Elon Musk vs. OpenAI: Round 2

Welcome Artisan,

As tech workers, we have all seen our fair share of drama, especially on the app formerly known as Twitter.

But most of the time, the drama does not involve the potential fate of humanity falling into the wrong hands or a high-stakes power struggle around the most powerful technology we have collectively ever had.

The stakes are a bit higher this time, but the memes are equally bad.

Let’s dive in.

The One Big Thing

Elon Musk Fights on Twitter, OpenAI in Blogs

In this edition of “Choose Your Fighter”, we have Elon Musk, Memelord, vs. OpenAI, A Hopefully Respectable Company Vying for Public Approval.

The Basics:

• Elon sued OpenAI for “abandoning its mission," of making AGI open for all of humanity and pursuing a profit based motive for the company

• OpenAI fired back with a series of emails from years ago, showing Elon Musk expressing that OpenAI had “0%” chance of catching up to Google

• People on X make fun of Elon for these messages

• OpenAI internal emails revealed the company always planned to make AI “less open” as AGI got closer

• Elon starts posting memes about “ClosedAI”, Sam Altman, and whoever else he can think of

• OpenAI’s board members also get in on the action

Okay, so it turns out that Silicon Valley is just high school. More accurately, it’s the table at lunchtime where all the nerds sit and gossip, while everyone else plays around and enjoys their free time.

Except in this scenario, the nerds are on the brink of developing an all powerful technology, and the one to get their first probably becomes the richest and maybe most powerful person ever.

Everybody in this image is a billionaire, many times over.

Life is stranger than fiction, but my hot take is that this is actually an important debate here. What is OpenAI’s actual responsibility to pursue its original mission, which is to make AGI safe for all of humanity?

Is there legal precedent for when a company starts as a non-profit, creates a for-profit subsidiary, sells it, and then has to deal with the fallout?

I generally believe the market can sort these things out on its own, but this is the key risk of advanced AI systems: centralization. The longer this battle wages on, ironically, the better chance we have of having a safe AGI.

The last thing any billionaire wants is for other billionaires to have total control.

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