For humanity's sake! Elon Musk is right about Sam Altman-led OpenAI’s hypocrisy

tech.hindustantimes.com:

Call it an epic troll by Elon Musk if you want, but the billionaire's lawsuit against OpenAI puts a refreshing spotlight on the endless humanitarian posturing by AI businesses.

Musk has sued the world-leading AI company and its chief executive officer, Sam Altman, for breaking their founding agreement about building powerful AI systems “for the benefit of humanity.” OpenAI still touts that mission on its website, but Musk is calling BS: “In reality… OpenAI Inc. has been transformed into a closed-source de facto subsidiary of the largest technology company in the world: Microsoft,” his lawsuit, filed in a San Francisco court on Thursday night, says.

He's right. But first, let's bear in mind why Musk might be suing. The billionaire is notoriously thin-skinned and known for holding a grudge. In the years after he invested in and then failed to buy a rival AI company called DeepMind, he trash-talked its founder Demis Hassabis. After he backed OpenAI, he then tried to buy the company, and then when he was rejected, started his own AI firm, called X.ai.

So take his legal quest with a pinch of salt. He's likely not only bitter, but eager to throw a punch at OpenAI.

Even so, Musk's lawsuit points to an exasperating phenomenon among the world's leading AI companies of starting life with promises to harness the transformative potential of artificial intelligence for the public good, only to end up falling under the sway of tech giants. 

Just this week for instance, Mistral, one of the world's hottest AI startups, looked destined to follow the same pattern. Based in Paris, Mistral has built AI models nearly as capable as ChatGPT for a fraction of the price and, crucially, made them open source, meaning anyone can use them for free if they have the computing resources. The company, which touts “fierce independence” and “a strong commitment to open, portable” AI on its website, has even put its models on torrent sites that people use to download pirated content. 

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