Among the many most fascinating components 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 It was about an outdated pal.
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 “wonderful,” as long as AI itself survived. Web page known as Musk a “speciest” for being “professional human.” Musk known as the angle “insane.”
That’s largely notable given how shut the 2 as soon as had been. Fortune included them on its 2016 record of secretly best-friend enterprise leaders; Musk was so snug with Web page that he often crashed at his Palo Alto dwelling. Web page as soon as instructed Charlie Rose that he’d quite give his cash 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 lower 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 below oath. Web page hasn’t commented, and it’s value remembering the whole lot that Musk stated was in service of a lawsuit. Nonetheless, as not too long ago as 2023 he instructed tech podcaster Lex Fridman he wished to patch issues up: “We had been buddies for a really very long time.”
