The world's richest man sues a technology tycoon, what's his purpose?

On March 1, Beijing time, another major drama was staged in the artificial intelligence (AI) industry.

On the same day, Elon Musk, the "Silicon Valley Iron Man", billionaire and Tesla CEO, filed a lawsuit with the San Francisco Superior Court in the United States, suing OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman for violating OpenAI's founding regulations. An agreement that technology is developed for the “benefit of humanity” rather than profit.

Source: AI Post

"OpenAI has become a de facto subsidiary of Microsoft in a closed-source form, and under its new board of directors, the company is not only developing but actually optimizing AGI with the goal of increasing Microsoft's profits, not humans. Well-being." In this 46-page, 14,000-word lawsuit, Musk denounced OpenAI for violating its original intention .

In addition, Musk also mentioned some unknown inside details of OpenAI in the lawsuit documents, questioned Altman and others' profit from OpenAI's general artificial intelligence technology, and exposed five major "crimes" of OpenAI, demanding that OpenAI Restore open source.

Screenshot of lawsuit documents, source: San Francisco Superior Court

Musk and OpenAI have a long history

The lawsuit documents describe in detail the establishment process of OpenAI, including Musk's early financial investment in the company, suggestions on research directions, and efforts to recruit top scientists and engineers... These are considered to be key factors in OpenAI's rapid rise.

In 2015, over a small dinner in Palo Alto, Musk and Altman decided to start a non-profit artificial intelligence research laboratory, which they named "OpenAI."

OpenAI, as the name suggests, means open and open source AI. Therefore, the original intention of OpenAI was to be open source. Musk claimed in the lawsuit that the creation of OpenAI was based on shared concerns about the potential risks of AI technology and a commitment to ensuring that the development of AI technology can benefit all mankind .

In the OpenAI registration information provided by Musk, the third item clearly states "developing technology for the benefit of mankind rather than profit."

Musk played a key role in the successful launch of OpenAI. He used his connections and influence to recruit top talents for OpenAI, leased the company's initial office space, and donated large amounts of funds to OpenAI , such as from 2016 to September 2020. , invested $44 million in OpenAI.

On February 21, 2018, Musk resigned as co-chairman of OpenAI . Despite this, Musk continues to provide funding to OpenAI in accordance with the founding agreement. For example, in 2018, Musk donated approximately $3.5 million to OpenAI, and again in 2019 to $3.48 million. He also continues to receive updates on OpenAI from Altman.

It can be seen here that although the two parties parted ways, they were still in peace until the emergence of ChatGPT and the development of GPT-4.

Musk accuses OpenAI of violating original intentions

According to Musk’s review of OpenAI’s gradual closure in the complaint:

In 2018, OpenAI released the GPT model, released the source code, and published detailed papers. In 2018 and 2019, OpenAI released GPT2 and GPT3 respectively, accompanied by research papers. However, by March 2023, OpenAI released a new generation model GPT-4, but the entire development process was kept confidential .

More importantly, Musk believes that OpenAI not only failed to remain open in accordance with the founding agreement on GPT-4, but also did not immediately terminate the exclusive authorization to Microsoft due to reaching the AGI threshold, allowing Microsoft to still make money through OpenAI .

Here is the background to this accusation.

In the investment contract with Microsoft, OpenAI stipulates that once its AI research reaches AGI, Microsoft cannot continue to profit from OpenAI's research. However, Microsoft’s “Spark of AGI” paper had already admitted that GPT-4 could be considered an “early (but incomplete) version of AGI.” In addition, rumors leaked last year about OpenAI’s mysterious Q project, according to several An OpenAl staff member wrote an article warning of the potential power of Q*, and OpenAI may well have developed AGI capabilities by now .

However, according to Musk's claim, the new board members after Gong Dou are all "loyal Altman fans" and have almost no understanding of artificial intelligence safety. They are unable to judge whether AGI has been achieved, and are more concerned about corporate profits. interested. In this way, OpenAI can postpone the announcement of reaching AGI indefinitely, so as to continue to cooperate with Microsoft and safeguard business interests.

In Musk's view, this change deviates from the original intention of OpenAI. OpenAI now serves Microsoft's profit and no longer serves the interests of mankind . In other words, Altman started OpenAI as a non-profit organization and asked Musk to spend money and efforts. As a result, it actually turned into a profit-driven company.

“Imagine a donor giving money to a nonprofit that purports to protect the Amazon rainforest, but then the organization sets up a for-profit Amazon timber company and uses the donated funds to clear the rainforest.”

So Musk filed a complaint against OpenAI with five charges including breach of contract, breach of promise, breach of fiduciary duty, unfair business practices, and accounting audit.

Behind the lawsuit, OpenAI violated its original intention

Or does Musk feel threatened?

Just one day before the lawsuit was filed, OpenAI had just joined hands with NVIDIA, Microsoft and other companies to invest US$675 million in Figure. Not only that, it also officially announced its cooperation with Figure to create the next generation of AI multi-modal models for humanoid robots. With the strong alliance, Figure has become the number one opponent of Tesla's humanoid robot Optimus.

When the founder of Figure happily stated that "Figure's humanoid robot is the ultimate deployment carrier of AGI," Musk responded coldly with "Oputimus." OpenAI's intervention clearly made Musk feel threatened.

Faced with such pressing pressure, Musk will naturally not sit still and wait for death. This lawsuit is not Musk’s formal declaration of war against OpenAI.

"Red God" Zhou Hongyi also expressed his views on this prosecution. He believed that Musk sued OpenAI for three main reasons: First, Musk was "slandering" OpenAI. Before that, he was basically the spokesperson of the new generation of the United States and a brain-computer expert. Interfaces and rocket launches have put Musk in the media spotlight. But in the past two years, the spotlight of the industry and the media has turned to Altman; secondly, Musk is unbalanced. He initiated OpenAI and invested a lot of money. However, now that OpenAI has grown into a towering tree, it has become a giant tree. He has nothing to do with it; the third is that Musk is trying to slow down Altman's development of artificial intelligence. After all, he had quietly purchased 10,000 "GPUs" from Nvidia for artificial intelligence development.

Going to court is just one of the manifestations of their essential differences, and the subsequent development remains to be seen. But what is certain is that as artificial intelligence technology continues to advance, how to ensure that these technologies benefit all mankind instead of becoming a profit tool for a few people will be a challenge that the entire world must face and a question that must be answered.