Musk Issues Another Warning to OpenAI: "It Appeared Unethical and Illegal"

"I was offered equity (from OpenAI), but accepting it seemed unethical and illegal."

Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, once again took a jab at OpenAI, the developer of the generative AI ChatGPT. He revealed that he was previously offered equity by OpenAI but declined it because it appeared unethical.

Elon Musk [Photo by Yonhap News]

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On the 19th (local time), according to the U.S. economic media Business Insider, Musk made this statement in a reply to a question from a user on X (formerly Twitter) about his donation to the company at the time of OpenAI's founding.

Musk said, "It is not at all clear to me whether OpenAI's structure is legal," and at various points added, "I was offered equity, but accepting it seemed unethical and illegal."

However, he did not disclose when, from whom, or how much equity was offered.

Musk expressed a critical view of OpenAI. He was particularly critical of the multi-billion dollar partnership between OpenAI and the tech giant Microsoft (MS). Since 2019, MS has invested $13 billion (approximately 17.4 trillion KRW) in OpenAI and holds a 49% stake, making it the largest shareholder.

Last year, Musk stated on X, "OpenAI was founded as an open-source, non-profit company to act as a counterbalance to Google, but now it has become a closed-source, for-profit company effectively controlled by MS," adding, "This is not at all what I intended."

Meanwhile, Musk co-founded OpenAI in 2015 with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman but later parted ways. Musk resigned from the OpenAI board in 2018 due to conflicts of interest related to Tesla's AI research. However, he later claimed that he left because of differences in opinion with the OpenAI team and has since shown a critical stance toward OpenAI.

Additionally, Musk is focusing on developing his own AI. In December last year, he unveiled a new chatbot called 'Grok.'

Earlier in April of the same year, when announcing his AI development plans, Musk stated that ChatGPT is trained to be "politically correct" and "says things that are not true," and he pledged to create an AI that pursues truth to the maximum extent.

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