Elon Musk calls out OpenAI for hypocrisy, citing concern for humanity

Elon Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI sheds light on the humanitarian posturing of AI companies, which some may view as an epic troll.

Musk has sued the world’s leading artificial intelligence company and its CEO, Sam Altman, for violating the founding agreement to build powerful artificial intelligence systems “for the benefit of humanity.” OpenAI continues to tout this mission on its website, but Musk is calling BS: “In reality…OpenAI Inc. has been turned into a de facto closed source subsidiary of the world’s largest technology company, Microsoft,” his lawsuit, filed in a San Francisco court Thursday night, says.

He is right. But first, keep in mind why Musk might sue. The billionaire is notoriously thin-skinned and known for holding grudges. Years after he invested in a rival artificial intelligence company called DeepMind but failed to get a buyout, he spoke to its founder, Demis Hassabis. After backing OpenAI, he tried to buy the company, and when he was rejected, he started his own AI company called X.ai.

So take his legal quest with a grain of salt. He’s probably not only bitter, but also eager to strike a blow against OpenAI.

Nevertheless, Musk’s lawsuit points to a maddening phenomenon of the world’s leading AI companies starting life with promises to harness AI’s transformative potential for public good, only to eventually fall under the sway of tech giants.

Just this week, for example, Mistral, one of the world’s hottest AI startups, seemed to be following the same pattern. Based in Paris, Mistral has built AI models almost as powerful as ChatGPT at a fraction of the cost and, above all, made them open source, meaning anyone can use them for free if they have the computing resources. The company, which touts “rugged independence” and a “strong commitment to open, portable” AI on its website, has even put its model on torrent sites where people download pirated content.

But the latest AI system it announced on Monday is now closed source and only available to customers of Microsoft’s Azure cloud service. Microsoft has invested $16 million in Mistral, not much among the $500 million the startup has raised so far (it’s valued at about $2 billion), but significant enough to draw the attention of antitrust regulators. If they’re worried that small investments can turn into bigger ones, it’s because that’s what happened with OpenAI. Microsoft’s initial $1 billion investment in the company eventually turned into a $13 billion 49 percent stake in the company. And OpenAI’s capitulation to the tech giant is at the heart of Musk’s appeal.

Musk founded OpenAI with Altman in 2015 to share the benefits of artificial intelligence with humanity in a transparent and open way that Altman says would help the world become “richer … every year.” But over the years, OpenAI became more secretive, its corporate structure more complex (see the names of the companies listed in the lawsuit below), and Microsoft became the clear recipient of this bounty. AI products were becoming “the fastest-growing $10 billion business in our history,” Microsoft’s CFO said last year.

Google’s AI division, DeepMind, immediately took over. It was founded 14 years ago to build powerful artificial intelligence that would cure cancer and stop climate change, and for years its website said in bold letters that it was building AI to “advance science and benefit humanity.” Then it sold itself to Google in 2015 and, in the heat of the recent generative AI arms race, changed its home page to mention “transformational products” like Gemini.

The goals of curing diseases and making everyone richer seem to have been left to improving the products of the tech giants, which ironically could put many people out of work.

Startups like Mistral are drawn in this direction because building more powerful AI systems requires massive amounts of computing power that only the world’s largest tech companies have stable access to. A spokesman for Mistral said its partnership “does not compromise transparency”.

You could argue that this is a rite of passage. They strive to make the world a better place, then go public or acquire acquisitions and water down those ideals. But the stakes are higher with AI systems being woven into every aspect of life. (Just one example: UK legislators use generative AI to summarize feedback from the public.) Tools widely used to make critical decisions should not be controlled by an opaque oligopoly. It would be disappointing if Mistral eventually moved towards this status quo.

If Musk’s lawsuit has any effect, it should force AI companies to be honest about their intentions as they develop. His suit notes that Altman created a non-profit board for OpenAI that could fire him if he stopped trying to benefit humanity. They did. Then Altman came back and fired some of the board members who fired him. It was a good move for OpenAI’s business, but a betrayal of its supposedly benevolent goals. The emperor had no clothes, and Musk was right to call him out.