On February 29, local time, Tesla CEO Elon Musk formally filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, its CEO Sam Altman and President Greg Brockman in the San Francisco Superior Court.。

The indictment states that OpenAI and its personnel violated the company's original intention to develop artificial intelligence (AI) only for commercial gain rather than the common welfare of mankind, and that there were misconduct such as breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duty and unfair business practices; it also requires a court injunction to prohibit the defendant and Microsoft from profiting from the company's general artificial intelligence (AGI) technology, and requires the company to restore open source。

The power between the "hands": the interests of the long-term must be divided first.

It's easy to see from the complaint that Musk's lawsuit was triggered by the scale of the capital he invested。

It is reported that Musk, Altman and Brockman co-founded OpenAI in 2015.。

According to Musk, the three men agreed to set up an open source non-profit experimental company to develop AGI for the "benefit of humanity."。Since then, Musk has invested more than $44 million in OpenAI and claims that without his participation and support, OpenAI will most likely never get off the ground.。Not only that, but he has also recruited many talented people for OpenAI with his personal influence and connections.。

In 2018, Musk resigned from the OpenAI board.。As for the reasons for Musk's resignation, according to people familiar with the matter, Musk tried to take back control of OpenAI from Altman and other co-founders in late 2017 in order to integrate the two into a commercial company with Tesla's supercomputer, and only after the proposal was rejected did Musk later announce his resignation from OpenAI and urge OpenAI to speed up research and development.。

Since then, Musk has called for AI regulation several times.。

In 2019, Microsoft became the main "gold owner" of OpenAI, and since then, OpenAI has defined itself as a "capped-profit" enterprise, a mixture of for-profit and non-profit.。At the same time, the return on the shareholder's investment may not exceed 100 times the original investment amount.。This structure allows OpenAI to attract private investment while maintaining its long-term mission - to ensure that the development of AI benefits all of humanity.。

Last year, Altman was fired by OpenAI's former board of directors as the company defended its mission to develop AI for the benefit of humanity, and the "palace fight drama" has since kicked off.。Just a few days later, Altman "killed" his old employer with a new board.。

Musk also believes that Altman has taken advantage of the nature of his organizational structure because of this brief "civil war."。Moreover, the current board lacks expertise in AI and technology, and most of OpenAI's board members who left last year were pressured by Microsoft.。

OpenAI's "Betrayal": When to Return to "Open"？

From the complaint, another major source of Musk's "dissatisfaction" with OpenAI is OpenAI's ambiguous move on open source and transparency.。

In 2018, OpenAI is said to have released its first GPT model and published the source code and detailed papers; and by 2019, GPT-2 and GPT-3 have been unveiled, also with research papers.。However, in 2023, the introduction of GPT-4 did not disclose the technical details in accordance with the founding agreement, and did not immediately terminate the proprietary license to Microsoft as a result of reaching the AGI threshold.。

In this regard, Musk believes that the confidentiality of the technical details of GPT-4 is "mainly for commercial rather than security considerations," which clearly deviates from the company's original intention.。"OpenAI has become a closed source code and is effectively a subsidiary of Microsoft, the world's largest technology company.。Under the new board, it is developing and refining AGI to maximize Microsoft's profits rather than benefit humanity.。"

Jason Kwon, OpenAI's chief strategy officer, denied the claims, blaming the allegations as likely stemming from Musk's "regret that he is not involved in the company's affairs today," and said OpenAI is completely independent of and in direct competition with Microsoft.。

An investigation in January revealed that OpenAI had shut down public access to some critical files.。The original transparency pledge said any member of the public could view copies of its governance documents, financial statements and conflict of interest rules.。But now, OpenAI seems to have changed this policy。

The report also said that OpenAI is developing a secret algorithm called "Q *"。Although the specifics are not yet clear, several OpenAI employees warned in a letter about the potential power of Q *。As a result, Musk said in the lawsuit that Q *, or a more powerful AGI developed by OpenAI, is beyond the scope of its license with Microsoft.。

In July 2023, Musk announced the creation of an AI company, xAI; in November, he released the first AI model, Grok; and in January, it was reported that Musk wanted to raise up to $6 billion in new equity for xAI at a proposed valuation of $20 billion.。

An hour after the lawsuit was filed, Musk posted a tweet referring to OpenAI and its recent investment in humanoid robotics company Figure, with the caption: "Come on, though," full of gunpowder.。

The proceedings of the above-mentioned proceedings are scheduled for a case management meeting on 31 July 2024, case number CGC24612746.。