The bad blood between Elon Musk and Sam Altman shows no signs of going away.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has now claimed that Elon Musk leveraged his governmental influence to gain an unfair advantage against OpenAI. The remarks highlight the escalating rivalry between the two Silicon Valley titans and shed light on the evolving dynamics of the AI industry.
Altman, who co-founded OpenAI with Musk before their public and acrimonious split, did not mince words in his recent comments. “I had said, I think also externally, but at least internally after the election, that I didn’t think Elon was going to abuse his power in the government to unfairly compete,” Altman stated. “And I regret to say I was wrong about that. I mean, I don’t like being wrong in general. I just think it’s really unfortunate for the country that he would do these things and I didn’t think, I genuinely didn’t think he was going to.”
The OpenAI chief also acknowledged the current administration’s stance on the matter, expressing gratitude for their intervention. “I am grateful that the administration has really done the right thing and stuck up to that kind of behavior. But yeah, it sucks,” he remarked.
The statement also provided a window into Altman’s perspective on the broader AI race. He reflected on a past belief that the first to achieve a significant breakthrough would dominate the field entirely. “I think the thing that’s changed,” Altman mused, “where there was a couple years ago where people thought like, okay, whoever gets there first is the winner, and that’s it. And the game is over.”
However, he now sees a more distributed and competitive landscape. “And now we realize there are great AI labs elsewhere. Like Anthropic is building great tools. I think Google’s really got its game up. There’s good stuff happening everywhere, and it’s not gonna be that one person runs away with it,” Altman explained. He drew a compelling analogy to illustrate his point: “The discovery of AI was analogous to… the discovery of the transistor in many surprising number of ways. But many companies are gonna build great things on that and then eventually it’s gonna like seep into almost all products, but you won’t think about using transistors all the time. So, yeah, I think a lot of people are gonna build really successful companies built on this incredible scientific discovery.”
In a direct address of his fraught relationship with Musk, Altman expressed a desire for a less combative approach. “And I wish Elon would be less zero sum about it. Or negative sum. I think the pie is just gonna get bigger and bigger if we think of it that way,” he concluded.
Musk had co-founded OpenAI, and had been its biggest backer. But differences arose between him and the other executives, and he eventually left. OpenAI also didn’t stick to its original mission of remaining a non-profit, and raised funding from Microsoft. After ChatGPT ended up being a viral hit in 2022, OpenAI has been trying to turn into a for-profit entity. This has met with the ire of Musk, which has sued OpenAI, claiming that he’d initially funded the company assuming it would be a non-profit, and changing to a for-profit structure later was a breach of agreements.
Since then, Musk and Altman’s feud has spilled over on social media. On X, Musk had called Sam Altman “Scam” Altman, and said that OpenAI didn’t have backers for its $500 billion datacenter project, Stargate. Altman had also hit back, and said that Elon Musk was a bully, and that he was insecure and not a happy person. Thus far, these had been childish barbs, but Altman seems to have raised the stakes — he’s now implying that Musk used his influence in US government to unfairly compete against OpenAI. This seems to directly insinuate corruption, and might only serve to escalate the growing acrimony between the duo.