Home Tech At his OpenAI trial, Musk relitigates an historical friendship

At his OpenAI trial, Musk relitigates an historical friendship

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At his OpenAI trial, Musk relitigates an historical friendship

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Image Credit:Jeff Chiu / AP
  • Connie Loizos

Amongst doubtlessly the most attention-grabbing parts of Elon Musk’s testimony Tuesday in his lawsuit in opposition to OpenAI wasn’t the charity he claims changed into stolen from him (we all knew that changed into coming). It changed into about an historical friend.

Musk testified that one in every of his core motivations for co-founding OpenAI changed into a falling-out with Google’s Larry Web page over AI security — namely, a dialog whereby Musk raised the risk of AI wiping out humanity and Web page shrugged it off as “stunning,” goodbye as AI itself survived. Web page referred to as Musk a “speciest” for being “pro human.” Musk referred to as the standpoint “insane.”

That’s mostly considerable given how terminate the two once had been. Fortune integrated them on its 2016 checklist of secretly supreme-friend replace leaders; Musk changed into so blissful with Web page that he time and again crashed at his Palo Alto home. Web page once steered Charlie Rose that he’d rather give his cash to Musk than to charity.

The friendship didn’t survive OpenAI. When Musk recruited Google AI star Ilya Sutskever to help starting up the company in 2015, Web page felt for my part betrayed and bring to a halt contact.

It’s a tale Musk has steered before — including to author Walter Isaacson for his bestselling biography of Musk — but Tuesday changed into the dear time he said it below oath. Web page hasn’t commented, and it’s value remembering the entirety that Musk said changed into in carrier of a lawsuit. Still, as lately as 2023 he steered tech podcaster Lex Fridman he wished to patch things up: “We had been chums for a extraordinarily very long time.”

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