In what can only be described as a feud that feels one part Silicon Valley power struggle and one part philosophical debate over the soul of artificial intelligence, Elon Musk has taken a rhetorical flamethrower to OpenAI, the very organization he helped found back when the world still regarded AI with a mix of awe and sci-fi dread rather than general existential fatigue.
On Monday, Musk filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and its omnipresent CEO Sam Altman, accusing the company of abandoning its not-for-profit mission in favor of a slightly more lucrative model that apparently involves partnering with Microsoft, who, as we all know, definitely did not climb to the top of the tech world by giving everything away for free. Musk, ever the busy billionaire with an affinity for courtroom appearances almost rivaling his affinity for launching things into orbit, claims OpenAI has placed profits over the open and altruistic sharing of artificial intelligence research. Which is a bit like accusing a shark of having too many teeth.
The lawsuit claims that OpenAI’s shift toward a for-profit structure is in stark betrayal to the original mission that Musk helped bankroll with a generous donation back in 2015. The theory goes that OpenAI was supposed to develop artificial general intelligence for the benefit of all humanity, though apparently not for the benefit of Microsoft’s cloud services revenue, which now seems to be a rather significant stakeholder in the whole sentience game.
“OpenAI, Inc. has been transformed into a closed-source de facto subsidiary of the world’s largest technology company,” the suit declares, as though being acquired by Microsoft is some sort of irreversible moral crime.
Musk’s legal action raises some interesting, if not slightly ironic, philosophical questions about whether superintelligent AI should belong to the public, to shareholders or remain locked in polite legal squabbles until one gains sentience just to file its own lawsuit for independence. OpenAI, ever diplomatic, stated it was reviewing the complaint and looked forward to clarifying the matter, a phrase which here roughly translates to “preparing the lawyers.”
Meanwhile, Musk, who already owns Tesla, X (formerly Twitter), and enough satellites to open a space-based ISP, is now threatening to build his own rival AI company. Because when it comes to the fate of humanity, there truly is no such thing as too many large language models vying for control of civilization’s data.
After all, what is artificial intelligence if not a series of increasingly expensive hobby projects for tech billionaires with a modest God complex?