BEIJING, March 2 (Xinhua) -- Elon Musk, a well-known American entrepreneur, recently filed a lawsuit against the American Open Artificial Intelligence Research Center (OpenAI) and its CEO Sam Altman, saying that it violated the original intention of the company to be "non-profit" when it was founded. Openai executives denied the allegations.
The lawsuit was filed late on Feb. 29 in California Superior Court, Reuters said on March 1. Musk is suing OpenAI for breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duty, and unfair business practices. He also wants the court to issue an injunction prohibiting any business, including Microsoft Corp., from benefiting from OpenAI's technology.
A woman experiences smart technology at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, U.S., Jan. 8, 2023. Xinhua News Agency (photo by Zeng Hui).
In the lawsuit, Musk accused Altman of breach of contract, saying that Altman and OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman originally joined forces with Musk to start a nonprofit company, but the business is now focused on making profits.
When OpenAI was founded in 2015, Musk was an early investor and co-chaired the board with Altman. In the lawsuit, Musk said he invested "tens of millions" of dollars in the nonprofit company.
Musk resigned from OpenAI's board of directors in early 2018, and OpenAI said at the time that the move was to prevent conflicts of interest because Musk was recruiting AI talent to develop self-driving technology for Tesla. According to OpenAI in a February 2018 blog post, "this will eliminate potential future conflicts for Musk." Musk later said he disagreed with the startup's direction, but he continued to fund it.
Later in 2018, OpenAI filed documents to form a for-profit division and began moving most of its employees to the department, but retained a nonprofit board to manage the company. Microsoft invested its first $1 billion in the company in 2019 and signed an agreement the following year that gave Microsoft exclusive rights to OpenAI's AI model. The company said that Microsoft's license for the exclusive rights to OpenAI's AI models will expire once OpenAI implements artificial general intelligence. Altman, who was abruptly fired from the board of directors late last year for reasons that have not yet been fully disclosed, then joined Microsoft Corp. and returned to OpenAI just a few days later, leading to the resignation of most of the old board members.
This is a photo taken on November 14, 2019 at Microsoft's headquarters in Redmond, Washington, USA. Photo by Xinhua News Agency reporter Qin Lang.
Musk said in the lawsuit that the changes led to the "overnight collapse" of the checks and balances that protect the nonprofit's mission.
Axios News** reported on March 1, citing a memo, that OpenAI executives denied several allegations made by Musk in the lawsuit. "It's never going to be easy," Altman said, adding that similar lawsuits will continue.
According to Reuters, Musk has not yet commented on the lawsuit.
Musk announced the formation of X. in July last yearAI company, mainly engaged in artificial intelligence business. Last November, xThe AI company launched the first artificial intelligence model, Grok, which can connect to Musk's social networking platform X (formerly Twitter) in real time, aiming to compete with OpenAI and others.
Some legal experts say Musk's breach of contract allegations, based in part on an email between Musk and Altman, may not hold up in court.
Giuseppe Seit, president and co-founder of market research firm ToggleAI, said that Musk has repeatedly called for regulation of AI since exiting OpenAI, but this "does not have any impact on AI development inside or outside OpenAI, and it could be seen as Musk's desire to acquire a stake in a company that he actually founded but does not hold any shares in." (Liu Xi).
*: Xinhua News Agency).
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