2024-03-02 12:08:33
Published2. March 2024, 1:08 p.m
Profit maximization: “Catastrophic consequences for humanity” – Elon Musk is suing OpenAI
The tech billionaire accuses OpenAI of using artificial intelligence to maximize profits instead of using it for the benefit of humanity.
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Lawsuit against OpenAI: That’s what it’s about
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Elon Musk has sued the ChatGPT developer company OpenAI.
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He accuses the company of maximizing profits – instead of using artificial intelligence for the benefit of humanity.
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OpenAI is now teasing Musk. He is just jealous of the success of his former start-up.
Elon Musk was once a co-founder of OpenAI, but the gap between the tech billionaire and his former start-up and its CEO Sam Altman is growing. Musk filed a lawsuit against the AI company on Thursday over its commercial focus.
Profit maximization
The accusation: When Musk co-founded OpenAI in 2015, the company was intended to be a non-profit organization. The developer of the chatbot ChatGPT is now de facto a profit-oriented subsidiary of the software company Microsoft.
The lawsuit states that OpenAI “not only developed but refined general artificial intelligence to maximize Microsoft’s profits rather than for the benefit of humanity.”
Microsoft has been a major investor in OpenAI since 2019, pouring billions more into the company last year and integrating AI technologies like ChatGPT into several of its software offerings.
Dispute in the executive suite
Last November, a dispute over the direction of OpenAI escalated. The OpenAI board fired company boss Sam Altman at the time.
Microsoft then announced that it would hire Altman and poach other OpenAI employees. The board backed down, Altman got his job back and several board members were replaced.
In the lawsuit, Musk claims that Microsoft, a billion-dollar donor, used its influence so that Altman could return to the top.
OpenAI taunts Musk
According to media reports, OpenAI defended itself against the allegations from Elon Musk’s lawsuit in an email to employees.
The top manager responsible for strategy issues, Jason Kwon, contradicted, among other things, Musk’s claim that OpenAI is actually controlled by the major investor Microsoft, as the financial service Bloomberg and the website “Axios” reported.
The allegations may have been due to Musk’s regret that he was no longer involved with OpenAI, Kwon teased. OpenAI has not yet commented publicly on the lawsuit.
Musk vs. Altman
Musk was the main promoter and financier of OpenAI in its early days. In 2018, Musk stepped down as co-chairman and invested less and less in the company. This was preceded by a conflict with co-founder and current CEO Sam Altman over control and plans to establish a for-profit entity, the lawsuit says.
“Catastrophic consequences for humanity”
OpenAI was founded with the mission of developing “general artificial intelligence”. The basic idea behind it was to ensure that such technology would not at some point threaten the existence of humanity.
Musk now stated in his lawsuit that this basic idea had been “turned on its head”. Since the restructuring of the company’s board of directors, OpenAI has been operating “for profit”, “in secret” and “with potentially catastrophic consequences for humanity”.
Elon Musk founded his own AI company called xAI last year.
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