OpenAI, the AI research organisation behind ChatGPT, has issued a rebuttal to X (formerly Twitter) CEO Elon Musk’s claims against it and stated that it intends to dismiss all of his claims. In a blog post published on March 5, authored by top OpenAI officials including CEO Sam Altman and co-founder Greg Brockman, the company dismissed Musk’s claims regarding its for-profit model and the closed-source nature of GPT-4 (the latest iteration in the series of language models developed by OpenAI), claiming that Musk was aware and had consented to the direction the company was taking. The blog further claimed that Musk wanted OpenAI to merge with Tesla and wanted “full control” over the organisation.
Musk was one of the co-founders of OpenAI in 2015 but left the company in 2018. In July 2023, the Twitter CEO announced that he had founded an artificial intelligence company called xAI and intended to compete with ChatGPT, an offering from OpenAI.
Last week, Musk filed a lawsuit against the startup, alleging that OpenAI had deviated from its Founding Agreement of developing Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) for the benefit of humanity and was instead advancing the commercial interests of Microsoft and the OpenAI CEO. According to the lawsuit, the Founding Agreement between Musk, Altman and Brockman laid out that the company would develop AGI for the benefit of humanity, instead of commercial interests, and that OpenAI would be open source, not keeping its technology private for proprietary reasons. However, Musk claimed that by keeping GPT-4 closed-source, the company had violated its “original mission and historical practice” and turned it into a “de-facto Microsoft proprietary algorithm.” Musk sought a court order requiring OpenAI to adhere to its founding mission.
In its response to Musk, OpenAI stated that it realised building an AGI would require far more resources than anticipated and decided that a for-profit model would be the best way to acquire them. It alleged that Musk wanted the company to “attach to Tesla as its cash cow” as the only way to “even hope to hold a candle to Google.” He also allegedly demanded majority equity, initial board control, and to be the CEO. The blog also contained several emails, purportedly exchanged between OpenAI officials and Musk, showing Musk’s awareness and agreement with a for-profit and closed-source model.
OpenAI also published a justification for keeping GPT-4 closed source, via an email between OpenAI Chief Scientist Ilya Sutskever and Musk.
“… by opensorucing (sic) everything, we make it easy for someone unscrupulous with access to overwhelming amount of hardware to build an unsafe AI, which will experience a hard takeoff.
As we get closer to building AI, it will make sense to start being less open. The Open in openAI means that everyone should benefit from the fruits of AI after its built, but it’s totally OK to not share the science” wrote Sutskever in his email.
In essence, OpenAI argued that a closed-source AI was much safer as it would prevent someone with resources from building a copy and misusing it.
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Also Read:
- Elon Musk Sues OpenAI For Violating Founding Agreement of Developing Artificial General Intelligence For Public Benefit
- Navigating The Complexities Of Open Source AI: Insights From Carnegie India Summit
- IT Ministry’s Advisory Mandates AI Models To Be Government-Approved Prior To Use By Indians
- Views: Open Source AI—A Nebulous Concept Bearing A Heavy Weight
