Musk dismisses lawsuit against OpenAI over mission drift

(MENAFN) Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk has taken steps to dismiss his lawsuit against OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman, accusing them of deviating from the startup's original mission of developing artificial intelligence (AI) for the betterment of humanity rather than for profit. Musk's attorneys filed the motion to dismiss the lawsuit in a California state court on Tuesday, as reported in a filing in San Francisco Superior Court. The reason for Musk's decision to dismiss the lawsuit was not explicitly stated in the filing.

A Superior Court judge in San Francisco was scheduled to hear OpenAI's motion to dismiss the lawsuit at a hearing set for Wednesday. Neither OpenAI nor an attorney for Musk immediately responded to requests for comment on the matter. Musk dismissed the case without prejudice, leaving open the possibility of refiling it at a later time.

The lawsuit marked the culmination of Musk's ongoing dissatisfaction with OpenAI, a startup he co-founded, which has since become a prominent figure in the field of generative AI, receiving substantial funding from Microsoft. Musk's own venture into artificial intelligence, xAI, was founded in July last year and recently secured USD6 billion in series B funding, achieving a post-money valuation of USD24 billion.

In the lawsuit, Musk alleged that Altman and OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman initially approached him to establish an open-source, non-profit company. However, Musk claimed that the startup, established in 2015, had shifted its focus towards profit-making activities. Musk's lawsuit cited OpenAI's release of its powerful language model, GPT-4, last year as evidence of the company's departure from its original mission, accusing them of disregarding their founding agreement.

MENAFN13062024000045015839ID1108327692