Elon Musk Vs. OpenAI: What’s Happening, When It Started, And Possible Outcomes

On February 29, 2024, Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, one of the most popular AI startups in the world and backed by Microsoft. In the lawsuit, which is publicly viewable, Musk alleges that OpenAI, under the leadership of Sam Altman, violated its founding agreement. As mentioned in the lawsuit, OpenAI's founding agreement was to remain “a non-profit AGI developing for the benefit of humanity, nor a for-profit enterprise seeking to maximize profits for its shareholders.” Additionally, the agreement also states that the company will maintain its open source nature.

Lawsuit alleges OpenAI violated its founding agreement

The lawsuit highlights how OpenAI's initial research was done in the open, providing public access to the design, models and codes. This is indeed true for the first three GPT models, released in 2018, 2019 and 2020. However, with GPT-4, the company has not released a technical document, which Musk considers a significant violation of the agreement initial. . “The internal design of GPT -4 was kept and remains a complete secret, except for OpenAI – and, upon information and belief, for Microsoft,” underlines the document submitted to the court. Building on this, Musk's lawsuit calls GPT-4 “Microsoft's de facto proprietary algorithm.”

This corporation shall be a nonprofit corporation organized exclusively for charitable and/or educational purposes within the meaning of section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, as amended, or the corresponding provision of any future United States Internal Revenue Code. law. The specific objective of this company is to finance the research, development and distribution of technologies related to artificial intelligence.

Certificate of Incorporation for OpenAI via Musk Lawsuit

How might this affect Microsoft's ties to OpenAI?

In September 2020, Microsoft signed an agreement with OpenAI, granting it an exclusive license to technologies developed by the AI ​​startup until it successfully develops AGI. In exchange, Microsoft provided the company with the computing power and funding it needed at the time. In this context, Musk accuses GPT-4 of “being an AGI algorithm”. The lawsuit cites an excerpt from Microsoft's research, saying the breadth and depth of GPT -4's capabilities can be considered “an early (but still incomplete) version of an artificial intelligence (AGI) system.”

The lawsuit mentions two implications. First, OpenAI uses GPT-4 to make money (by selling it to businesses and regular users through a paid subscription model), which goes against the founding agreement that the company remains a non-profit organization. Second, it states that Microsoft should not use GPT-4 since it is an almost complete AGI model. It's important to mention here that as part of the deal between OpenAI and Microsoft, the former nonprofit board has the authority to determine when it has achieved a realistic AGI model.

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Was Altman's sudden departure from OpenAI related to the premature development of AGI?

The lawsuit also linked this to Altman's sudden ouster from his position at the company last year. It also claims how Altman hand-picked his board members after his return. At the time, senior management and Altman had different opinions on AI safety. The board states how Altman has always been forthright in his communications. Around the same time, we heard rumors about OpenAI's major AI breakthrough, Q*, and potential security concerns related to it (including human-threatening capabilities), who would be behind Altman's ouster. However, we cannot independently confirm any of this.

“This case is filed to compel OpenAI to adhere to the founding agreement and return to its mission of developing AGI for the benefit of humanity, not to personally benefit individual defendants and the world's largest technology company. [Microsoft]“, we read in point 33 of the trial. From what it appears to be, Musk wants OpenAI to return to his non-profit open source AI lab.

OpenAI published some conversations with Musk

In response to the lawsuit, OpenAI published a detailed blog post, sharing what it learned about achieving its mission and its relationship with Musk. This might surprise some readers, but Musk was one of the founding members of OpenAI. The blog mentions how Greg and Sam had originally planned to raise $100 million for the company, but Musk advised them to raise $1 billion instead. “We all understood that we would need a lot more capital to succeed in our mission – billions of dollars a year, which was far more than any of us, especially Elon, thought we could raise as a 'non-profit organisation. .”

In its blog, OpenAI mentions how the team and Elon realized that a “for-profit entity would be needed to acquire these resources.” In 2017, both parties decided to create a for-profit entity, which potentially involved selling the company's products/services in order to earn money to help grow AGI. However, Elon wanted majority ownership, initial control of the board, and to be the chief executive officer. In response, other team members said it was against the company's mission to provide absolute control to a single person. “Amid these discussions, he refused funding,” OpenAI says.

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Following the disagreements, Elon decided to leave the company in February 2018. Contrary to Elon's claims that the company would be an open laboratory for the development of AI, OpenAI mentions in its blog that one of the scientists already told Elon not to use open source. AGI.

As Ilya told Elon: “As we get closer to building AI, it will make sense to start being less open. Open in openAI means that everyone should benefit from the fruits of AI after it is built, but it is perfectly acceptable not to share the science…”, to which Elon replied: “Yeah.”

Despite everything, some questions remain unanswered

However, this raises more questions than answers. Since the company's original mission was to develop AI in an open environment, why hasn't it disclosed its intention to start “bringing less openness”, which the company mentions in a email to Musk? Additionally, if OpenAI has already decided not to share the science behind AGI with everyone and has not shared the research behind GPT-4, does that indicate that the company is considering GPT -4 as being close to AGI?

OpenAI's email conversations with Musk, available in the blog post, reveal that he favored creating a for-profit model that would solve the company's long-term financing problems. However, this does not appear to resolve the main issues mentioned in the lawsuit. It is important to mention that this article aims to explain to readers what is going on between the companies, as well as some context on what could have led to the current situation. However, if we missed a detail, please contact us to incorporate it into the story.

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