Elon Emails

Musk: 'OpenAI is on a path of certain failure relative to Google'

From:
Elon Musk
Date:
January 31, 2018
To:
Greg Brockman, Ilya Sutskever, Sam Altman; cc Sam Teller, Shivon Zilis; fwd Andrej Karpathy's email
Subject:
Fwd: Top AI institutions today
OpenAI is on a path of certain failure relative to Google. There obviously needs to be immediate and dramatic action or everyone except for Google will be consigned to irrelevance. I have considered the ICO approach and will not support it. In my opinion, that would simply result in a massive loss of credibility for OpenAI and everyone associated with the ICO. If something seems too good to be true, it is. This was, in my opinion, an unwise diversion. The only paths I can think of are a major expansion of OpenAI and a major expansion of Tesla AI. Perhaps both simultaneously. The former would require a major increase in funds donated and highly credible people joining our board. The current board situation is very weak. I will set up a time for us to talk tomorrow. To be clear, I have a lot of respect for your abilities and accomplishments, but I am not happy with how things have been managed. That is why I have had trouble engaging with OpenAI in recent months. Either we fix things and my engagement increases a lot or we don't and I will drop to near zero and publicly reduce my association. I will not be in a situation where the perception of my influence and time doesn't match the reality.

About this email

Forwarding Karpathy's chart, Musk tells OpenAI's leaders the organization is on a path of certain failure relative to Google, rejects the ICO, says the only paths are a major expansion of OpenAI and/or Tesla AI, and threatens to cut his involvement to near zero and publicly reduce his association.

Notes

Text taken from the LessWrong transcription (habryka, Nov 16 2024), which the compiler states was checked against the originals. Sent Jan 31, 2018 2:02 PM. Musk left the OpenAI board three weeks later.

Where it came from

Court record; attribution confirmed.

OpenAI, executive & internal. Tags: google, ico, funding, board, ultimatum, tesla-ai, musk-v-openai