亿万富翁、跨国公司领袖埃隆·马斯克 (Elon Musk) 是 OpenAI 的联合创始人，后来成为 OpenAI 的竞争对手。为微软创造利润——诉讼称这违反了公司最初的创立协议。
在向旧金山高等法院提起的诉讼中，马斯克声称，当他与 Altman 和 Brockman 一起创办研究实验室时，他们都同意开发 AGI——一种在最具经济价值的工作中超越人类的人工智能形式——为了人类的利益，通过开源许可证免费提供其技术。
然而，几年后马斯克离职后，诉讼称 OpenAI 完全偏离了最初的使命，开始与微软合作，本质上成为其闭源事实上的子公司，开发和完善 AGI 的目的是为了利润，而不是为了盈利。人类的利益。
OpenAI 违反成立协议
马斯克一直直言不讳地谈论先进人工智能的风险，他在诉讼中声称奥特曼在 2015 年与他有着同样的担忧。事实上，现任 OpenAI 首席执行官写道，超人类机器智能 (SMI) 的发展可能是对人类继续存在的最大威胁。
诉讼称，奥特曼写道：“我认为还有其他威胁更有可能发生……但不太可能像 SMI 那样摧毁宇宙中的每一个人。”
由于这些担忧以及谷歌为了自身利益而对 AGI 的封闭追求，两人和布罗克曼联手推出了 OpenAI，作为平衡，开发先进的人工智能，造福人类。
该研究实验室最初的成立协议旨在将人工智能系统构建为非营利性的，并在每一步都开源该技术，以消除安全考虑并确保透明度。
根据诉讼称，OpenAI 在几年内都遵守了该协议，包括在推出 GPT-3 模型时。
该实验室分享了一篇详细的论文，描述了 GPT-3 的内部细节和训练数据。
然而，事情在 2020 年开始偏离正轨，当时它与微软合作，向这家科技巨头独家授权 GPT-3。
诉讼称，2023 年，OpenAI 发布了 GPT-4（一种比普通人类更擅长推理的模型），但没有向公众透露任何相关信息，因此创始协议被点燃。
该公司多次以安全为由，没有详细说明内部设计，但马斯克声称，这种保密主要是出于商业考虑。
More importantly, the billionaire alleged that GPT-4, which has been described as an early version of AGI by Microsoft’s own researchers, has been integrated with the paid Office suite, going beyond the scope of the 2020 deal that covered GPT-3.
As this happened, the lawsuit notes, the board of OpenAI, which reserved the right to determine when AGI (a product officially outside the scope of Microsoft’s license) was achieved, fired Altman in November 2023 for not consistently being candid and losing confidence in his ability to lead the lab. However, owing to Microsoft’s significant investment in OpenAI and leverage, the CEO was reinstated and a majority of OpenAI board members were forced to resign. The new board members appointed after those events now lack the expertise to make an independent determination of whether and when OpenAI has attained AGI, the lawsuit noted.
As a result, Musk has alleged that OpenAI has essentially become a closed-source de-facto subsidiary of Microsoft, providing its early-AGI system and refining it further to maximize the profits of the technology major. He further notes that the company is also developing Q* which holds an even stronger claim to AGI.
With this lawsuit, Musk wants to compel OpenAI to adhere to the original founding agreement and circle back to the mission of actually developing AGI for the benefit of humanity, rather than profits.
While this is the first legal step from Musk against OpenAI’s purported change of tactics, it is definitely not the first time the billionaire has called out the research lab. On multiple occasions in the past, he has spoken about OpenAI being under the control of Microsoft – “a ruthless corporate monopoly” and that the company was given its name for its open, non-profit approach, which is no longer the case.
I’m sure it will be fine pic.twitter.com/JWsq62Qkru
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 24, 2023
Notably, owing to these concerns and the belief that he may be the only one to bring safe, ethical AI into the world, Musk has also launched his own AI venture called xAI. The company claims it’s pursuing maximum truth-seeking AI that tries to understand the nature of the universe and has already released its own chat assistant called Grok.
“I think this might be the best path to safety in the sense that an AI that cares about understanding the universe is unlikely to annihilate humans because we are an interesting part of the universe,” he said in an interview with Fox News in April.
xAI is still playing catchup with OpenAI but has roped in AI experts from the Altman-led organization as well as DeepMind, Google Research, Microsoft Research, Tesla and the University of Toronto.
