Elon Emails

Sutskever's New Year note: 'most overwhelmingly competent person in the world'

From:
Ilya Sutskever
Date:
January 1, 2018
To:
Elon Musk; bcc Greg Brockman
Subject:
Note
Hi Elon, We've been working together for almost exactly two years, so it felt appropriate to send this note. I enjoy working together. You quickly pushed me out of my academic comfort zone. With time, I grew to appreciate the vast depth of your strategic insight -- I can think of many examples, the biggest one is the decision to build the custom hardware. I've made my share of non-negligible mistakes in 2017, but their lessons will help us overcome the harder challenges of the future. We're trying to accomplish a difficult task, but with effort, we may be able to do it. It helps that we have the most overwhelmingly competent person in the world helping us. Happy 2018. Let's make 2017 pale in comparison.

About this email

Sutskever marks two years of working with Musk, credits his strategic insight (above all the decision to build custom hardware), admits mistakes in 2017 and calls Musk the most overwhelmingly competent person in the world.

Notes

Text taken from the PDF text layer of the court exhibit as filed on the Musk v. Altman docket (N.D. Cal. 4:24-cv-04722), via CourtListener/RECAP. Header timestamp 1/1/2018 8:45:15 AM. No reply from Musk is in the exhibit.

Where it came from

Court record; attribution confirmed.

OpenAI, executive & internal. Tags: gratitude, new-year, relationship, hardware, musk-v-openai