Elon Musk is suing OpenAI and Sam Altman for violating company principles

Elon Musk sued OpenAI and its CEO, Sam Altman, accusing them of breaching a contract by putting profits and commercial interests in artificial intelligence development above the public interest.

Mr. Musk, who helped create OpenAI with Mr. Altman and others in 2015, said the company’s multibillion-dollar venture with Microsoft is reneging on a promise to carefully develop AI and make the technology publicly available.

“OpenAI has been transformed into a de facto closed-source subsidiary of the largest technology company, Microsoft,” said the lawsuit, which was filed Thursday in Superior Court in San Francisco.

The lawsuit is the latest chapter in a battle between the former business partners that has been simmering for years. After Mr. Musk left OpenAI’s board in 2018, the company became a leader in generative AI and created ChatGPT, a chatbot that can produce text and respond to questions in human prose. Mr Musk, who has his own AI company called xAI, said OpenAI was not focused enough on the risks of the technology.

Silicon Valley insiders believe that generative AI, the technology behind ChatGPT, is a unique technology that could transform the tech industry as profoundly as web browsers did more than 30 years ago. But others, most notably Mr Musk, have said the technology could also be dangerous and perhaps even destroy humanity.

The lawsuit adds to a series of problems piling up for OpenAI. The company’s relationship with Microsoft is also under scrutiny by regulators in the United States, the European Union and Britain. It has been sued by The New York Times, several digital media outlets, writers and computer programmers for collecting copyrighted material to train its chatbot. And the Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating Mr. Altman and OpenAI after the company’s board fired him in November before rehiring him days later.

Musk’s lawsuit stated that he became involved with OpenAI because it was founded as a nonprofit to develop artificial intelligence for the benefit of “humanity.” A key part of that, the lawsuit said, was to make the technology open source, meaning the underlying software code would be shared with the world. Instead, the company created a for-profit business unit and limited access to its technology.

The lawsuit, which seeks a jury trial, accused OpenAI and Mr. Altman of breach of contract and breach of fiduciary duty, as well as unfair business practices. Mr. Musk is asking that OpenAI be required to open its technology to others and that Mr. Altman and others repay Mr. Musk for the money Mr. Musk gave to the organization. Greg Brockman, the president of OpenAI, is also named as a defendant.

OpenAI declined to comment on the lawsuit.

The lawsuit could expose OpenAI to a lengthy and invasive legal investigation that reveals more about Mr. Altman’s firing and OpenAI’s transition from a nonprofit to a for-profit company. That change, brought about by Mr. Altman in late 2018 and early 2019, has been the source of backbiting at OpenAI for years and contributed to the board’s decision to fire him as CEO.

Although Mr. Musk has repeatedly criticized OpenAI for becoming a for-profit company, in 2017 he devised a plan to wrest control of the AI ​​lab from Mr. Altman and its other founders and transform it into a commercial venture that would work alongside his other companies. , which includes electric car maker Tesla, and tap into their increasingly powerful supercomputers, people familiar with his plan say. When his attempt to take control failed, he left the OpenAI board, the people said.

Speaking at The New York Times’ DealBook Summit last year, Mr. Musk said he wanted to know more about the chaos that unfolded at OpenAI last year, including why co-founder Ilya Sutskever along with other board members fired Mr. Musk. Altman in November. He said he was concerned that OpenAI had discovered a dangerous element of AI, a question his legal team could explore during the trial.

“I have mixed feelings about Sam,” Mr Musk said at the DealBook conference. Referring to a powerful ring in “The Lord of the Rings,” he added: “The ring of power can corrupt, and he has the ring of power.”

Mr Musk did not respond to requests for comment.

The feud between Mr. Musk and Mr. Altman has long been a subject of intrigue in Silicon Valley. The men met for the first time during a tour of SpaceXMusk’s rocket company, and later discussed their shared concerns about the threat AI could pose to humanity.

According to the lawsuit, OpenAI’s nonprofit status was a major source of friction as tensions increased between company executives interested in trying to monetize new AI technology and Mr. Musk, who wanted it to remain a research lab.

“Either do something yourself or continue with OpenAI as a nonprofit,” Musk said at one point, according to the complaint. “I will no longer fund OpenAI until you make a firm commitment to stay, or I’m just a fool providing essentially free funding to a startup. The discussions are over.”

The lawsuit seeks to portray Mr. Musk as an indispensable figure in the development of OpenAI. According to the lawsuit, Musk contributed more than $44 million to OpenAI between 2016 and 2020. He also rented the company’s first office space in San Francisco and paid the monthly fees. According to the complaint, he was personally involved in recruiting Mr. Sutskever, a top researcher at Google, as OpenAI’s chief scientist.

“Without Mr. Musk’s involvement and substantial supporting efforts and resources,” the lawsuit said, “it is highly likely that OpenAI Inc. would never have gotten off the ground.”