Read the complaint at Elon Musk vs. Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, OpenAI

Rather, Musk is alleging that the initial OpenAI team set out to develop artificial general intelligence, or AGI, “for the benefit of humanity,” but that the project was turned into a for-profit enterprise. which is controlled by major shareholder Microsoft. .

Musk used most of the 35-page complaint (plus an attached exhibit) on Friday to tell his side of the story and remind the world of his central role in creating a company that has since become the planet’s most powerful company. has become one of the most popular startups. (OpenAI tops CNBC’s Disruptor 50 list in 2023) thanks to the viral spread of ChatGPT.

“It’s definitely a good advertisement for Elon Musk’s benefit,” Kevin O’Brien, a partner at Ford O’Brien Landy LLP and a former assistant U.S. attorney, told CNBC. “I’m not sure about the legal part though.”

“The one thing that jumps out at me is there’s no deal,” added O’Brien, who has not been involved in any dealings with Musk.

In the lawsuit, Musk’s lawyers say they want OpenAI to return to its work as a research lab and no longer exist for Microsoft’s “financial benefit.” Musk, who is worth more than $200 billion, is unconcerned about the legal costs of pursuing a suit that has no obvious personal economic benefit and is of questionable merit.

Shannon Capon Kirk, global head of eDiscovery and AI for Ropes & Gray LLP, told CNBC that Musk may be trying to force more information into the public domain about how OpenAI is working and its business goals. How has it changed in recent years? .

It’s “a high-profile case with public interest, which could result in OpenAI being available to everyone,” said Kirk, who is not working on any of Musk’s cases. “Is that the real purpose?”

In their complaint, Musk’s lawyers allege that OpenAI has “turned into a closed-source de facto subsidiary of the world’s largest technology company: Microsoft.” They also say the arrangement runs counter to a founding agreement and 2015 certification of incorporation that OpenAI established with Musk, who was a major donor to OpenAI in its early years.

Musk’s lawyers said their client contributed more than $15 million to OpenAI in 2016, “more than any other donor” and helped build the startup’s team of “top talent.” Helped. The following year, Musk gave about $20 million to OpenAI, which lawyers reiterated was more than other backers. In total, Musk invested more than $44 million in OpenAI from 2016 to September 2020, according to the suit.

The lawsuit fits a pattern for Musk, who has frequently posted on X and commented in public forums about his importance in creating OpenAI.

In November, Musk told an audience at the New York Times’ Deal Book conference that OpenAI had strayed from its original mission.

“Open AI should be renamed ‘Super Closed Source for Profit Maximizing AI,’ because that’s what it is,” Musk said on stage at the event. He noted that it had transformed from an “open-source foundation” to a multibillion-dollar “for-profit corporation with closed-source”.

In the lawsuit, Musk’s lawyers allege that the inner workings of OpenAI’s GPT-4 AI model are “a complete secret except to OpenAI — and, upon information and belief, Microsoft,” and that the privacy is commercial rather than protective. Driven by profit. Musk has publicly beefed with Microsoft for a while, and in May 2023, Musk’s lawyers accused the company of using X (formerly Twitter) data in unauthorized ways.

Even if OpenAI’s mission has changed, that doesn’t mean Musk has a solid legal case.

“If he has any hope of recovery, he’s going to have to prove that the agreement was made – that the company was going to be open and not for profit and all that, and that the failure to do that caused him injury, Which is a different issue,” O’Brien said. “It’s hard to see where the hurt is here.”

Musk’s lawyers did not respond to a request for comment.

Musk has his own AI company, X.AI, which introduced a competing chatbot called Grok in November after two months of training. In December, X.AI filed with the SEC to raise up to $1 billion in an equity offering. And Musk is also developing autonomous vehicle tech and humanoid robotics at Tesla, which require AI advances.

He is known for hiring big people from OpenAI, taking Andrej Karpathi, a former OpenAI software engineer, to Tesla in 2017.

One of Musk’s goals with the case may be to shed light on the details of OpenAI’s GPT-4 in the discovery process, lawyers said, if it gets to that point. O’Brien said it can be difficult to keep intellectual property and other internal details private when a lawsuit is filed.

Kirk agreed, saying that in the discovery phase, there can be “a lot of document requests for all kinds of communications,” such as internal conversations, text messages and more. Some documents produced may come with protective orders that keep them away from the public.

Part of Musk’s case hinges on the idea that OpenAI has already reached AGI, commonly defined as AI that performs the same as humans when completing a wide array of cognitive tasks. Can work at – or higher than – the surface. The lawsuit claims that because the GPT-4 is “reasonably superior to average humans” based on test scores from the Uniform Bar Exam, the GRE Verbal Assessment and even the Advanced Sommelier Exam.

As part of its agreement with OpenAI, Microsoft only has the rights to OpenAI’s “pre-AGI” technology, and it’s up to OpenAI’s board whether the company has reached that milestone.

In a memo to employees Friday after the lawsuit, OpenAI said “GPT-4 is not AGI.”

“Crucially, an AGI will be a highly autonomous system capable of devising new solutions to long-standing challenges,” wrote Chief Strategy Officer Jason Cowen. “GPT-4 can’t do that.”

Most of the AI ​​community agrees with Kwon.

“Part of what they’re going to litigate” is the question of what AGI is, Kirk said.

Read the full complaint Here: