Elon Emails

Musk: DeepMind odds rising; OpenAI needs urgency

From:
Elon Musk
Date:
February 19, 2016 (Sent 12:05 AM)
To:
Ilya Sutskever, Greg Brockman, Sam Altman
Subject:
Re: Followup thoughts
Frankly, what surprises me is that the AI community is taking this long to figure out concepts. It doesn't sound super hard. High-level linking of a large number of deep nets sounds like the right approach or at least a key part of the right approach. [REDACTED] The probability of DeepMind creating a deep mind increases every year. Maybe it doesn't get past 50% in 2 to 3 years, but it likely moves past 10%. That doesn't sound crazy to me, given their resources. In any event, I have found that it is far better to overestimate than underestimate competitors. This doesn't mean we should rush out and hire weak talent. I agree that nothing good would be achieved by that. What we need to do is redouble our efforts to seek out the best people in the world, do whatever it takes to bring them on board and imbue the company with a high sense of urgency. It will be important for OpenAI to achieve something significant in the next 6 to 9 months to show that we are for real. Doesn't need to be a whopper breakthrough, but it should be enough for key talent around the world to sit up and take notice. [REDACTED]

About this email

Musk says he is surprised the AI community is slow to figure out concepts, estimates DeepMind's odds of success are growing each year, and urges redoubled recruiting and a significant result within 6 to 9 months.

Notes

Two passages are redacted in the exhibit. The earlier message(s) in the 'Followup thoughts' thread that Musk is replying to were not published.

Where it came from

Court record; attribution confirmed.

OpenAI, executive & internal. Tags: deepmind, urgency, recruiting, competition, timelines, musk-v-openai