Know

The businessman alleges that OpenAI's management violated the founding agreement by abandoning the startup's original non-profit mission to create AI for the benefit of humanity. Instead, the startup began monetising proprietary models by partnering with Microsoft.

According to Musk, Altman and Brockman assured him that OpenAI would be a non-profit project to counter Google's AI dominance. He donated $44 million to the organisation between 2016 and 2020.

In reality, however, the company has evolved into a for-profit venture focused on monetising its AI developments through a partnership with Microsoft.

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

Musk also mentioned the personnel changes within the startup that took place at the end of 2023. He criticised the board's decision to give Microsoft a seat as an observer.

Musk is demanding that OpenAI be legally barred from profiting from licensing advanced models like GPT-4, which he believes fall under the category of general-purpose AI. He's also asking for the return of donations intended for nonprofit AI research if the court upholds the company's abandonment of its socially-oriented mission.

The lawsuit will be decided in a San Francisco court.

Source: TechCrunch