In a dispute that highlights the growing ethical debate in the rapidly advancing field of artificial intelligence, OpenAI has published a company blog post addressing the lawsuit filed recently by Elon Musk, publicly stating, “We intend to move to dismiss all of Elon’s claims.”
Last week Musk took legal action against OpenAI, the bleeding edge AI organization that he helped co-found, serving on the board until 2018. Musk filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and cofounders Sam Altman and Greg Brockman over concerns regarding AI ethics and transparent development.
The lawsuit alleges that OpenAI has deviated from its original mission of open-source development for the public good, instead prioritizing profit and its beneficial partnership with Microsoft. The allegations shed light on the growing concerns arising from the rapidly advancing field of AI development — particularly as tools like ChatGPT begin to dramatically influence the global workforce.
OpenAI responded to Musk’s allegations, detailing previous history of the company’s relationship with Musk, and the decisions that ultimately led to company’s current structure.
OpenAI claims the organization realized that it needed to secure billions annually to pursue artificial general intelligence (AGI), leading to the formation of a profit-based entity, a decision the company says Musk supported. The company also claims Musk had made a proposal for majority equity, board control, and the CEO position, but the board rejected the proposal to prevent any individual from having “absolute control,” over OpenAI.
According to the company’s blog post, “We couldn’t agree to terms on a for-profit with Elon because we felt it was against the mission for any individual to have absolute control over OpenAI. He [Elon Musk] then suggested instead merging OpenAI into Tesla. In early February 2018, Elon forwarded us an email suggesting that OpenAI should ‘attach to Tesla as its cash cow,’ commenting that it was ‘exactly right… Tesla is the only path that could even hope to hold a candle to Google. Even then, the probability of being a counterweight to Google is small. It just isn’t zero.’”
Following the disagreement, Musk decided to leave the organization and later expressed his intention to build an AGI competitor within Tesla, according to OpenAI.
Despite the legal contention and allegations, OpenAI ensures that it remains committed to the organization’s mission of democratizing AI technology access and developing safe and beneficial AI applications.
