OpenAI claims Elon Musk wanted to merge it with Tesla as it responds to tech tycoon’s ‘profit over humanity’ suit
NY Post
OpenAI — in its first public comments since Elon Musk claimed in a lawsuit the artificial intelligence behemoth puts “profit over humanity” — claimed the tech tycoon tried to gain “full control” of the company six years ago by merging it with Tesla.
The ChatGPT-maker included the allegation in a Tuesday evening blog post, saying “We intend to move to dismiss all of Elon’s claims,” which include that Sam Altman has led the firm to “radically depart from its original mission” by prioritizing profit over humanity.
“As we discussed a for-profit structure in order to further the mission, Elon wanted us to merge with Tesla or he wanted full control,” OpenAI’s founding team and executives — including Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, Ilya Sutskever, John Schulman, Wojciech Zaremba — penned in the post.
In early February 2018, the same month Musk left OpenAI — reportedly over disagreements with the deal Altman struck with Microsoft, marking a transition away from the company’s purely nonprofit roots — he “forwarded us an email suggesting that OpenAI should ‘attach to Tesla as its cash cow,’ commenting that it was ‘exactly right,'” per OpenAI’s blog post.
“Tesla is the only path that could even hope to hold a candle to Google,” Musk reportedly added in the note.
The OpenAI band went on to expose Musk’s vow to make a $1 billion funding commitment to the company — the most valuable AI startup that’s reportedly worth $80 billion in the wake of a recent secondary stock sale.
