OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has signalled a willigness to work with Elon Musk to end the feud between them and work towards achieving artificial general intelligence (AGI). Notably, Musk and Altman share a complicated history which involves starting OpenAI together and now working as rivals in the same field.
On Saturday, both Musk and Altman were involved in a war of words over their previous stance criticising Donald Trump. The exchange started with Musk quoting a tweet from Y Combinator co-founder Paul Graham, which read, “Few have done more than Sam Altman to defeat Trump.”
Responding to that post, Altman replied, “we were both wrong, or at least i certainly was 🤷♂️ but that was from 2016 and this was from 2022”.
Altman was referencing a new article quoting a tweet from Musk in 2022 in which he wrote, “I don’t hate the man (Donald Trump), but it’s time for Trump to hang up his hat & sail into the sunset,”
The OpenAI CEO also waved the white flag, suggesting that they could be friends again.
“Anyway, see you next week, let’s be friends 🥺 👉👈 agi too important to let a lil feud get in the way” Altman wrote in his reply.
Notably, Musk has been a close ally of President Donald Trump and was also given the charge of running the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) by the US President. Meanwhile, Altman has also aligned with the US government’s agenda by contributing to the $500 billion Project Stargate for building AI infrastructure in the US.
Elon Musk’s rivalry with OpenAI:
While Musk exited OpenAI in 2018, he has been critical of the AI startup almost right after ChatGPT debuted to the public in late 2022. Musk criticized OpenAI’s ties with Microsoft, famously stating that it had become a “closed source, maximum-profit company effectively controlled by Microsoft,”.
In 2023, Musk also started his rival AI company called xAI which now runs the chatbot Grok that competes directly with OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
Musk has also filed several lawsuits against OpenAI over its relationship with Microsoft among other things. The most recent lawsuit that Musk filed was to stop OpenAI’s for-profit restructuring push.
While OpenAI earlier dismissed Musk as a zealous competitor, the ChatGPT maker had to finally change course after pressure from AI experts, former employees and attorney generals of a few states. Just this week, OpenAI announced that while its still spinning off its for-profit arm as a public benefit corporation (PBC), the non-profit would continue to retain control.
