Elon Musk last week sued two of his OpenAI cofounders, Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, accusing them of “flagrant breaches” of the trio’s original agreement that the company would develop artificial intelligence openly and without chasing profits. Late on Tuesday, OpenAI released partially redacted emails between Musk, Altman, Brockman, and others that provide a counter narrative.
The emails suggest that Musk was open to OpenAI becoming more profit-focused relatively early on, potentially undermining his own claim that it deviated from its original mission. In one message Musk offers to fold OpenAI into his electric-car company Tesla to provide more resources, an idea originally suggested by an email he forwarded from an unnamed outside party.
The newly published emails also imply that Musk was not dogmatic about OpenAI having to freely provide its developments to all. In response to a message from chief scientist Ilya Sutskevar warning that open sourcing powerful AI advances could be risky as the technology advances, Musk writes, “Yup.” That seems to contradict the arguments in last week’s lawsuit that it was agreed from the start that OpenAI should make its innovations freely available.
Despite ongoing legal disputes, the correspondence unveiled by OpenAI reveals a formidable group of technology entrepreneurs who founded an organization that has amassed remarkable influence. OpenAI often emphasizes its mission as the development of artificial general intelligence – machines more intelligent than humans – however, the founders appear to express more apprehension about the rising power of corporations like Google than they show enthusiasm about AGI.
“I believe we should announce that our initial funding commitment is $1B. This is not a figure of speech. I will cover any shortfalls,” Musk penned in a communication discussing the launch of OpenAI. He deemed a proposed initial announcement of $100 million in funding inadequate, citing the immense financial resources of companies like Google and Facebook.
Musk co-founded OpenAI alongside Altman, Brockman, and others in 2015, during another wave of intense AI speculation chiefly focused around Google. Just one month prior to OpenAI becoming an official nonprofit, Google’s AI program, AlphaGo, had sufficiently mastered Go, an exceptionally complex board game, to beat a world champion human player. This accomplishment shocked numerous AI experts who had deemed Go too nuanced for computer proficiency in the foreseeable future, demonstrating the potential for AI to conquer seemingly insurmountable challenges.
The contents of Musk’s lawsuit corroborates certain previously disclosed details about the early days of OpenAI, including Musk’s first introduction to the potential risks of AI in a 2012 meeting with Demis Hassabis, the co-founder and CEO of DeepMind. DeepMind, the company that developed AlphaGo, was bought by Google in 2014. The lawsuit further affirms Musk’s considerable disagreement with Google co-founder Larry Page about future AI threats, a discord which reportedly resulted in the termination of their friendship. Musk ultimately left OpenAI in 2018, and appears to have grown increasingly disillusioned with the project following the rampant success of ChatGPT.
Since OpenAI released the emails with Musk this week, speculation has swirled about the names and other details redacted from the messages. Some turned to AI as a way to fill in the blanks with statistically plausible text.
“This needs billions per year immediately or forget it,” Musk wrote in one email about the OpenAI project. “Unfortunately, humanity’s future is in the hands of [redacted],” he added, perhaps a reference to Google cofounder Page.
Elsewhere in the email change, the AI software—like some commentators on Twitter—guessed Musk had forwarded arguments that Google had a powerful advantage in AI from Hassabis.
Whoever it was, the relationships on display in the emails between OpenAI’s cofounders have since become fractured. Musk’s lawsuit seeks to force the company to stop licensing technology to its primary backer, Microsoft. In a blog post accompanying the emails released this week, OpenAI’s other cofounders expressed sorrow at how things had soured.
“We’re sad that it’s come to this with someone whom we’ve deeply admired,” they wrote. “Someone who inspired us to aim higher, then told us we would fail, started a competitor, and then sued us when we started making meaningful progress towards OpenAI’s mission without him.”
Andy Greenberg
Amanda Hoover
Joel Khalili
Matt Simon
