03/07/2024

The Fear That Inspired the Creation of OpenAI

Many tech leaders' fears spawned its creation

Last week, Elon Musk 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 counternarrative.

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.

Please select this link to read the complete article from WIRED.