Elon Musk Sues Sam Altman, OpenAI For Violating Founding Mission In Seeking Profits Over “The Benefit Of Humanity”

Jill Goldsmith
·4-min read

Sam Altman survived a boardroom coup at OpenAI last year, but Elon Musk’s not dropping. The billionaire sued him and the company, which is partnered with Microsoft,  in San Francisco court for breach of contract.

“This case is filed to compel OpenAI to adhere to the Founding Agreement and return to its mission to develop AGI for the benefit of humanity, not to personally benefit the individual Defendants and the largest technology company in the world,” the suit said, requesting a jury trial.

More from Deadline

“Mr. Musk has long recognized that AGI poses a grave threat to humanity—perhaps the greatest existential threat we face today,” it said, referring to Artifical General Intelligence. “Our entire economy is based around the fact that humans work together and come up with the best solutions to a hard task. If a machine can solve nearly any task better than we can, that machine becomes more economically useful than we are.”

“But where some like Mr. Musk see an existential threat in AGI, others see AGI as a source of profit and power.”

Related to the breach of contract allegations, the lawsuit accuses OpenAI of using funds contributed by donors like Musk — who were supporting a nonprofit — for for-profit purposes. It’s requesting a full accounting and return of those funds.

The suit said Musk grew concerned back in 2014 when Microsoft acquired research group DeepMind in 2014 and was “catapulted to the front of the race for AGI, and Altman “purported to share Mr. Musk’s concern.”

Altman, Musk and Gregory Brockman (who is also named in the suit) joined forces to form a non-profit AI lab that would try to catch up to Google in the AGI race, but with some key differences. It would be a nonprofit “developing AGI for the benefit of humanity, not for a for-profit company seeking to maximize shareholder returns. And it would be “open-source, balancing only countervailing safety considerations, and would not keep its technology closed and secret for proprietary commercial reasons.”

Reflecting the founding agreement, the suit said, Musk, in fact, named the new AI lab OpenAI. Its certificate of Incorporation says “resulting technology will benefit the public and the corporation will seek to open source technology for the public benefit when applicable. The corporation is not organized for the private gain of any person.”

The issue exploded in March of 2023 when OpenAI released its latest generation of its model, GPT-4, which excelled at reasoning and “already capable of intelligence that is superior to humans on a wide variety of economically valuable tasks,” the suit said.

“Having reached the threshold of AGI, which under the Founding Agreement they were to develop for the benefit of humanity rather than for any for-profit company or personal profit, Defendants instead radically departed from their mission in breach of the Founding Agreement. GPT-4 is an entirely closed model. The internal design of GPT-4 remains a secret and no code has been released. OpenAI has not published a paper describing any aspect of its internal design; it has simply issued press releases boasting about its performance. The internal details of GPT-4 are known only to OpenAI and, on information and belief, to Microsoft. GPT-4 is hence the opposite of “open AI.” And it is closed for propriety commercial reasons: Microsoft stands to make a fortune selling GPT-4 to the public, which would not be possible if OpenAI—as it is required to do—makes the technology freely available to the public.”

Last November, the OpenAI board abruptly ejected Altman, saying it had lost confidence in his leadership. Hundreds of employees signed a letter saying they would also leave if he was not was reinstated, which was within days, and the board reconstituted.

“On information and belief, Mr. Altman’s firing was due in part to OpenAI’s breakthrough in realizing AGI. In fact, news reports suggested that there was a rift among OpenAI, Board members and executives regarding safety concerns and the potential threat posed by OpenAI’s next generation Q*.”

“The public is still in the dark regarding what exactly the Board’s “deliberative review process” revealed that resulted in the initial firing of Mr. Altman. However, one thing is clear to Mr. Musk and the public at large: OpenAI has abandoned its “irrevocable” non-profit mission in the pursuit of profit. Numerous leaders and intellectuals have publicly commented on the irony and tragedy of OpenAI becoming “Closed, For-Profit AI.”

Following Altman’s firing, the suit said, OpenAI’s board was faced with “mounting pressure from lawyers and major shareholders, including Microsoft, to reinstate Mr. Altman.”

Best of Deadline

Sign up for Deadline's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

  • Up next
  • Up next
  • Up next
  • Up next

Latest stories