On Friday, I said a new season is coming in the OpenAI soap opera, and it’s already here! Elon Musk sues OpenAI and Sam Altman!

According to The New York Times (Elon Musk Sues OpenAI and Sam Altman for Violating the Company’s Principles, written by Adam Satariano, Cade Metz and Tripp Mickle and available here), Musk sued OpenAI and its chief executive, Sam Altman, accusing them of breaching a contract by putting profits and commercial interests in developing artificial intelligence ahead of the public good. A multibillion-dollar partnership that OpenAI developed with Microsoft, Musk said, represented an abandonment of a founding pledge to carefully develop A.I. and make the technology publicly available.

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

The lawsuit is the latest chapter in a fight between the former business partners that has been simmering for years, and it homes in on unresolved questions in the A.I. community: Will artificial intelligence improve the world or destroy it and should it be tightly controlled or set free?

Musk, the chief executive of Tesla, and Altman, as much as anyone in the world, have helped to frame that debate. Musk helped found OpenAI in 2015 as a response to A.I. work being done at the time by Google. Musk believed Google and its co-founder, Larry Page, were dismissive of the risks A.I. presented to humanity.

Musk left OpenAI’s board during a power struggle in 2018, after which the company went on to become a leader in the field of generative A.I. and created ChatGPT. Musk, who founded his own A.I. company last year called xAI, said OpenAI was not focused enough on the technology’s risks.

According to CNBC, Musk has long wanted recognition for his central role in the creation of OpenAI, and he spent large chunks of the lawsuit telling his version of events. His lawyers said in the suit that Musk was approached in 2015 by Altman and OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman and agreed to form a nonprofit lab that would develop artificial general intelligence, or AGI, outside of the corporate sphere.

“We believe the claims in this suit may stem from Elon’s regrets about not being involved with the company today,” wrote OpenAI Chief Strategy Officer Jason Kwon in an internal memo on Friday that was viewed by CNBC. “It is deeply disappointing to see Elon take this action against a company he helped start, especially given his close collaboration with some of you who are still here working towards the mission.”

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

Additionally, Musk leased OpenAI’s initial office space “and paid the monthly rental expenses,” the suit said. He was also “present for important company milestones.”

In my Kitchen Sink post on Friday, I referenced an article from the Times that noted that WilmerHale, the law firm investigating Sam Altman, could present its findings to the company’s board as soon as this month and joked that a new season of the OpenAI soap opera was coming. Apparently, when Elon Musk sues OpenAI and Sam Altman, it’s already here! Let the binge watch, er, reading begin! 😉

So, what do you think? Do you think this suit is about Musk’s concerns that OpenAI has abandoned their founding mission to develop AI to benefit humanity, or is it about retribution after leaving due to a power struggle? Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Image created using Microsoft Bing’s Image Creator Powered by DALL-E, using the term “an opera with soap”. 😀

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