VOA科学技术2024--Why Is Elon Musk Bringing Legal Action Against OpenAI?

Why Is Elon Musk¹ Bringing Legal Action Against OpenAI?

　　Business leader Elon Musk is bringing a legal case against artificial intelligence (AI) company OpenAI and its chief Sam Altman.

　　Musk is chief of carmaker Tesla and SpaceX and also leads the social media service X. He said OpenAI is betraying its founder's aims by seeking to increase profits rather than helping³ the world.

　　Musk brought the legal action in San Francisco Superior Court. He said that, at first, he financially supported OpenAI, the maker² of the AI tool ChatGPT. He said he had an agreement with Altman and Greg Brockman, the president. That agreement was to keep the artificial intelligence company as a nonprofit organization. Musk said the goal was to develop technology that would help the public.

　　Under its founding agreement, OpenAI would also make its code open to the public instead of making it the company's private property, the lawsuit⁴ says. Musk claims in the lawsuit that OpenAI went against the agreement by having a close relationship with Microsoft.

　　OpenAI did not comment on the lawsuit last week.

　　Musk's lawsuit says OpenAI broke a contract, failed in its financial responsibility, and used unfair business methods. Musk also wants to prevent anyone, including Microsoft, from profiting from OpenAI's technology.

　　Musk was early supporter of OpenAI

　　Anupam Chander is a law professor at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. He said Musk's claims are unlikely to succeed in court. However, he said that might not be the point for Musk, who is getting his personal story on the record.

　　Chander said Musk claims he named OpenAI, employed an important scientist, and that he was the main financial supporter in its early years. He said, "In some sense, it's a lawsuit that tries to establish his own place in the history of generative AI."

　　Musk was an early investor⁵ in OpenAI when it was founded in 2015. He was a leader in the company alongside Altman. In the lawsuit, he said he invested "tens of millions" of dollars in the nonprofit research laboratory.

　　Musk left the company in early 2018 in a move that OpenAI said at the time would prevent conflicts of interest. Musk's Tesla car company was looking for people in AI to help develop self-driving car technology.

　　Musk has since said he disagreed with the company's direction but continued to give money to the nonprofit.

　　Later, OpenAI created a for-profit arm and began moving most of its workforce⁶ to that business. But it kept its nonprofit board of directors that oversaw⁷ the company.

　　Microsoft investment

　　Microsoft made its first $1 billion investment in the company in 2019. The next year Microsoft signed an agreement with OpenAI giving Microsoft the rights to OpenAI's AI models. That agreement is supposed to end once OpenAI has created artificial general intelligence (AGI), the company has said.

　　AGI is a sort of artificial intelligence that can perform just as well or even better than humans in different kinds of work.

　　The nonprofit board of directors fired Altman as chief executive officer late last year. But Microsoft helped bring Altman back and pushed most of the old board of directors to leave.

　　Musk's lawsuit claims that those changes caused the balance of power protecting the nonprofit aim of the company to "collapse⁸ overnight." One of Musk's claims is that the directors of the nonprofit have failed in their duty to support its nonprofit aim.

　　Dana Brakman Reiser is a professor at Brooklyn Law School. She questions whether Musk has standing⁹, or a connection to the case, that a court would uphold.

　　She said it would be a problem if every person who cared about or gave money to a nonprofit group could bring a lawsuit against its leaders and officers. She said only other directors, or a government legal official could bring that sort of lawsuit.

　　Musk now has his own AI company. But his legal case against Altman could inform the public about private talks and decision-making that took place at OpenAI. The company's lawyers will likely fight to keep some of those documents from being released.

　　Investor Chamath Palihapitiya wrote on X, Musk's social media service: "The discovery will be epic¹⁰." Discovery is the process by which lawyers request documents related to a legal case. Musk answered in his only public comments on the case so far: "Yes."

　　Words in This Story

　　betray – v. to ignore your principles or beliefs in order to achieve something or gain an advantage for yourself

　　lawsuit – n. a claim or complaint against somebody that a person or an organization can make in court

　　code – n. a system of computer programming instructions

　　generate – v. to produce or create something

　　epic – adj. very great or large and usually difficult or impressive

1 musk   

n.麝香, 能发出麝香的各种各样的植物，香猫

参考例句：

• Musk is used for perfume and stimulant.麝香可以用作香料和兴奋剂。
• She scented her clothes with musk.她用麝香使衣服充满了香味。

2 maker   

n.制造者，制造商

参考例句：

• He is a trouble maker，You must be distant with him.他是个捣蛋鬼，你不要跟他在一起。
• A cabinet maker must be a master craftsman.家具木工必须是技艺高超的手艺人。

3 helping   

n.食物的一份&adj.帮助人的，辅助的

参考例句：

• The poor children regularly pony up for a second helping of my hamburger. 那些可怜的孩子们总是要求我把我的汉堡包再给他们一份。
• By doing this, they may at times be helping to restore competition. 这样一来, 他在某些时候,有助于竞争的加强。

4 lawsuit   

n.诉讼，控诉

参考例句：

• They threatened him with a lawsuit.他们以诉讼威逼他。
• He was perpetually involving himself in this long lawsuit.他使自己无休止地卷入这场长时间的诉讼。

5 investor   

n.投资者，投资人

参考例句：

• My nephew is a cautious investor.我侄子是个小心谨慎的投资者。
• The investor believes that his investment will pay off handsomely soon.这个投资者相信他的投资不久会有相当大的收益。

6 workforce   

n.劳动大军，劳动力

参考例句：

• A large part of the workforce is employed in agriculture.劳动人口中一大部分受雇于农业。
• A quarter of the local workforce is unemployed.本地劳动力中有四分之一失业。

7 oversaw   

v.监督，监视( oversee的过去式 )

参考例句：

• He will go down as the president who oversaw two historic transitions. 他将作为见证了巴西两次历史性转变的总统，安然引退。 来自互联网
• Dixon oversaw the project as creative director of Design Research Studio. 狄克逊监督项目的创意总监设计研究工作室。 来自互联网

8 collapse   

vi.累倒；昏倒；倒塌；塌陷

参考例句：

• The country's economy is on the verge of collapse.国家的经济已到了崩溃的边缘。
• The engineer made a complete diagnosis of the bridge's collapse.工程师对桥的倒塌做了一次彻底的调查分析。

9 standing   

n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的

参考例句：

• After the earthquake only a few houses were left standing.地震过后只有几幢房屋还立着。
• They're standing out against any change in the law.他们坚决反对对法律做任何修改。

10 epic   

n.史诗，叙事诗；adj.史诗般的，壮丽的

参考例句：

• I gave up my epic and wrote this little tale instead.我放弃了写叙事诗，而写了这个小故事。
• They held a banquet of epic proportions.他们举行了盛大的宴会。