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Elon Musk sues OpenAI, renewing claims ChatGPT-maker put profits before 'the benefit of humanity'

FILE - The OpenAI logo appears on a mobile phone in front of a computer screen with random binary data, March 9, 2023, in Boston. San Francisco-based OpenAI said Thursday, July 25, 2024, it is releasing a preview of the SearchGPT to a small group of users and publishers for feedback. (AP Photo/Michael Dwyer, File) (Michael Dwyer, Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved)

LOS ANGELES ā€“ Elon Musk filed a lawsuit on Monday against OpenAI and two of its founders, Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, renewing claims that the ChatGPT-maker betrayed its founding aims of benefiting the public good rather than pursuing profits.

The lawsuit, filed in a Northern California federal court, called Musk's case a ā€œtextbook tale of altruism versus greed.ā€ Altman and others named in the suit ā€œintentionally courted and deceived Musk, preying on Muskā€™s humanitarian concern about the existential dangers posed by artificial intelligence,ā€ according to the complaint.

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Musk was an early investor in OpenAI when it was founded in 2015 and co-chaired its board alongside Altman. In the lawsuit, he said he invested ā€œtens of millionsā€ of dollars and recruited top AI research scientists for OpenAI. Musk resigned from the board in early 2018 in a move that OpenAI said ā€” at the time ā€” would prevent conflicts of interest as he was recruiting AI talent to build self-driving technology at the electric car maker.

The Tesla CEO dropped his previous lawsuit against OpenAI without explanation in June. That lawsuit alleged that when Musk bankrolled OpenAIā€™s creation, he secured an agreement with Altman and Brockman to keep the AI company as a nonprofit that would develop technology for the benefit of the public and keep its code open.

ā€œAs we said about Elonā€™s initial legal filing, which was subsequently withdrawn, Elonā€™s prior emails continue to speak for themselves,ā€ a spokesperson for OpenAI said in an emailed statement. In March, OpenAI released emails from Musk showing his earlier support for making it a for-profit company.

Musk claims in the new suit that he and OpenAI's namesake objective were ā€œbetrayed by Altman and his accomplices.ā€

ā€œThe perfidy and deceit are of Shakespearean proportions,ā€ the complaint said.


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