Elon Emails

Zilis relays Altman's position after the blow-up

From:
Shivon Zilis
Date:
September 22, 2017
To:
Elon Musk; cc Sam Teller
Subject:
Re: Non-profit
From Altman: Structure: Great with keeping non-profit and continuing to support it. Trust: Admitted that he lost a lot of trust with Greg and Ilya through this process. Felt their messaging was inconsistent and felt childish at times. Hiatus: Sam told Greg and Ilya he needs to step away for 10 days to think. Needs to figure out how much he can trust them and how much he wants to work with them. Said he will come back after that and figure out how much time he wants to spend. Fundraising: Greg and Ilya have the belief that 100's of millions can be achieved with donations if there is a definitive effort. Sam thinks there is a definite path to 10's of millions but TBD on more. He did mention that Holden was irked by the move to for-profit and potentially offered more substantial amount of money if OpenAI stayed a non-profit, but hasn't firmly committed. Sam threw out a $100M figure for this if it were to happen. Communications: Sam was bothered by how much Greg and Ilya keep the whole team in the loop with happenings as the process unfolded. Felt like it distracted the team. On the other hand, apparently in the last day almost everyone has been told that the for-profit structure is not happening and he is happy about this at least since he just wants the team to be heads down again.

About this email

Zilis passes along Altman's view: he is fine keeping the non-profit, has lost trust in Brockman and Sutskever, is taking a ten-day hiatus, and sees a path to tens of millions in donations, with Holden Karnofsky possibly offering more if OpenAI stays non-profit.

Notes

Text taken from the LessWrong transcription (habryka, Nov 16 2024), which the compiler states was checked against the originals. Sent Sep 22, 2017 5:54 PM.

Where it came from

Court record; attribution confirmed.

OpenAI, executive & internal. Tags: nonprofit, trust, fundraising, altman, negotiation, musk-v-openai