Sam Altman and Elon Musk are the most prominent figures in the tech industry right now, and are behind one of the most successful AI companies, called OpenAI. Their different takes on AI and "rivalry" plays a huge role in the future of humanity, as we move towards the AI revolution.

We have recently seen and heard Elon and Sam taking jibes at each other. It’s no secret that Elon Musk has played a significant role in steering the OpenAI engine. He has also shown his criticism towards the company becoming “maximum profit” and expressed his concerns about Microsoft being in control more than the leaders at OpenAI. 

Recently, on firing of Sam Altman as the CEO of OpenAI, Elon also expressed his support for Ilya in the on-going OpenAI controversy, while indirectly pointing fingers at Sam.

Sam Altman, on the other hand, called Elon Musk a jerk and said that he would want to stay away from his “style.” But the question is: where is this rivalry stemming from?

2015: Harmony through a bigger cause 

Elon and Sam: Pre-OpenAI

To fully understand the story of Elon Musk and Sam Altman, we have to start with their own individual backgrounds. 

Both of them are seasoned entrepreneurs, as we know today. However, in 2015, the year OpenAI was founded, both were on different trajectories. By 2015, Elon Musk had already founded PayPal and SpaceX and become the CEO of Tesla. So, he was already considered a “disrupter” in Silicon Valley and the world. 

Altman, on the other hand, had less entrepreneurial experience than Elon and was primarily known in the technological circles for being the president of Y Combinator. 

Sam sold his first company at about USD43.9 million in 2012 and went on to run Y Combinator in 2014. Y Combinator was a startup enabler that helped startups with various aspects of launching, including getting funded.

The collective valuation of Y Combinator companies exceeded USD65 billion, encompassing entities like Airbnb, Dropbox, Zenefits, and Stripe. So you can figure out how huge the impact of Y Combinator is. He was also a lead investor in one of the funding rounds of Reddit.

Hence, Sam Altman was a well-regarded and reliable Silicon Valley entrepreneur with a good track record of running companies, especially tech startups. 

How did Elon Musk and Sam Altman first meet?

The tech industry is quite well-connected, and people tend to know each other. A partner at Y Combinator introduced Elon and Sam to each other and took Sam for a tour of the SpaceX office.

In his Vanity Fair interview, Sam recalled his “awesome” SpaceX tour. He also mentioned the trust and mutual respect that he and Elon had. 

Shared philosophy: To keep AI in Good Hands

Because of their shared interest, Sam and Elon, before launching OpenAI in 2015, were already discussing the idea of AI in a non-profit structure for a year or two. The idea was to have “more good guys than bad ones” when it comes to AI development. 

In addition, they wanted optimal incentives towards the technology rather than being driven by profits. 

In 2015 Summer, their idea started to shape into an executable plan, which finally started in the fall of 2015. Sam Altman and Elon Musk discussed various structures and concluded that this one offered the most benefits. 

Unlike obligations to shareholders, this structure aligns with a genuine nonprofit ethos, allowing operations based solely on what is optimal.

In 2015, Y Combinator was doing a video series with top entrepreneurs like Mark Zuckerburg and Vinod Khosla, titled “How to Build the Future,” in which Elon Musk was one of the guests.

Elon Musk has been an AI critic for the longest time and publicly spoke about its dangers and ill effects before 2015. He wasn’t against the technology but believed that it’s easy for AI to go out of control. Hence, his approach towards AI was always conservatively careful. 

However, he wasn’t the only one who thought along those lines. Many other great minds in tech, including Sam Altman, were in harmony with that thought. 

In December 2015, OpenAI was launched as an AI research-based non-profit entity to deal with the dangers of artificial intelligence and drive its evolution. It was co-founded by Musk and Y Combinator/Sam, alongside other big names like Peter Thiel and Jessica Livingston.

Elon Musk’s Initial Journey in OpenAI

Elon Musk’s fear of AI

Google acquired Deepmind in 2014 and was already putting in massive resources, talent, and manpower towards building AI technologies. 

Apple also acquired several AI-related companies that year, including Perceptio and VocalIQ, as part of its ongoing efforts to enhance Siri, its virtual assistant. 

These acquisitions aimed to improve Apple's AI capabilities, particularly in natural language processing and understanding. Facebook also made advancements in AI research and development, notably with the establishment of its AI Research (FAIR) division. 

This division focused on various AI-related projects, including natural language processing, computer vision, and deep learning. Facebook continued to invest in AI technologies to improve user experiences across its platform.

Not just tech companies but even automobile companies were making big moves. Toyota announced the establishment of the Toyota Research Institute (TRI) in November 2015. 

This initiative aimed to focus on AI, robotics, and autonomous driving technology. TRI was created to explore advanced technologies that could improve safety on the roads, make driving more accessible, and enhance the overall mobility experience.

It's safe to say that AI started advancing at an enormous rate. While he acknowledged the incredible advancements AI can bring, Musk has repeatedly warned about its potential dangers, cautioning that AI could pose a significant risk to humanity if not properly regulated.  He's advocated for proactive regulation and oversight to ensure that AI development prioritizes safety and ethical considerations. 

In this interview, Elon Musk recalls his conversations with Larry Page (Co-founder of Google) about AI. He expresses that Larry wasn’t as concerned about the dangers of AI as Elon was and also called Elon a “speciest” for being “pro-human consciousness.” Moreover, after acquiring DeepMind, Google had 75% of the total AI talent in the world. 

With that concern and skepticism towards AI being in the wrong hands, Musk co-founded OpenAI to advance AI in a safe and beneficial manner, emphasizing the need for responsible AI development.

Elon’s Contribution

Elon Musk also claims that he contributed USD50 million to OpenAI and also came up with its name. The initial idea was for OpenAI’s technology and patents to be open sources, meaning everyone would have access to it. 

Altman recently admitted that Elon Musk was a “talent magnet” at that time because he had a good reputation and not just recruited but also convinced engineers and scientists like Ilya Sutskever to join OpenAI, who was monumental in building the company thereafter. 

To give you a context, Sutkever is the brain behind Google’s TensorFlow and played a huge role in deep learning development. Moreover, Ilya was working at Google before joining OpenAI, and he wasn’t sure he should take this step. However, Elon's vision, personal brand, and trust convinced him to do so!

Elon Musk and Sam Altman's partnership and shared beliefs

After starting with OpenAI, Elon and Sam’s joint efforts expanded with OpenAI's Gym launch in 2016, offering an open-source platform for AI algorithm development, fostering global advancements in AI research and development.

In 2018, their collaboration extended to Neuralink, a neurotechnology company co-founded by Musk. Altman's involvement contributed to advancing Neuralink's mission of developing brain-machine interfaces for medical research and assisting individuals with neurological conditions. Altman also invested in the company later on, in 2021. 

Beyond their professional endeavors, Musk and Altman shared a common vision of creating innovative AI technology but not at the expense of humanity, without it being driven by profit-making tendencies. 

It seems like their collaboration extended beyond business interests, reflecting a deeper commitment to driving transformative change and pioneering advancements for humanity.

Both are driven by a deep commitment to addressing humanity's critical issues and envisioning an innovative future. 

Altman's focus on artificial intelligence and Musk's ambitions in space exploration converge on the belief that groundbreaking technologies can drive societal progress. They emphasize the ethical implementation of these advancements, advocating for careful consideration before execution.

Why did Elon Musk leave OpenAI?

Sam Altman has expressed publicly that Elon Musk was skeptical of the future of OpenAI and felt that the organization was falling behind companies like Google and Apple. 

Elon Musk also said that he felt the situation to be like an “Ant against an elephant” and doubted how OpenAI could compete against Google’s Deepmind. It felt like a “hopeless endeavor” to him at that time.

Could it be that Elon was intimidated by the advancements of competing organizations and did not have enough faith in the company? 

Musk also offered his leadership to OpenAI and wanted to take the company under his wing, but the founders were against it. 

Later, in 2018, Elon Musk announced that he was parting ways with OpenAI. He mentioned a “conflict of interest,” as the development of AI in Tesla had started at that time. 

However, it’s also possible that Elon Musk did not want OpenAI to become profitable, which it did just a year later in 2019. I am hinting at this possibility because the charter for the company funding started to roll out in April 2018 itself. 

Sam Altman’s Opinion on AI

Altman embraces AI's transformative power but is also cautious about it. He sees it as a catalyst for progress, enhancing human capabilities and addressing complex challenges. But at the same time, Altman also advocates for governance frameworks and stresses the importance of AI regulation.

He believes that humanity can adapt to AI but also acknowledges its dangers and is careful about the speed of this technology. Sam supports profitability and has developed a more capitalistic approach toward OpenAI. However, OpenAI LLP still follows that core philosophy it had while starting OpenAI organization and has a “Safety” wing in the company for human-ai value alignment. 

Sam Altman and Elon Musk’s clashing philosophies

At the start, both Elon, Sam, and other of OpenAI’s founding members were pro-non-profit and wanted to work towards conscious AI technology. However, OpenAI needed monetary resources to carry out its high computational activities, retain its exceptional engineering talent, and at the same time be ambitious and ahead of its competition. So it decided to go for profit, raised investment, and capped its profit at 100x. 

Elon Musk, maybe, didn’t have the same vision as the rest of the OpenAI team. Elon spoke against the company going capped profit and also questioned its legality. 

He criticized it in 2020, saying OpenAI is “not open enough.” He also showed his disapproval towards Dario Amodei’s leadership. It seems like Elon Musk had a different direction in mind for OpenAI. 

Recently, Elon also introduced xAI, an AI-focused startup aimed at understanding the fundamental principles of the universe through artificial intelligence. The company revealed its first AI model called Grok, emphasizing ethical AI development.

It could be that Elon’s philosophy around AI has also evolved to it being profitable, as he plans to integrate xAi with x (formerly Twitter).

Lastly, it’s also important to note that Sam Altman doesn’t own any equity in OpenAI, which hints at his idea of serving his role towards technology and monetizing it only for its evolution and to stay ahead of the competition. This information suggests that maybe he doesn’t care about profits much and just wants to fulfill his duty toward building a safe AI company. 

To conclude, both entrepreneurs are super ambitious and have similar thoughts towards AI but just different approaches. 

Elon Musk’s Safer Alternative

On July 12, 2023, Elon Musk announced xAI, an AI firm that aims to create safer artificial intelligence alternatives and explore the possibilities of the universe. This move indicated Musk's intention to create an alternative AI entity that could ensure ethical and safe AI development, positioning xAI as a competitor to OpenAI in this domain.

Conclusion

This is the case of the creation being bigger than the creators! Even with good intent, things can go wrong, so the risk is huge! And hence the clashes and rivalries. 

With Microsoft and Bing being in the picture, only the future will tell what OpenAI does. However, it’s great to see the trend of more conscious entrepreneurship!

Tech leaders have learned from the past, and they acknowledge the risks of the tech they are building. While stopping growth and preventing tech from evolving is impossible, we can always be mindful of it. 

History has given us technological wonders that proved to be total disasters for humankind, like nuclear weapons, thalidomide, surveillance technology, etc. We all hope AI is not one of them!

Lastly, it’s clear that Elon Musk didn’t want his invention going in the direction it is going in right now. However, this friendship, followed by a rivalry, has shaped the AI world into what it is now. 

Without Elon, Ilya would not have been a part of the OpenAI, and without Ilya, OpenAI could not have created the technology it created! Similarly, if Google hadn’t acquired DeepMind, maybe Musk would have never even felt the urgency to start OpenAI. 

It’s only because of the competitive spirit, ethical debates, and divergent perspectives that different AI companies are shaping up the technology and accelerating our journey to the future.