Elon Musk Sues OpenAI for Abandoning Original Mission for Profit

Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX and Tesla and owner of X, formerly known as Twitter, attends the Viva Technology conference dedicated to innovation and startups at the Porte de Versailles exhibition center in Paris, France, June 16, 2023. (Reuters)
Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX and Tesla and owner of X, formerly known as Twitter, attends the Viva Technology conference dedicated to innovation and startups at the Porte de Versailles exhibition center in Paris, France, June 16, 2023. (Reuters)
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Elon Musk Sues OpenAI for Abandoning Original Mission for Profit

Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX and Tesla and owner of X, formerly known as Twitter, attends the Viva Technology conference dedicated to innovation and startups at the Porte de Versailles exhibition center in Paris, France, June 16, 2023. (Reuters)
Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX and Tesla and owner of X, formerly known as Twitter, attends the Viva Technology conference dedicated to innovation and startups at the Porte de Versailles exhibition center in Paris, France, June 16, 2023. (Reuters)

Elon Musk has sued ChatGPT-maker OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman, saying they abandoned the startup's original mission to develop artificial intelligence for the benefit of humanity and not for profit.

The lawsuit filed late on Thursday in San Francisco is a culmination to the billionaire's long-simmering opposition to the startup he co-founded and has since become the face of generative AI, partly due to the billions of dollars in funding from Microsoft.

Musk alleged a breach of contract, saying Altman and co-founder Greg Brockman originally approached him to make an open source, non-profit company, but the startup established in 2015 is now focused on making money.

Recounting OpenAI's founding, Musk said the three men had agreed to work on artificial general intelligence (AGI), a concept that machines could handle tasks like a human, but in a way that would "benefit humanity", according to the lawsuit.

OpenAI would also work in opposition to Google, which Musk believed was developing AGI for profit and would pose grave risks.

Instead, OpenAI "set the founding agreement aflame" in 2023 when it released its most powerful language model GPT-4 as essentially a Microsoft product, the lawsuit alleged.

Musk has sought a court ruling that would compel OpenAI to make its research and technology available to the public and prevent the startup from using its assets, including GPT-4, for the financial gains of Microsoft or any individual.

OpenAI, Microsoft and Musk did not respond to Reuters requests for comment.

The billionaire is also seeking a ruling that GPT-4 and a new and more advanced technology called Q* would be considered AGI and therefore outside of Microsoft's license to OpenAI.

Reuters in November was first to report on Q* and warnings from OpenAI researchers about a powerful AI discovery.

Musk, who runs Tesla and rocket maker SpaceX and bought Twitter for $44 billion in October 2022, stepped down from OpenAI's board in 2018 and has on several occasions called for regulation on AI.

OpenAI's tie-up with Microsoft is under antitrust scrutiny in the United States and Britain following the startup's boardroom battle last year that resulted in the sudden ouster and return of Altman and the creation of a new temporary board.

The startup is planning to appoint new board members in March, the Washington Post reported on Thursday. Microsoft said in November it would have a non-voting, observer seat on the board.

Some legal experts said Musk's allegations of breach of contract, which is partly based on an email between Musk and Altman, could fail to hold up in court.

While contracts can be formed through a series of emails, the lawsuit cites an email that appears to look like a proposal and a "one-sided discussion", said Brian Quinn, a law professor at Boston College Law School.

"To the extent Musk is claiming that the single e-mail in Exhibit 2 is the 'contract', he will fall well short," Quinn said.

Musk's xAI

Musk has mounted a rival AI effort with his startup xAI, which is made up of engineers hired from some of the top US technology firms such as Google and Microsoft that he hopes to challenge.

The startup started rolling out its ChatGPT competitor Grok for Premium+ subscribers of social media platform X in December and aims to create what Musk has said would be a "maximum truth-seeking AI".

The billionaire, who has called AI a "double-edged sword", was among a group of AI experts and industry executives that last year called for a six-month pause in developing systems more powerful than OpenAI's GPT-4, citing great risks to humanity and society.

Since its debut, ChatGPT has been adopted by companies for a wide range of tasks from summarizing documents to writing computer code, setting off a race among Big Tech companies to launch their own offerings based on generative AI.



US Defends Law Forcing Sale of TikTok App

This photograph taken in Mulhouse, eastern France on October 19, 2023, shows the logo of the social media video sharing app TikTok reflected in mirrors. (AFP)
This photograph taken in Mulhouse, eastern France on October 19, 2023, shows the logo of the social media video sharing app TikTok reflected in mirrors. (AFP)
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US Defends Law Forcing Sale of TikTok App

This photograph taken in Mulhouse, eastern France on October 19, 2023, shows the logo of the social media video sharing app TikTok reflected in mirrors. (AFP)
This photograph taken in Mulhouse, eastern France on October 19, 2023, shows the logo of the social media video sharing app TikTok reflected in mirrors. (AFP)

The Justice Department late Friday filed its response to TikTok's civil suit aimed at derailing a law that would force the app to be sold or face a US ban.

TikTok's suit in a Washington federal court argues that the law violates First Amendment rights of free speech.

The US response counters that the law addresses national security concerns, not speech, and that TikTok's Chinese parent company ByteDance is not able to claim First Amendment rights here.

The filing details concerns that ByteDance could, and would, comply with Chinese government demands for data about US users or yield to pressure to censor or promote content on the platform, senior justice department officials said in a briefing.

"The goal of this law is to ensure that young people, old people and everyone in between is able to use the platform in a safe manner," a senior justice department official said.

"And to use it in a way confident that their data is not ultimately going back to the Chinese government and what they're watching is not being directed by or censored by the Chinese government."

The response argues that the law's focus on foreign ownership of TikTok takes it out of the realm of the First Amendment.

US intelligence agencies are concerned that China can "weaponize" mobile apps, justice department officials said.

"It's clear that the Chinese government has for years been pursuing large, structured datasets of Americans through all sorts of manner, including malicious cyber activity; including efforts to buy that data from data brokers and others, and including efforts to build sophisticated AI models that can utilize that data," a senior justice department official said.

TikTok has said the demanded divestiture is "simply not possible" -- and not on the timeline required.

The bill signed by President Joe Biden early this year set a mid-January 2025 deadline for TikTok to find a non-Chinese buyer or face a US ban.

The White House can extend the deadline by 90 days.

"For the first time in history, Congress has enacted a law that subjects a single, named speech platform to a permanent, nationwide ban, and bars every American from participating in a unique online community with more than one billion people worldwide," said the suit by TikTok and ByteDance.

- TikTok shutdown? -

ByteDance has said it has no plans to sell TikTok, leaving the lawsuit, which will likely go to the US Supreme Court, as its only option to avoid a ban.

"There is no question: the Act will force a shutdown of TikTok by January 19, 2025," the lawsuit said, "silencing (those) who use the platform to communicate in ways that cannot be replicated elsewhere."

TikTok first found itself in the crosshairs of former president Donald Trump's administration, which tried unsuccessfully to ban it.

That effort got bogged down in the courts when a federal judge temporarily blocked Trump's attempt, saying the reasons for banning the app were likely overstated and that free speech rights were in jeopardy.

The new effort signed by Biden was designed to overcome the same legal headaches, and some experts believe the US Supreme Court could be open to allowing national security considerations to outweigh free speech protection.

"We view the statute as a game changer from the arguments that were in play back in 2020," a senior justice department official said.

There are serious doubts that any buyer could emerge to purchase TikTok even if ByteDance would agree to the request.

Big tech's usual suspects, such as Facebook parent Meta or YouTube's Google, will likely be barred from snapping up TikTok over antitrust concerns, and others could not afford one of the world's most successful apps used by about 170 million people in the United States alone.