Elon Musk sues OpenAI for abandoning its principles and says taking Microsoft's billions has 'set the founding agreement aflame'

Elon Musk has launched a lawsuit against OpenAI and some of his fellow co-founders of the company, claiming that the firm has departed from its original principles in favour of «maximising profits» for Microsoft (first reported by the BBC). Open AI is best-known for ChatGPT and its biggest investor by far is Microsoft, which since 2019 has invested billions of dollars in a long-term partnership with the company, and last year showed its level of control by playing a leading role in Altman's firing then re-hiring by the OpenAI board.

Musk founded OpenAI with Sam Altman and Greg Brockman (among others, including Peter Thiel) in 2015 to create artificial general intelligence (AGI), with the three agreeing on certain principles for the company that were inspired by doing the opposite of Google. OpenAI's work would be «for the benefit of humanity», it would be a non-profit, and it would freely open source its technology. Musk would leave OpenAI in 2018.

The new lawsuit says that Musk only agreed to co-found OpenAI because it was under these conditions, but that the firm is now focused on profits rather than those principles. The lawsuit reads:

«This case is filed to compel OpenAI to adhere to the Founding Agreement and return to its mission to develop AGI for the benefit of humanity, not to personally benefit the individual Defendants and the largest technology company in the world.»

OpenAI's structure changed in 2019 when the non-profit set up a for-profit subsidiary, which is capped but nevertheless allowed the serious money to start flowing in. Microsoft invested $1 billion the same year, and though the numbers are a little fuzzy it is now estimated to have invested over $13 billion. To state the obvious: Microsoft is doing this because it thinks there's gold in them thar hills.

The lawsuit also takes aim at the controversy over Altman's firing last year. The OpenAI board kicked its CEO to the curb in November last year, with the cryptic rationale that he had not been