OpenAI executive says Elon Musk regrets not being a part of their company (2024)

New Delhi,UPDATED: Mar 3, 2024 15:03 IST

Elon Musk recently sued ChatGPT parent OpenAI, accusing them of breaking contracts, fiduciary duties, and engaging in unfair business practices. Musk alleged that their focus on maximizing profits for Microsoft, rather than benefiting humanity, goes against the original mission of OpenAI. And now, an OpenAI executive reportedly said that Musk is regretting not being a part of OpenAI and has therefore, taken legal action against the company.

OpenAI executive says Musk regrets leaving OpenAI

According to a report in The Verge, an OpenAI executive believes that Musk sued OpenAI as he regrets not being a part of the company anymore.

The company's chief strategy officer, Jason Kwon, said in a memo sent to staff that Musk "regrets not being involved with the company today."

Musk had sued OpenAI on Thursday in a lawsuit filed with the San Francisco court. The lawsuit talked about Musk's long-held concern that OpenAI's collaboration with Microsoft undermines the company's initial commitment to developing public and open-source artificial general intelligence.

In his legal action, Musk called for OpenAI, its president Gregory Brockman, CEO Sam Altman, and Microsoft to be prevented from profiting from the technology related to artificial general intelligence.

Musk has been accusing Microsoft of turning OpenAI into a "for profit company" for a long time.

Last year, Musk said in a tweet that OpenAI was no longer what he intended it to be and had turned into a 'maximum-profit company effectively controlled by Microsoft'.

"OpenAI was created as an open source (which is why I named it “Open” AI), non-profit company to serve as a counterweight to Google, but now it has become a closed source, maximum-profit company effectively controlled by Microsoft. Not what I intended at all," he wrote.

Elon Musk and OpenAI

For the unversed, OpenAI was founded in 2015 with the intent of saving humanity from the potential destruction of AI. The company was launched as a non-profit research company, dedicated to the cause. Sam Altman and Elon Musk were amongst the founders of the company. Musk resigned from OpenAI in 2018 and also let go of all his stake in it.

In 2019, OpenAI declared itself as a ‘for-profit’ company and partnered with the likes of Microsoft and other big corporations. Its generative AI chatbot, ChatGPT, garnered immense attention in 2022 and became the face of the company. As a result, OpenAI as well as its founder Sam Altman became household names.

After initially offering ChatGPT for free, OpenAI rolled out a paid version which was even more advanced. Even though the free version running on GPT-3.5 is available to use without any fee, the paid version is more sophisticated and runs on OpenAI's latest LLM, GPT-4.