Elon Musk escalates feud with Sam Altman and sues ChatGPT developer OpenAI

Tech billionaire Elon Musk is escalating his feud with ChatGPT developer company OpenAI and its boss Sam Altman with a lawsuit. The gist is that OpenAI, co-founded by Musk in 2015, has deviated from the agreed path of being a non-profit company whose artificial intelligence research should benefit humanity.

Major investor Microsoft in particular is now benefiting from this, according to the lawsuit filed in San Francisco on Thursday. This is a “blatant violation” of the original founding agreement.

Musk, who left OpenAI after a few years, has long criticized OpenAI and Altman. Last year he founded his own AI company called X.AI, whose chatbot Grok competes with ChatGPT – while warning about the dangers of artificial intelligence.

Musk sees the difference from other developers in the fact that his AI has to look for the ‘truth’. Musk is close to the political views of the American right, complaining about alleged racism against white people and railing against the “woke brain virus” that is destroying humanity. The term “woke” often summarizes efforts and attitudes against discrimination.

AI as a perceived danger

Musk pointed out in the lawsuit that OpenAI was expressly founded as a counterweight to the tandem of Google and the AI ​​company DeepMind, which was acquired by the internet company. The impetus was the idea that artificial intelligence, with its potential dangers, should not be left to profit-oriented companies.

This specifically concerns so-called general artificial intelligence, which not only can perform individual, limited tasks better than humans, but is usually superior to them. Musk claims he came up with the name OpenAI.

According to the lawsuit, he sees a particular turning point in the failed attempt by OpenAI’s board of directors to oust Altman as boss. As a billion-dollar donor, Microsoft used its influence to help Altman return to the top. The new board members do not have in-depth expertise in the field of artificial intelligence.

Four of the removed OpenAI board members were followers of the controversial philosophical worldview “effective altruism.” A school of thought that is finding more and more followers, especially in Silicon Valley. Effective altruists want to do as much good as possible with as few resources as possible. Billionaires have also joined the movement and Musk himself is close to the movement. Critics accuse effective altruists of pursuing only their own interests.

Now, OpenAI “not only develops a general artificial intelligence, but also refines it to maximize Microsoft’s profits – rather than for the benefit of humanity,” the lawsuit says. There was initially no response from OpenAI to the lawsuit.

(sda/awp/dpa/oli)