“I’m the reason OpenAI exists,” Tesla and Twitter CEO Elon Musk said Tuesday in an interview with CNBC.
When asked by interviewer David Faber how much he invested in the creator of ChatGPT, Musk replied, “I’m not sure of the exact number, but it’s a number on the order of $50 million.”
“It wouldn’t exist without me,” he added.
Elon Musk founded OpenAI with Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, Ilya Sutskever, John Schulman, and Wojciech Zaremba in December 2015.
“I was instrumental in recruiting key scientists and engineers, especially Ilya Sutskever,” Musk said. “Ilya’s involvement was the linchpin for OpenAI to ultimately be a success.”
Almost seven years later, in November 2022, OpenAI launched the first iteration of the ChatGPT chatbot, the successors that took the world by storm.
The name OpenAI, Musk said, refers to open-source software. Open-source values call for making the source code of a program or platform freely available and able to be distributed and modified.
Musk said the idea was to create a rival to Google, which Musk called a closed-source for-profit company.
“That profit motive can be dangerous,” he said.
Musk said he and Google co-founder Larry Page had long conversations discussing artificial intelligence.
“I’ve always urged him to be careful about the risk of AI,” Musk said. “He’s not at all concerned about the nature of AI and is very much into it.”
In 2014, Google acquired a UK-based artificial intelligence research laboratory, DeepMind Technologies, for $500 million.
But while the idea of taking over Google may have been enticing, Musk said he initially thought it was a hopeless endeavor.
“How can we compete with—how can OpenAI compete with—Google DeepMind?” he said. “It seems like an ant against an elephant is not a competition.”
Musk has expressed concerns about what he sees as OpenAI’s shift to a closed-source for-profit model like Google’s.
“It seems strange that something can be a nonprofit, open source, and somehow transform itself into a for-profit, closed source,” he said, likening it to an environmental organization created to save the Amazon rainforest from being turned into a log. company.
“I also think it’s important to understand, when push comes to shove — let’s say they create some digital super intelligence, almost god-like intelligence, who’s in control?”
Musk also noted his concern about the relationship between OpenAI and software giant Microsoft, which has invested $13 billion in the company since 2019.
“I’m concerned that Microsoft may actually be more in control than, as the OpenAI leadership team realizes,” he said, adding that Microsoft owns the rights to all the software and everything it needs to run. the system of inference, which gives them a good. control deal with OpenAI.
Calling artificial intelligence a double-edged sword, Musk said the technology is likely to make life better, creating an age of abundance.
“There is some chance that it will go wrong and destroy humanity,” he said, adding that the chance is small, but not zero.
In March, Musk and several members of the high-profile tech community, including Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, signed an open letter calling for a six-month moratorium on AI development after to launch OpenAI’s GPT-4.
“A friend of mine, Max Tegmark, a physicist at MIT, wanted me to sign the letter,” he said. “I know it’s useless. I just wanted to call it like it’s one of those things for the record, I recommend that we pause,” he said. “I thought we were? Of course, not at all.”
