Elon Musk isn’t wrong about OpenAI. It started as one thing and then became something else, although that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
The enfant terrible of the world of technology and social media initiated a lawsuit (PDF) late Thursday against OpenAI, and co-founders Sam Altman and Gregory Brockman, alleging that by launching a for-profit arm, OpenAI violated the terms of its original founding agreement, which promised that OpenAI would work to ensure that AI and even general AI would work to be developed for the betterment of humanity.
Musk, Altman and Brockman launched OpenAI in 2015 with that agreement, but after pouring millions ($44 million by Musk’s count) into the nonprofit and having multiple disagreements over the company’s direction, Musk and OpenAI eventually parted ways.
In the meantime, OpenAI launched a profit division, which could better fund its research than raising donations, and formed a partnership with Microsoft, which handed OpenAI a massive billion-dollar investment and exclusive access to some of the company’s work. Product. That’s given Microsoft an edge in the AI race and helped it launch Copilot (formerly Bing Chat).
In the lawsuit, which seeks unspecified damages and OpenAI’s return to its nonprofit, open-source roots, Musk claims that OpenAI “has been transformed into a de facto closed-source subsidiary of the largest technology company in the world: Microsoft.”
It points to the development of GPT-4, which Musk claims can outpace humans, and how its trajectory does not match that of GPT-3.5. Unlike previous OpenAI GPT models, GPT-4 is not yet open source. However, Musk claims that Microsoft has access to that internal design.
Too powerful
And then there’s the generative AI model that’s so powerful it may have led to the temporary ouster as CEO of Sam Altman (before he was sent back four days later). Q*, called Q* (pronounced Q Star), could be the dangerously powerful superintelligence that OpenAI’s chief scientist Ilya Sutskever was so concerned about that he sided with the board when they decided to remove Altman.
Most of that board is now gone and Altman is once again firmly in control. Musk’s lawsuit claims this is a recipe for disaster, claiming the new board “lacks substantial AI expertise and, in terms of information and beliefs, is ill-equipped by design to make an independent determination about the ask if and when OpenAI has achieved AGI… “
A key element of the lawsuit is Musk’s belief that any AGI (superintelligence) development falls outside the scope of the Microsoft agreement and that if OpenAI gives the tech giant access to that technology, it will be breaking the rules.
The overarching goal of the lawsuit here is to “force OpenAI to comply with the Founding Agreement and return to its mission to develop AGI for the benefit of humanity, and not for personal benefit to the individual defendants and the largest technology company in the world.”
To be fair, Musk is not asking for his millions back, although it is noted that the compensation level is well above the Court’s “jurisdictional minimum of $35,000.” However, the way I see it, Musk is just stomping his foot, arguing that OpenAI is no longer playing fair.
You see, it’s not that Musk never uses AI for commercial or profit purposes. His laughable Grok chatbot, the first product from his newly founded xAI artificial intelligence company, charges for use, or, more accurately, it asks you to pay for an X (formerly Twitter) subscription to get sharp answers to life’s questions.
Musk’s Tesla uses Dojo, a powerful and expensive supercomputer, to develop computer vision video processing. Dojo AI is used to develop autonomous driving systems for Teska’s equally expensive EVs.
There is some merit to Musk and others’ concerns about the inherent danger of AI running amok, but even he has admitted that the world is in an AI arms race.
You have to be in it to win it
Back in 2017, when Russia was president Vladimir Putin warned: “Putin says the nation that leads in AI ‘will be the ruler of the world’ Musk tweeted: “China, Russia, soon all countries with strong computer science. Competition for AI superiority at the national level is likely the cause of WW3 IMO.”
It was a warning about the battle for AI dominance, but also a signal that the war was already underway. No country can afford to fall behind and whether we like it or not, OpenAI can give us the best chance to stay ahead.
Musk is right, though: OpenAI tries to have it both ways: maintain the altruistic sheen of a nonprofit with one hand, while still collecting the receipts with the other.
Perhaps it would make more sense if OpenAI dropped the ruse and simply became what it usually is anyway: a for-profit company.
What we are quickly learning is that companies developing AI cannot be the ones overseeing it.
Imperfect nonprofits like the Partnership for AI (of which Facebook, Amazon, Google and IBM are indeed among the founders) are certainly not trying to build the next generative platform. Instead, they focus on best practices and guidance.
Ultimately, Elon Musk is not a champion of AI rights or a protector of the realm. He’s a frustrated ex-partner who wonders why his own efforts aren’t as impactful and whether he can use the court to make himself feel better while undermining an ex-flame.