Author: Gao Xin [original article, **please contact, infringement must be investigated].
On March 1, local time, the United States reported that Musk has sued OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman, accusing them of violating the founding contract and putting the profits and commercial interests of developing artificial intelligence above the public interest. Musk said OpenAI's partnership with Microsoft represents the company abandoning its founding commitment to carefully develop artificial intelligence and make the technology public. The lawsuit is seen as an escalation of the quarrel between American tech giants over artificial intelligence.
Musk and Altman first met when the latter visited SpaceX, and later bonded because they were both concerned about the threat posed by artificial intelligence to humanity.
In 2013, Musk warned then-Google CEO Larry Page that artificial intelligence could make humans irrelevant and even exterminated. In an email to Musk in 2015, Altman wrote that "the technology will be owned by the Society" and used "for the good of the world" and that "safety should be a top priority."
Musk said in the lawsuit that his involvement in the development of OpenAI, a non-profit organization that develops artificial intelligence for the "benefit of humanity," is based on these commitments. However, now OpenAI and Altman are not fulfilling their promises. OpenAI's collaboration with Microsoft, in particular, is a testament to this.
According to the New York Times, in 2019, Altman negotiated an agreement with Microsoft, and Microsoft agreed to invest $1 billion in OpenAI, which will use Microsoft's cloud computing services to build and deploy artificial intelligence technology. In the years since, Microsoft has invested another $12 billion in the startup and has become the only company outside of OpenAI to license the company's artificial intelligence technology, GPT-4, for the original technology. And Musk believes that this non-profit company, which aims at the interests of mankind, should be open source technology.
Musk's lawsuit gives a clearer picture of Altman's previous dismissal and quick reinstatement. According to an analysis by the United States**, OpenAI is still managed by a nonprofit organization that controls the for-profit sector. In 2023, the nonprofit's board of directors fired Altman for failing to be "consistently upfront with the board." The decision was opposed by employees, and Microsoft extended an olive branch to Altman, prompting him to quickly return to the CEO position, albeit without joining the board.
In the lawsuit, Musk demanded that OpenAI open its technology to others, and demanded that Altman and others repay their previous investments. According to the lawsuit, Musk contributed more than $44 million to OpenAI between 2016 and 2020. He paid the rent for his initial office and was also involved in recruiting Ilya Sutskever, a scientist who previously worked at Google, to be OpenAI's chief scientist. Along with OpenAI and Altman, OpenAI President Greg Brockman is being sued.
Musk, who founded his own artificial intelligence company, XAI, last year, believes that OpenAI is not paying enough attention to the risks of the technology. robust.Gary Marcus, CEO and founder of AI and professor emeritus of psychology and neuroscience at New York University, said that Musk has both concerns about the fairness of OpenAI and his own interests in the commercialization of artificial intelligence.
Brian Quinn, a law professor at Boston College, said that Musk may not be qualified to file such a challenge, because the law related to nonprofits restricts the status of such a challenge to the nonprofit's due-paying members, directors within the organization, and Delaware regulators where OpenAI is registered. At the same time, a series of emails used as evidence are not enough to become legal evidence.
As of now, OpenAI has not commented on the lawsuit. However, its internal employees told The New York Times that Musk's argument baffled him that artificial intelligence built for the good of humanity was contradictory to building commercial enterprises. Jason Kwon, OpenAI's chief strategy officer, said Musk's statement "doesn't reflect our actual work and mission." ”
In addition, this time the US media also broke out that Musk originally wanted to take away control of the artificial intelligence laboratory from the founding team in 2017 and turn it into a commercial operation, cooperating with his companies such as Tesla. The failure of this plan led him to leave the OpenAI board.
Musk has said that he has mixed feelings for Sam, and he mentioned that the "Ring of Power" in "The Lord of the Rings" can be used as an immoral act, and Sam has this Ring of Power.
OpenAI's executives in the corporate office. From left: Mira Murati, Sam Altman, Greg Brockman and Ilya Sutskever. * The New York Times
Silicon Valleyers believe that the generative AI technology behind ChatGPT is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that could revolutionize the tech world in the same way that browsers did more than 30 years ago. Currently, OpenAI is facing a series of troubles. The company's partnership with Microsoft is facing scrutiny from regulators in the United States, the European Union, and the United Kingdom. It was sued by The New York Times, several digitizers, writers, and programmers for scraping copyrighted material to train chatbots. And the U.S. ** Exchange Commission is also investigating Altman and OpenAI.
The "Ring of Power" is easy to wear, and this is just the beginning. The key that opens the door to the future of mankind needs to be found with the common wisdom of mankind.
Source: The New York Times, Wall Street, The Guardian, Reuters.