Elon Musk Sues OpenAI!

Summary

Elon Musk is suing OpenAI, Sam Altman and Greg Brockman for allegedly violating the terms of OpenAI's founding as a non-profit organization meant to safely develop AI for humanity's benefit. Musk claims OpenAI has transformed into a for-profit Microsoft subsidiary selling secretive AI models.

Takeaways

• 😲 Elon Musk is suing OpenAI, Sam Altman and Greg Brockman for breach of contract regarding OpenAI's shift from nonprofit to for-profit.
• 🤔 The lawsuit alleges OpenAI was founded to counter the existential threat of AI, but has strayed from its mission.
• 💰 Microsoft owns part of OpenAI despite stating otherwise to avoid regulatory scrutiny.
• 😠 OpenAI is accused of keeping its AI models secret for commercial reasons rather than safety.
• 🤥 OpenAI's board was allegedly stacked to hide its attainment of AGI from Microsoft.
• 💸 Elon Musk contributed over $100 million to OpenAI initially.
• ⏪ Elon wants OpenAI to return to open sourcing its AI research.
• 🏛️ The lawsuit asks the court to determine if GPT-4 reaches the level of AGI.
• 🤨 But Elon has questioned in public whether GPT models exhibit general intelligence.
• 🍿 This lawsuit seems poised for drama as the facts around OpenAI's actions come to light.

Q & A

What is the basis of Elon Musk's lawsuit against OpenAI?

Elon Musk is suing OpenAI for breach of contract. He alleges OpenAI violated the founding agreement by transforming from a nonprofit developing open source AI for humanity's benefit into a for-profit company selling AI services to Microsoft.

What was OpenAI originally intended to be?

OpenAI was founded in 2015 as a nonprofit lab to develop artificial general intelligence (AGI) safely and for humanity's benefit, not for shareholder profit. It was intended to be open source as a counterbalance to profit-driven companies.

How did OpenAI allegedly violate its founding principles?

According to the lawsuit, OpenAI violated its founding principles by keeping its latest AI models (GPT-3 and GPT-4) closed source and secret except for Microsoft, failing to publish papers, and transforming into a for-profit company providing AI services for Microsoft's benefit.

What does Elon Musk want if he wins the lawsuit?

Elon Musk wants OpenAI to return to open sourcing its AI research and technology for public benefit. He also wants the court to prohibit OpenAI from financially benefiting Microsoft or other entities, and to determine if GPT-4 constitutes AGI.

Why does the video question if GPT-4 is really AGI?

The video points out Elon Musk has publicly doubted if chatbots like GPT-4 have the potential for AGI, as they cannot solve fundamental physics problems or make profound discoveries as some humans can. The video suggests Musk may not genuinely believe GPT-4 is AGI.

How much money did Elon Musk donate to OpenAI?

According to the lawsuit, Elon Musk donated over $44 million to OpenAI between 2016-2020. He also paid the rent for OpenAI's San Francisco office space and claims to have contributed $100 million total.

When did OpenAI start transforming into a for-profit company?

In March 2019, OpenAI announced the creation of a for-profit subsidiary called OpenAI LP. Elon Musk asked OpenAI to confirm he had no financial stake in the for-profit arm, but continued supporting the nonprofit OpenAI Inc.

Why does the video say this case will be interesting to follow?

The video says it will be interesting if the court actually tries to determine if GPT-4 constitutes AGI, given public doubts about chatbots' abilities. Also, Elon Musk's first demand seems reasonable but assessing AGI may be difficult.

Who owns a share of OpenAI now?

Microsoft has an agreement entitling it to OpenAI profits but claims it does not technically own OpenAI. However, the video argues Microsoft has shareholder-like influence over OpenAI in practice.

Why might OpenAI want to keep GPT-4's design secret?

The lawsuit alleges commercial reasons drive OpenAI's secrecy around GPT-4, but the video suggests avoiding legal liability for using others' copyrighted data without permission is also a likely factor.

Outlines

00:00

Lawsuit calling out OpenAI's shift from nonprofit to for-profit 🤑

Paragraph 1 describes the lawsuit filed by Elon Musk against OpenAI executives Sam Altman and Greg Brockman. He accuses them of breaching their founding agreement to develop beneficial AI as a nonprofit by instead transforming OpenAI into a for-profit company secretly owned by Microsoft.

05:02

Lawsuit alleges GPT-4 demonstrates reasoning capability 🤖

Paragraph 2 highlights lawsuit claims that GPT-4 demonstrates human-level reasoning based on test performance, while noting that many dispute whether large language models truly reason. It then describes how GPT-4's design is secret and speculates this secrecy is driven by commercial interests.

10:02

Lawsuit seeks court ruling that GPT-4 is artificial general intelligence 🧠

Paragraph 3 covers background on Elon Musk's funding of OpenAI and decision to stop once a for-profit subsidiary was created. It then details the lawsuit's requests, including requiring OpenAI research be public and prohibiting financial benefit for individuals - and crucially seeking a court ruling that GPT-4 constitutes AGI.

Keywords

💡Lawsuit

Elon Musk has filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, Sam Altman and Greg Brockman for breach of contract. The lawsuit alleges that OpenAI was founded as a non-profit to develop AI safely for humanity, but has since become a for-profit company licensing AI to Microsoft.

💡AGI

AGI stands for Artificial General Intelligence. This refers to AI that can perform intellectual tasks as well as humans across many domains. The lawsuit tries to argue GPT-4 reaches the level of AGI, but this is disputed.

💡Non-profit

OpenAI was founded as a non-profit in 2015 to develop AI safely for the benefit of humanity. The lawsuit alleges OpenAI has now improperly transformed into a for-profit company.

💡Microsoft

Microsoft has licensing rights to GPT-3 and a board seat at OpenAI. The lawsuit argues Microsoft now has significant control over OpenAI to benefit itself.

💡Secrecy

Unlike most AI research, GPT-4's design is secret. The lawsuit argues this secrecy is for commercial reasons rather than safety.

💡Copyright

There are ongoing lawsuits over OpenAI's usage of copyrighted training data. The secrecy around GPT-4's design may aim to hide this copyright infringement.

💡Board of Directors

The OpenAI board fired Sam Altman as CEO in November 2023, but Altman then worked with Microsoft to reinstate himself and appoint a new board.

💡Relief

The lawsuit asks the court to order OpenAI to return to open research for humanity's benefit. It also asks the court to determine if GPT-4 reaches the level of AGI.

💡Conflict

There is significant conflict between Elon Musk's statements that GPT-4 is not AGI, vs the lawsuit's argument it has reached AGI.

💡Motive

While Elon Musk's motives for the lawsuit can be debated, the evidence suggests violations of OpenAI's founding charter as a non-profit developing open AI research.

Highlights

Elon Musk has filed a lawsuit against OpenAI executives alleging breach of contract

The lawsuit alleges OpenAI departed from its founding mission to develop AI safely and openly for humanity's benefit

OpenAI kept GPT-4 design details secret and focused on commercial interests rather than safety

The lawsuit alleges OpenAI may have already achieved AGI with GPT-4

New OpenAI board members allegedly lack AI expertise to determine if AGI is achieved

Microsoft has significant leverage over OpenAI but claims not to own any portion

Elon Musk contributed over $100 million to OpenAI and provided its office space

OpenAI created a for-profit subsidiary which Elon Musk didn't explicitly object to

Lawsuit demands OpenAI technology remain available to the public

Lawsuit asks court to determine if GPT-4 is AGI and outside Microsoft license

GPT-4 states it is not AGI, just advanced narrow AI

Elon previously said chatbots need to make discoveries to be called AGI

Elon questioned if GPT-4 has solved any fundamental physics problems

May be hard to prove Elon genuinely believes GPT-4 is AGI given past comments

Case will be interesting to follow regarding AGI status of large language models

Transcripts

hey guys it's Sasha Elon Musk has just

filed a lawsuit against open AI Sam

Olman the CEO of openai and Greg

Brockman the president of open aai Elon

Musk is suing under various forms of

breach of contract because open AI has

gone from being a nonprofit organization

developing open source artificial

intelligence for the good of the world

to a close Source private company making

huge amounts of money for themselves and

Microsoft the world's biggest company

and this case is seriously bananas in so

many ways now first at the very start

part of the allegations Elon Musk has

decided to publish a little thesis on

the risk of artificial general

intelligence which is an interesting

read there's a bit of History here how

in 1996 IBM's D blue AI program beat

Gary Kasparov the first time a computer

program beat a human a chess which was

pretty important except deep blue was

not an AI program it was built using a

Uris evaluation model with an expert

system which basically means it was

manually programmed on how to evaluate

chess positions using specific opinion

from experts and it was not using AI it

was just crunching 200 million positions

a second and working out via a search

algorithm if that position was good or

not anyway the lawsuit does say that

these programs while useful were

essentially one trick ponies their

intelligence was not General well the

truth is there is a difference between a

neural network or some other thing that

people might call some form of

intelligence and what is essentially a

big series of if then statements anyway

there's two pages of AI history which

seems to be very focused on chess which

is an odd way to measure artificial

intelligence because according to some

guy on Twitter chess is too simple to be

useful in real life a mere 8 by8 grid no

fog of war no technology tree no random

map or spawn position only two players

both sides exact same pieces but then we

get into the crooks of the lawsuit the

founding agreement of open AI it says

that in 2015 Mr ultman wrote that the

development of superhuman machine

intelligence is probably the greatest

threat to the continued existence of

humanity which you know sounds kind of

bad right so what do you do armed with

this information armed with the

knowledge that this is the biggest

threat to the existence of humanity

later the same year Mr Oldman approached

Mr musk with a proposal that they join

forces to form a nonprofit AI lab that

would try to catch up to Google in the

race for AGI but it would be the

opposite of Google and back in 2015 of

course Google's motto was don't be evil

so if open AI wanted to be the opposite

of Google M so apparently Elon Musk and

Sam Alman thought that AI could wipe out

Humanity the worst thing ever so they

thought why don't we go and do exactly

that it's a bit like how in a horror

movie you know the main character

descends into the dark basement with the

flickering lights and the screams and

you wonder why would you do that well so

the movie can happen anyway let's move

on together with Mr Brockman the three

I.E Elon Musk Sam ultman and Greg

Brockman agreed that this new lab a

would be a nonprofit developing AI for

the benefit of humanity not for a profit

company seeking to maximize shareholder

profit and B would be open- ssource

balancing only counterveiling safety

considerations and would not keep its

technology closed and secret for

proprietary commercial reasons aka the

founding agreement reflecting the

founding agreement Mr musk named this

new AI lab open AI which would compete

with and serve as a vital counterbalance

to Google deepmind in the race for AGI

but would do so to benefit Humanity not

the shareholders of a private for-profit

company much less one of the largest

technology companies in the world so

that last bit is obviously referencing

Microsoft who own a giant chunk of open

AI well technically they do not because

you know the competition authorities in

the United States and in Europe are

pretty annoyed with them and technically

you know that would be kind of illegal

because they're meant to be a nonprofit

so according to Microsoft while details

of our agreement remain confidential it

is important to note that Microsoft does

not own any portion of open aai and is

simply entitled to a share of profit

distributions translation our lawyers

made it so that we technically don't own

the company not at all even though we

literally get to decide on the board

members we have a board seat of our own

and we get a big chunk of the profits

and yes that pretty much is the legal

definition of what a major shareholder

is you know you vote on important

company matters you get to elect

directors you have your own director on

the board and you get a slice of the

profits but don't worry it's not being a

shareholder at all it's completely legit

anyway there are a couple of pages that

basically repeat the same point that

open AI was meant to be open as a

nonprofit but then in 2023 defendants Mr

ultman Mr Brockman and open AI set the

founding agreement a flame I am not sure

if a flame is a technical legal term

because I'm not a lawyer but if it is

that's some pretty cool legal Le

language in March 2023 open AI released

its most powerful language model yet GPT

4 GPT 4 is not just capable of reasoning

it is better at reasoning than average

humans you can see that they're trying

to make the case that GPT 4 is

artificial general intelligence it's

scored in the 90th percentile on the

uniform bar exam for lawyers it scored

in the 99th percentile on the GRE verbal

assessment it even scored a 77% on the

advanced samier examination now a little

interjection if I may open AI is great

at recalling information based on its

training data because it's a large

language model and it is great at

merging different bits of that

information together I think a lot of

people would argue though that the term

reasoning may have a slightly deeper

function and meaning than just the

ability of a large language model to

recall data in a grammatically correct

syntax at this time Mr mman caused open

AI to radically depart from its original

Mission and historical practice of

making his technology and knowledge

available to the public gbt 4's internal

design was kept and remains a complete

secret except to open Ai and on

information and belief Microsoft who

remember don't own open AI at all there

are no scientific Publications

describing the design of GPT 4 instead

there are just press releases bragging

about performance on information and

belief the secrecy is primarily driven

by commercial considerations not safety

I actually think a big reason for the

secrecy is also because open AI clearly

broke the law in using other people's

copyrighted information as their

training material there are multiple

ongoing lawsuits from the likes of the

New York Times and others and there have

been countless examples of open AI

printing data from sources where that is

the only source that has that data who

did not give them permission for their

data to be used they didn't get paid for

it they didn't get to stand any benefit

whatsoever and this is a pretty

egregious and extremely blatant abuse of

copyright because somebody put that

information together somebody actually

had to go and find the information in

order for open AI thought just consume

it but you know open AI thought it would

be great just to swallow it all for free

the law the copyright just

steal everyone's information then

repackage it because it's an llm and

sell it as a large language model I know

Tech Bros will disagree be really mad

because they don't understand or choose

not to understand that just because the

information is available on a website

does not in fact make it public it does

not make it free for you to go and just

ReUse It Go and resell the same thing

and make billions of dollars from it no

that's not how the world Works according

to the lawsuit open is currently

developing a model known as qar that has

an even stronger claim to AGI even

stronger being a reference that GPT 4 is

already AGI on November 17th 2023 open

ai's board fired Mr Oldman after losing

confidence in his ability to continue

leading open AI because he was not

consistently candid with the board in a

series of stunning developments spanning

the next several days Mr Oldman and Mr

Brockman in concert with Microsoft

exploited Microsoft's significant

leverage over open Ai and forced the

resignation of a majority of open ai's

board members including Chief scientist

Ilia s Mr ultman was reinstated as CEO

of open AI Inc on November 21st and yeah

that whole episode is incredibly fishy

it just doesn't add up so you fire the

CEO because he's apparently lying to the

board you know that's what not being

candid means then you fire the rest of

the board and you put the CEO back and

then you put your own director in there

as well that just doesn't make any sense

on information and belief the new board

members were handpicked by Mr ultman and

blessed by Microsoft who remember most

definitely do not own open AI the new

board members lack substantial AI

expertise and on information and belief

are ill equipped by Design to make an

independent determination of whether and

when open AI has obtained AGI so the

allegation is that they have already

obtained AGI but they've intentionally

placed people in charge who don't know

that AGI is already here because if it

was then Microsoft would not legally be

able to license it and this next

paragraph is the really crucial part

these events of 2023 constitute flagrant

breaches of the founding agreement which

defendants have essentially turned on

its head to this day open ai's website

continues to profess that its Charter is

to ensure that AGI benefits all of

humanity in reality however openai has

been transformed into a close Source

deao subsidiary of the largest

technology company in the world

Microsoft and on page 13 Elon Musk

brings the receipts because the

certificate of incorporation for open AI

said that this Corporation shall be a

nonprofit corporation organized

exclusively for charitable Andor

educational purposes further down the

lawsuit says that Mr musk brought to

bear his connections stature and clout

in the effort he did a lot of the

earlier recruitment personally Elon

contributed more than $44 million to

open AI Inc between 2016 and September

2020 and he paid the rent on the

company's office in San Francisco and in

a tweet a year ago Elon said that he

contributed the first1 100 million to

open aai so that must have been one

really expensive office in 2017 Mr

Brockman and others suggested

transforming open aai from a nonprofit

to a for-profit corporation after a

series of communications over several

weeks Mr Musk told Mr Brockman Dr Suk

and Mr Oldman either go do something on

your own or continue with open AI as a

nonprofit I will no longer fund open aai

until you have made a firm commitment to

stay or I'm just being a fool who is

essentially providing free funding to a

startup discussions are over and

apparently the other two said okay and

then after Elon Musk stopped being

actively involved with open aai on March

11th 2019 open aai announced that it

would be creating a a for-profit

subsidiary open AI LP and the weird

thing is that when this happened El musk

didn't seem to mind too much following

the announcement Mr musk reached out to

Mr ultman asking him to be explicit that

I have no financial interest in the

for-profit arm of open AI so he said he

doesn't want to have explicit financial

interest in it but it doesn't say that

he directly objected however Mr mus

continued to support open AI Inc the

nonprofit donating and additional $3.48

million in 2019 and then open AI hired

some snazzy lawyers who made a load of

other companies up to make it as

confusing as possible but basically to

migrate the nonprofit into a for-profit

company without it being very obvious

and then after a load more details there

is the bit where Elon Musk says what he

wants if he wins the case one and Order

requiring the defendants continue to

follow open ai's long-standing practice

of making AI research and Tech

technology developed at open AI

available to the public and two an order

prohibiting defendants from utilizing

open Ai and its assets for the financial

benefit of the individual defendants

Microsoft or any other particular person

or entity and this all sounds very

reasonable based on the evidence based

on everything we've heard but then then

comes Part B for a Judicial

determination the GPT 4 constitutes

artificial general intelligence and is

thereby outside the scope of open ai's

license to Microsoft so Elon Musk wants

a judge in a court to determine if GPT 4

qualifies as artificial general

intelligence not just some artificial

intelligence artificial general

intelligence and the truth is I'm not

sure if Elon Musk or open AI themselves

know if gp4 is really artificial general

intelligence in fact I think they both

know the opposite to be true in fact I

know that they both know the opposite to

be true true I think I'll need a big bag

of popcorn to watch this one unfold

because that's basically the case and I

am no lawyer but the first demand seems

pretty reasonable because open AI

screwed over the original Founders the

original Mission the original people who

contributed Nvidia donated graphics

cards to the project back in 2016 a lot

of people gave open AI money and free

resources to help the great cause and

now they just stole all of that took all

those resources merged them into their

own closed private company from which

they stand to make billions of dollars

and that just doesn't sound right but I

suspect the problem with this case is

going to be in that second bit you know

where Elon Musk says that the court must

determine if gp4 qualifies as general

artificial intelligence I asked gp4 the

question is GPT 4 an artificial general

intelligence model and it said no it's

not gp4 like its predecessors is a

highly Advanced example of artificial

narrow intelligence so open Ai and GPT 4

don't think so and in December 2022 Elon

Musk wrote on Twitter about chat GPT to

be called AGI it needs to invent amazing

things or discover deeper physics many

humans have done so I'm not seeing that

potential yet and in July last year in

response to some guy with three first

names Elon Musk wrote It's not AGI until

it can solve at least one fundamental

physics problem as far as I know I don't

think GPT 4 has solved any fundamental

physics problem it might be a little

hard to prove that Elon Musk genuinely

believes GPT 4 to be AGI given that he

has publicly said the exact opposite

multiple times and this case will

definitely be interesting to follow if

you enjoy a bit of shadon fder