Musk has filed several complaints against the company for abandoning its original mission of using AI for the benefit of humanity, prioritizing economic interests. OpenAI’s response.
This comes two months after Musk accused OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, of abandoning its founding mission of developing an AI platform that seeks to «benefit humanity» in favor of maximizing its profits.
In a motion to dismiss filed in federal court in California on Tuesday, OpenAI said Musk’s lawsuit was the latest move in an «increasingly blatant campaign to harass OpenAI for its own competitive advantage.»
OpenAI’s defense
According to the company, Musk initially supported its core goal of pursuing “safe and beneficial development of artificial general intelligence,” but the billionaire reportedly “left the company when his attempt to dominate it failed.” OpenAI’s filing notes that Musk has since launched his own AI startup, xAI, and is “seeking to leverage the court system” to gain a competitive advantage in the sector.
The ChatGPT maker said the documents and facts in Musk’s federal lawsuit are the same as those in the initial case he filed in state court and dropped in June. Musk has not yet commented on the suit.
According to OpenAI’s filing, Musk’s lawsuit is «a public relations stunt comprising unenhanced and implausible variants of contractual and fiduciary claims that he was not prepared to defend in state court; and implausible theories of fraud and false advertising that fail to identify any specific misrepresentations.»
Musk first sued OpenAI and its CEO, Sam Altman , earlier this year, accusing the company of abandoning its original goal of developing open-source artificial general intelligence that would benefit humanity, opting to maximize its profits instead.
In the case filed in San Francisco Superior Court, Musk accused the company and its leaders of reneging on their original agreement to build an open-source rival to work done by companies like Google’s DeepMind.
A few days later, the company fired back at Musk’s claims, pointing out that the billionaire (one of OpenAI’s co-founders) acknowledged in 2017 that a «for-profit entity» would be needed to achieve OpenAI’s goals of creating artificial general intelligence. The company alleged that Musk even tried to become the CEO and largest shareholder of the for-profit entity.
However, OpenAI said it could not agree to the billionaire’s terms because the company felt they went against its mission «of any individual having complete control.» According to the company’s post, Musk was «someone who inspired us to aim higher, then told us we would fail, founded a competitor, and then sued us when we started to make meaningful progress toward OpenAI’s mission without him.»
In June, the billionaire dropped his lawsuit against OpenAI, only to reopen it in federal court in August.
