On the evening of the 29th local time, Musk suddenly sued ChatGPT maker OpenAI and its CEO Altman and others in the Los Angeles Superior Court, saying that it deviated from the company's original non-profit, open-source principles, and required OpenAI to abide by the "Founding Agreement" and return to its mission of developing AGI for the benefit of mankind. The complaint states that the company has been "completely secretive" about the design of its state-of-the-art artificial intelligence model, GPT-4, and has not sought to "benefit humanity" as it was founded, but has instead focused on "maximizing profits" for its major investor, Microsoft.
We know that when OpenAI launched ChatGPT in November 2022, this artificial intelligence that can train itself based on reinforcement learning is like a god descending, causing a huge shock in the global science and technology, business, and cultural circles, and the world is boiling, only 4 months later, they launched an upgraded product ChatGPT-4, which is staggering in its super intelligence! Today, including in China, a variety of interactive natural language generation models have become popular, forming a situation where a hundred flowers are blooming, but ChatGPT is the only one. In the corner, there is a person standing, he is Musk, at this time, his heart is turning over and cannot be calmed.
Musk's approach to AI can be described as a "big pie", and he insisted on being cautious at first, calling generative AI the singularity of science, like a black hole, and no one knows what will happen after that.
He called for a moratorium on AI development first, the establishment of first-class regulatory norms, and the formulation of product safety standards first, and he announced in April 2023 that he would also invest in the establishment of an artificial intelligence company, the name of which was thought of, called "The Truth", he said that the purpose of establishing this company is to figure out the truth of the universe, and it is absolutely safe, and it is impossible to destroy mankind.
Later, he did set up an artificial intelligence company, but the company is not called Truth AI, but XAI, and also launched the first generation of large model Grok in November last year, although this product also has its own characteristics, but it is still a generation-skipping product compared to ChatGPT-4 after all. It can be said that in the development of artificial intelligence, he got up early in the morning and rushed to a late set.
In fact, as early as 2015, he invested 50 million US dollars in openai, and later thought that the development speed was too slow, and asked him to lead the team, but was rejected by the board of directors, and later broke up. After the ChatGPT product became popular, he said sourly that it was not because of him that the company OpenAI was born.
In a brief review, we can see that Musk's attitude towards AI has gone through several 180-degree turns, and now, he wants to sue his old employer for not making money. Let's not forget that his first identity was a businessman.
It can be said that with the keen insight of a businessman, he has long predicted the unlimited business opportunities behind artificial intelligence, and decisively made a move at the first time. The market is unimaginably big, and whoever doesn't engage in AI is a fool! But people are not as good as heaven, maybe he is too assertive, maybe he is in a hurry, he has a stalemate with the most talented team in the field of artificial intelligence, and he has to withdraw his capital and leave, and he will see the consequences immediately.
After Musk divested, Microsoft provided $1 billion in support to OpenAI for the first time in 2019. Subsequently, following the launch of OpenAI's chatbot, ChatGPT, Microsoft's investment expanded to a multi-year, multi-billion dollar partnership in January 2023.
Now, seeing the great success of openai, the market cake has been carved up again, and his company's model is lagging behind, and the powerful opponent is precisely the guy who has not been able to win a game so far, can he, a talented king of kings who never admit defeat, not be in a hurry to think about it?
Seeing that he is too far behind, he is now suing OpenAI, is it a delaying tactic? He has been advocating the AI threat theory, in fact, he doesn't know in his heart, is AI very dangerous, or OpenAI is dangerous? Smart people always have rewards, and his AI human threat theory really bought him a little time, because ChatGPT4 is too powerful, and the society has asked OpenAI to slow down the development speed, under pressure, OpenAI's top executive Ultraman had to announce that in order to strengthen AI security measures, ChatGPT5 training will not be carried out in the short term.
Musk's lawyers said that OpenAI's technology, including GPT-4, is closed-source and primarily serves Microsoft's proprietary commercial interests, and that these "shocking developments" highlight Microsoft's increased influence over the company, and they are asking the court to order OpenAI to continue to provide information related to its AI development to the public.
It can be seen that Musk's attack this time is steady and ruthless, he does not fight unprepared battles, and his accusations are adding to the blockage of openai and Microsoft, whose partnership is currently under review by regulators in the United Kingdom, the European Union and the United States.
Whether Musk's status as the subject of litigation is appropriate, whether his so-called "corporate principle" can be established, whether his litigation claim can be supported by the court, whether he can win back the openai game in court and take a bad breath, all this, which is right and which is wrong, we can only wait and see, and those who eat melons will never be too big.