Among the many most fascinating elements of Elon Musk’s testimony Tuesday in his lawsuit towards OpenAI wasn’t the charity he claims was stolen from him (all of us knew that was coming). It was about an outdated buddy.
Musk testified that one in all his core motivations for co-founding OpenAI was a falling out with Google’s Larry Web page over AI security — particularly, a dialog through which Musk raised the prospect of AI wiping out humanity and Web page shrugged it off as “tremendous,” as long as AI itself survived. Web page referred to as Musk a “speciest” for being “professional human.” Musk referred to as the perspective “insane.”
That’s largely notable given how shut the 2 as soon as had been. Fortune included them on its 2016 checklist of secretly best-friend enterprise leaders; Musk was so snug with Web page that he repeatedly crashed at his Palo Alto residence. Web page as soon as instructed Charlie Rose that he’d fairly give his money to Musk than to charity.
The friendship didn’t survive OpenAI. When Musk recruited Google AI star Ilya Sutskever to assist launch the corporate in 2015, Web page felt personally betrayed and minimize off contact.
It’s a narrative Musk has instructed earlier than — together with to creator Walter Isaacson for his bestselling biography of Musk — however Tuesday was the primary time he stated it beneath oath. Web page hasn’t commented, and it’s price remembering all the things that Musk stated was in service of a lawsuit. Nonetheless, as just lately as 2023 he instructed tech podcaster Lex Fridman he needed to patch issues up: “We had been pals for a really very long time.”
