Elon Musk was an early backer of OpenAI. Reuters
Elon Musk was an early backer of OpenAI. Reuters
Elon Musk was an early backer of OpenAI. Reuters
Elon Musk was an early backer of OpenAI. Reuters

Elon Musk sues ChatGPT maker OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman for abandoning non-profit mission


Alvin R Cabral
  • English
  • Arabic

Elon Musk has sued OpenAI and its chief executive Sam Altman over the ChatGPT maker's "stark betrayal" of its founding principles of being a non-profit organisation that would ensure artificial intelligence would be for the greater good of the world.

The lawsuit, filed in the Superior Court of California, alleges that OpenAI has pursued profit, with Microsoft, the world's most valuable company and the biggest backer of OpenAI, benefiting the most.

OpenAI took off last year, and its rise caused the shift, the case alleges. Mr Musk was an early backer and a co-founder of OpenAI, but stepped down in 2018. Microsoft was reported to have invested $10 billion in California-based OpenAI last year.

"These events of 2023 constitute flagrant breaches of the founding agreement, which defendants have essentially turned on its head. To this day, OpenAI, Inc’s website continues to profess that its charter is to ensure that AGI [artificial general intelligence] 'benefits all of humanity'," the lawsuit said.

"In reality, however, OpenAI, Inc has been transformed into a closed-source de facto subsidiary of the largest technology company in the world: Microsoft. Under its new board, it is not just developing but is actually refining an AGI to maximise profits for Microsoft, rather than for the benefit of humanity."

Mr Musk, the world's wealthiest person, further targeted Mr Altman, saying that when the two met in 2015, he "may have found someone who understood his concerns about AI and his desire to keep the first AGI out of the hands of a private company like Google".

OpenAI, Mr Altman and its co-founder Greg Brockman, also a defendant in the lawsuit, have yet to respond to the allegations.

OpenAI's meteoric rise stemmed from its sensational ChatGPT generative AI platform, sparking a race between companies and investors to cash in on what is considered the next technological revolution.

However, while AI has already long been used, its evolving iterations have made it become even more powerful, stoking concerns ranging from misinformation, misuse and bias to further enhancing the notion that AI will take jobs away from human beings.

Mr Musk also noted that Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella "boasted" about the apparent benefits of Microsoft's support of OpenAI, in a boardroom saga that engulfed OpenAI in November last year.

Mr Altman was ousted by OpenAI's board on November 17, who said he was not consistently candid in his communications, only to be reinstated a few days later after a dramatic chain of events that included two interim chief executives.

In between, Mr Nadella had said that Mr Altman would be joining Microsoft to lead a new AI development unit at the Windows operating system maker.

"Indeed, as the November 2023 drama was unfolding, Microsoft’s CEO boasted that it would not matter '[i]f OpenAI disappeared tomorrow'," the lawsuit said.

"He explained that '[w]e have all the IP rights and all the capability.' 'We have the people, we have the compute, we have the data, we have everything.' 'We are below them, above them, around them'," it said.

Mr Musk's lawsuit demands to "compel OpenAI to adhere" to its original founding agreement, "not to personally benefit the individual defendants and the largest technology company in the world".

The filing also highlighted Mr Musk's moves to help advocate for the safety of AI, including voicing his concerns on Google's acquisition of DeepMind in 2014 and approaching US president Barack Obama to discuss his push for regulation.

It also said Mr Musk went around "hosting his own series of dinner discussions on ways to counter Google and promote AI safety".

Google, which is facing its own generative AI debacle after its Gemini platform flopped last week during its handling of racial issues, has not reacted to the lawsuit.

Mr Musk, owner of the microblogging site X, formerly Twitter, and chief executive of electric vehicle maker Tesla, formed his own AI company last year, xAI, to challenge OpenAI and whose mission statement is “to understand reality”.

The biog

Favourite food: Fish and seafood

Favourite hobby: Socialising with friends

Favourite quote: You only get out what you put in!

Favourite country to visit: Italy

Favourite film: Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels.

Family: We all have one!

Army of the Dead

Director: Zack Snyder

Stars: Dave Bautista, Ella Purnell, Omari Hardwick, Ana de la Reguera

Three stars

Wicked: For Good

Director: Jon M Chu

Starring: Ariana Grande, Cynthia Erivo, Jonathan Bailey, Jeff Goldblum, Michelle Yeoh, Ethan Slater

Rating: 4/5

CHATGPT%20ENTERPRISE%20FEATURES
%3Cp%3E%E2%80%A2%20Enterprise-grade%20security%20and%20privacy%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%E2%80%A2%20Unlimited%20higher-speed%20GPT-4%20access%20with%20no%20caps%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%E2%80%A2%20Longer%20context%20windows%20for%20processing%20longer%20inputs%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%E2%80%A2%20Advanced%20data%20analysis%20capabilities%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%E2%80%A2%20Customisation%20options%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%E2%80%A2%20Shareable%20chat%20templates%20that%20companies%20can%20use%20to%20collaborate%20and%20build%20common%20workflows%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%E2%80%A2%20Analytics%20dashboard%20for%20usage%20insights%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%E2%80%A2%20Free%20credits%20to%20use%20OpenAI%20APIs%20to%20extend%20OpenAI%20into%20a%20fully-custom%20solution%20for%20enterprises%3C%2Fp%3E%0A
Attacks on Egypt’s long rooted Copts

Egypt’s Copts belong to one of the world’s oldest Christian communities, with Mark the Evangelist credited with founding their church around 300 AD. Orthodox Christians account for the overwhelming majority of Christians in Egypt, with the rest mainly made up of Greek Orthodox, Catholics and Anglicans.

The community accounts for some 10 per cent of Egypt’s 100 million people, with the largest concentrations of Christians found in Cairo, Alexandria and the provinces of Minya and Assiut south of Cairo.

Egypt’s Christians have had a somewhat turbulent history in the Muslim majority Arab nation, with the community occasionally suffering outright persecution but generally living in peace with their Muslim compatriots. But radical Muslims who have first emerged in the 1970s have whipped up anti-Christian sentiments, something that has, in turn, led to an upsurge in attacks against their places of worship, church-linked facilities as well as their businesses and homes.

More recently, ISIS has vowed to go after the Christians, claiming responsibility for a series of attacks against churches packed with worshippers starting December 2016.

The discrimination many Christians complain about and the shift towards religious conservatism by many Egyptian Muslims over the last 50 years have forced hundreds of thousands of Christians to migrate, starting new lives in growing communities in places as far afield as Australia, Canada and the United States.

Here is a look at major attacks against Egypt's Coptic Christians in recent years:

November 2: Masked gunmen riding pickup trucks opened fire on three buses carrying pilgrims to the remote desert monastery of St. Samuel the Confessor south of Cairo, killing 7 and wounding about 20. IS claimed responsibility for the attack.

May 26, 2017: Masked militants riding in three all-terrain cars open fire on a bus carrying pilgrims on their way to the Monastery of St. Samuel the Confessor, killing 29 and wounding 22. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack.

April 2017Twin attacks by suicide bombers hit churches in the coastal city of Alexandria and the Nile Delta city of Tanta. At least 43 people are killed and scores of worshippers injured in the Palm Sunday attack, which narrowly missed a ceremony presided over by Pope Tawadros II, spiritual leader of Egypt Orthodox Copts, in Alexandria's St. Mark's Cathedral. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attacks.

February 2017: Hundreds of Egyptian Christians flee their homes in the northern part of the Sinai Peninsula, fearing attacks by ISIS. The group's North Sinai affiliate had killed at least seven Coptic Christians in the restive peninsula in less than a month.

December 2016A bombing at a chapel adjacent to Egypt's main Coptic Christian cathedral in Cairo kills 30 people and wounds dozens during Sunday Mass in one of the deadliest attacks carried out against the religious minority in recent memory. ISIS claimed responsibility.

July 2016Pope Tawadros II says that since 2013 there were 37 sectarian attacks on Christians in Egypt, nearly one incident a month. A Muslim mob stabs to death a 27-year-old Coptic Christian man, Fam Khalaf, in the central city of Minya over a personal feud.

May 2016: A Muslim mob ransacks and torches seven Christian homes in Minya after rumours spread that a Christian man had an affair with a Muslim woman. The elderly mother of the Christian man was stripped naked and dragged through a street by the mob.

New Year's Eve 2011A bomb explodes in a Coptic Christian church in Alexandria as worshippers leave after a midnight mass, killing more than 20 people.

Other must-tries

Tomato and walnut salad

A lesson in simple, seasonal eating. Wedges of tomato, chunks of cucumber, thinly sliced red onion, coriander or parsley leaves, and perhaps some fresh dill are drizzled with a crushed walnut and garlic dressing. Do consider yourself warned: if you eat this salad in Georgia during the summer months, the tomatoes will be so ripe and flavourful that every tomato you eat from that day forth will taste lacklustre in comparison.

Badrijani nigvzit

A delicious vegetarian snack or starter. It consists of thinly sliced, fried then cooled aubergine smothered with a thick and creamy walnut sauce and folded or rolled. Take note, even though it seems like you should be able to pick these morsels up with your hands, they’re not as durable as they look. A knife and fork is the way to go.

Pkhali

This healthy little dish (a nice antidote to the khachapuri) is usually made with steamed then chopped cabbage, spinach, beetroot or green beans, combined with walnuts, garlic and herbs to make a vegetable pâté or paste. The mix is then often formed into rounds, chilled in the fridge and topped with pomegranate seeds before being served.

Bio

Born in Dibba, Sharjah in 1972.
He is the eldest among 11 brothers and sisters.
He was educated in Sharjah schools and is a graduate of UAE University in Al Ain.
He has written poetry for 30 years and has had work published in local newspapers.
He likes all kinds of adventure movies that relate to his work.
His dream is a safe and preserved environment for all humankind. 
His favourite book is The Quran, and 'Maze of Innovation and Creativity', written by his brother.

The lowdown

Rating: 4/5

The%20specs
%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EEngine%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3E2.0-litre%204-cyl%20turbo%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EPower%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3E190hp%20at%205%2C600rpm%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3ETorque%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3E320Nm%20at%201%2C500-4%2C000rpm%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3ETransmission%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3E7-speed%20dual-clutch%20auto%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EFuel%20consumption%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3E10.9L%2F100km%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EPrice%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3EFrom%20Dh119%2C900%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EOn%20sale%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3ENow%3C%2Fp%3E%0A
EMERGENCY PHONE NUMBERS

Estijaba – 8001717 –  number to call to request coronavirus testing

Ministry of Health and Prevention – 80011111

Dubai Health Authority – 800342 – The number to book a free video or voice consultation with a doctor or connect to a local health centre

Emirates airline – 600555555

Etihad Airways – 600555666

Ambulance – 998

Knowledge and Human Development Authority – 8005432 ext. 4 for Covid-19 queries

Who was Alfred Nobel?

The Nobel Prize was created by wealthy Swedish chemist and entrepreneur Alfred Nobel.

  • In his will he dictated that the bulk of his estate should be used to fund "prizes to those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind".
  • Nobel is best known as the inventor of dynamite, but also wrote poetry and drama and could speak Russian, French, English and German by the age of 17. The five original prize categories reflect the interests closest to his heart.
  • Nobel died in 1896 but it took until 1901, following a legal battle over his will, before the first prizes were awarded.
If you go...

Fly from Dubai or Abu Dhabi to Chiang Mai in Thailand, via Bangkok, before taking a five-hour bus ride across the Laos border to Huay Xai. The land border crossing at Huay Xai is a well-trodden route, meaning entry is swift, though travellers should be aware of visa requirements for both countries.

Flights from Dubai start at Dh4,000 return with Emirates, while Etihad flights from Abu Dhabi start at Dh2,000. Local buses can be booked in Chiang Mai from around Dh50

The biog

Hobby: Playing piano and drawing patterns

Best book: Awaken the Giant Within by Tony Robbins

Food of choice: Sushi  

Favourite colour: Orange

Living in...

This article is part of a guide on where to live in the UAE. Our reporters will profile some of the country’s most desirable districts, provide an estimate of rental prices and introduce you to some of the residents who call each area home.

Pros%20and%20cons%20of%20BNPL
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The%20specs
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Brief scores:

Arsenal 4

Xhaka 25', Lacazette 55', Ramsey 79', Aubameyang 83'

Fulham 1

Kamara 69'

Updated: March 05, 2024, 10:23 AM