Elon Musk on Sam Altman and ChatGPT: I am the reason OpenAI exists

open AI I mean you seem somewhat frustrated with them you were one of the big contributors early on the reason I am the recent opening AI exists um how much money did you give them um so uh I I I'm not sure the exact number but it's some some number on the order of 50 million dollars uh so so the man fate loves irony next level um so I used to be close friends with Larry Page and I would say at his house and we'd have these conversations long into long into the evening about Ai

and I would I would be constantly urging him to be careful about the danger of AI and um and and he he just he was really not concerned about the danger of AI and was quite Cavalier about it um and um and and at the time uh Google especially after their acquisition of deepmind had three quarters of the world's AI Talent they had obviously a lot of computers and a lot of money um so it was a unipolar world four four Ai and and to go to unipolar world but but the the person who who

controls that does not or at least did not seem to be concerned about AI safety that that's uh that sounded like a real problem so um and then the final straw was uh Larry calling me a speciesist uh for being um pro-human Consciousness instead of machine Consciousness and I'm like well yes I guess I am I I am a speciesist and and uh so right so you helped to the creation of open AI you put as much as 50 million dollars more than helps it wouldn't exist without it wouldn't exist without you um I came

up with a name uh the name open AI refers to open source um so it's the intent was what's the okay so what was the opposite what's the opposite of um of Google which would be a an open source non-profit because Google is closed Source for-profit um and that profit motivation can be financially dangerous um so uh should you have gotten governance for that money should you have gotten some level of control perhaps in retrospect yeah I I I fully admit to being a huge idiot here um so um anyway so so open AI was

like meant to be open AI open as an open source uh it was created as a 51c3 um and um but but so so part of it is also in the beginning I thought look this is this is probably a hopeless Endeavor how could we possibly compete with how could open AI possibly compete with with Google deepmind I mean this this seemed like an ant against an elephant you know which is not a contest um and um and I was also uh I mean I I I I was instrumental in recruiting the the key uh

scientists and Engineers most specifically most notably Ilya soskire um in fact um ILY went back and forth several times because he would say he's going to join openai then Demus would convince him not to then I I would convince him to do so and then and this went back and forth several times and ultimately he decided to join open Ai and really uh Ilia Jordan was the what was was the linchpin full uh opening eye being ultimately successful you're very disappointed in what's happened there in terms of it becoming a for-profit in some way I

I do think that there's some look it does seem weird that something can be um a non-profit uh open source and somehow transform itself into a for-profit closed Source um I mean this would be like like let's say you funded an organization to save the Amazon rainforest instead they became a lumber company and chopped down the forest and sold it for money and you'd be therefore like well wait a second that's the exact opposite of what I gave the money for yeah uh is that legal that doesn't seem legal and if it is and in

general if it is legal to start a company as a non-profit and then take the IP and transfer it to a for-profit that then makes tons of money um shouldn't everyone start shouldn't that be the default um and and then I also think it's important to understand the the like like when push comes to shove let's say they do create some some digital super intelligence almost Godlike intelligence well who's in control yeah and and what is exactly is the relationship between open Ai and Microsoft um and I do worry that uh Microsoft actually may be

more in control than say the leadership team at open AI realizes um I mean Microsoft as part of the Microsoft's investment they have uh rights to all of the software all of the model weights and everything necessary to run the inference system so they essentially have a great deal of control at any point Microsoft could cut off open AI