Elon Musk thought that OpenAI would fail: Sam Altman

SAN FRANCISCO — OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman has said that Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk thought that the ChatGPT-maker company would fail and “he chose to part ways”.

In an interview with podcaster Lex Fridman, Altman said that “Musk thought OpenAI was going to fail. He wanted total control to turn it around. We wanted to keep going in the direction that now has become OpenAI. He also wanted Tesla to be able to build an AGI effort”.

“At various times, he wanted to make OpenAI into a for-profit company that he could have control of or have it merge with Tesla. We didn’t want to do that, and he decided to leave, which is fine,” he added.

Moreover, the CEO suggested that the company is still committed to its original cause as it is putting powerful technology in the hands of people for free, as a public good.

“We don’t run ads on our free version. We don’t monetise it in other ways. We just say it’s part of our mission. We want to put increasingly powerful tools in the hands of people for free and get them to use them,” Altman said.

Recently, Musk sued OpenAI and Altman, alleging they breached their original contractual agreements around AI.

OpenAI then hit back at Musk’s lawsuit, saying as the company discussed a for-profit structure in order to further the mission, “Musk wanted us to merge with Tesla or he wanted full control”.