Elon Musk has been hitting out at OpenAI over its disputed non-profit structure with lawsuits and trolling, but OpenAI seems to be fighting back.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has called Elon Musk a bully. “Elon definitely did a lot to help OpenAI in the early days, I’m very grateful,” he said on a podcast. “I think he’s just a sort of legendary entrepreneur. (But) He’s also clearly a bully, and he’s also someone who clearly likes to get in fights. Right now it’s me. It’s been Bezos, Gates, Zuckerberg, lots of other people,” Altman added.
Altman was reacting to the various lawsuits Elon Musk has filed against OpenAI. Elon Musk had co-founded OpenAI in 2015, and had given it a large sum of money to start its operations. Musk had also lent his name to the company, and his association with OpenAI was crucial to the company being able to attract top talent. But differences arose between Elon Musk and Sam Altman and other senior OpenAI leaders over its governance structure. Musk eventually dissociated himself from the company, and OpenAI created a for-profit arm that raised money from Microsoft. OpenAI went on to release ChatGPT and is now worth $150 billion, but Musk hasn’t received anything in return for his initial equity investment because OpenAI changed its governance structure midway, starting off as a non-profit and then becoming a for-profit entity. Musk has since sued OpenAI, and also started his own rival AI Lab named xAI.
Altman seemed to hint that Musk’s actions were partly motivated over jealousy that OpenAI had become successful. “I think fundamentally, this is about OpenAI is doing really well. Elon cares about doing really well. Elon started and now runs a very direct competitor that’s trying to do exactly what OpenAI does,” Altman said. Altman also claimed that xAI’s structure was similar to OpenAI’s. “I’ll point out (that xAI) is a structure like a public benefit corporation. And I heard Elon has majority ownership and control and seems like a reasonable thing he would do,” he added.
Altman seemed to imply that Musk is aggrieved chiefly because he no longer controls OpenAI. “Everything we’re doing, I believe Elon would be happy about if he were in control of the company. He left when he thought we were like on a trajectory to certainly fail,” Altman added.
Altman seems to have chosen a strange time to attack Musk. Musk is currently at the top of his game — he’s being called the de-facto President of the United States over his closeness to Donald Trump, and his net worth has soared since Trump won reelection. It remains to be seen how the OpenAI-Elon Musk feud plays out, but this rivalry has added even more spice to the ongoing AI wars.