Elon Musk suing OpenAI and its chief executive Sam Altman

Elon Musk is suing OpenAI and its CEO, Sam Altman, for allegedly abandoning the company’s original mission of developing artificial intelligence for the benefit of humanity, not for profit.

The lawsuit alleges that Altman and Greg Brockman, co-founder of the artificial intelligence (AI) research organization, originally approached Musk about creating a nonprofit open source company.

The goal of the company, which is behind ChatGPT and backed by Microsoft, to make money breached that contract, Musk’s lawyers said in the lawsuit filed in San Francisco.

They added that the company kept the design of GPT-4, its most advanced AI model, “completely secret.”

Musk co-founded OpenAI in 2015 but resigned from its board in 2018. He also runs electric vehicle maker Tesla and rocket maker Space X and bought Twitter for £35 billion in October 2022.

Last year, entrepreneur Altman was fired by OpenAI’s former board of directors. He said he was trying to defend the company’s mission of developing AI that benefits humanity. A few days later, Altman returned to the company with a new initial board of directors.

OpenAI plans to appoint several board members in March.

ChatGPT, OpenAI’s chatbot, became the fastest-growing software application in the world six months after its launch in November 2022.

It also sparked the launch of rival chatbots from Microsoft, Alphabet and a clutch of startups that took advantage of the hype to secure billions in funding.