DeepMind<\/a>, which Google acquired in 2014, was trying to persuade Sutskever that Google was the best place for him. \u00a0<\/p>\n\u201cIt was mostly Demis on one side and me on the other, both trying to recruit Ilya, and Ilya went back and forth,\u201d said Musk. \u201cFinally he did agree to join openAI. That was one of the toughest recruiting battles I\u2019ve ever had, but that was really the linchpin for OpenAI being successful.\u201d<\/p>\n
Musk described himself as the \u201cprime move behind OpenAI, in the sense that it was created because of discussions that I had with [Google cofounder] Larry Page back when he and I were friends.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
He described staying at Page\u2019s house and talking to him about AI safety.<\/p>\n
\u201cLarry did not care about AI safety, or at least at the time he didn\u2019t,\u201d Musk said. \u201cAt one point he called me a speciesist for being pro-human. And I\u2019m like, \u2018Well, what team are you on Larry?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Musk said that what concerned him was that Google had acquired DeepMind and had \u201cprobably two-thirds of all the AI researchers in the world. They had basically infinite money and compute, and the guy in charge, Larry Page, did not care about safety.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
When Fridman suggested Musk and Page might become friends again, Musk replied, \u201cI\u2019d like to be friends with Larry again. Really the breaking of the friendship was over OpenAI, and specifically I think the key moment was recruiting Ilya Sutskever.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Musk called Sutskever \u201ca good human\u2014smart, good heart.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Disappointment with OpenAI <\/h2>\n
Musk left OpenAI\u2019s board in 2018 after a power struggle. In the years since he\u2019s expressed disgust with its direction under Altman, especially after OpenAI accepted billions in investments from Microsoft<\/a> and moved away from its nonprofit status. \u00a0<\/p>\nAltman has called Musk a \u201cjerk\u201d<\/a> but also recently acknowledged his role<\/a> in OpenAI\u2019s founding.\u00a0<\/p>\n\u201cElon was definitely a talent magnet and attention magnet, for sure, and also just like has some real superpowers that were super helpful to us in those early days,\u201d he said on the In Good Company<\/em> podcast in September.<\/p>\nMusk, for his part, tweeted<\/a> earlier this year, \u201cOpenAI was created as an open source (which is why I named it \u201cOpen\u201d AI), non-profit company to serve as a counterweight to Google, but now it has become a closed source, maximum-profit company effectively controlled by Microsoft. Not what I intended at all.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n