GoKawiilIn late August 2017, key figures at OpenAI (then a small nonprofit research lab) gathered to discuss how they would create a for-profit to commercialize its technology and raise the funds needed to realize AGI.
Elon Musk was demanding full control of the company and had just given each of his co-founders a Tesla Model 3. CTO Greg Brockman said he saw that as way of buttering them up at a time when Musk and Sam Altman were vying to win support for their respective visions of the company’s future. OpenAI’s head of research, Ilya Sutskever, had commissioned a painting of a Tesla to give Musk during the meeting as a friendly gesture.
The conversation didn’t follow that mood: When Musk was told the others would not accede to his demand for control of the company, Brockman said he got angry and upset. He sat for several minutes thinking quietly.
Then, in Brockman’s telling, Musk said, “I decline.” The SpaceX and Tesla founder “stood up and stormed around the table…I thought he was going to hit me. He grabbed the painting and started to storm out of the room. And then he turned around and said, ‘When will you be departing OpenAI?’”
Brockman and Sutskever didn’t leave or commit to Musk’s vision. Musk stopped his regular donations to the company’s operating budget, and within six months, he would leave the board, though he paid for office space the company shared with Neuralink until 2020.
As today’s legal battle over the future of OpenAI proceeds, scrutiny has settled on a key period in 2017 when the organization’s original co-founders disagreed about who would control its future, eventually bringing us Musk’s lawsuit against his co-founders.
We have yet to hear from Sam Altman, but OpenAI president Greg Brockman testified for two days, often referencing a personal journal that offers a rare insight into what it’s like to be a 30-year-old tech executive in a pitched battle with Elon Musk.
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