Elon Musk’s 2016 Emails Reveal His ‘Extreme Mental Stress’ Over DeepMind’s Ambitions

Key Takeaways

• Elon Musk is suing OpenAI and its co-founders Sam Altman and Greg Brockman.
• Musk’s lawyers have shared emails between OpenAI’s co-founders.
• The emails reveal Musk’s unease about the prospect of Google DeepMind developing powerful AI.

A cache of emails between OpenAI’s founders has been revealed as part of Elon Musk’s lawsuit against the company.

The emails show that disagreements over OpenAI’s structure existed as early as 2016. In them, Musk also expressed his anxiety at the prospect of Google DeepMind winning the AI race.

Musk vs. Open AI

Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI accuses co-founders Sam Altman and Greg Brockman of reneging on the organization’s “founding agreement.”

According to Musk, who provided the initial capital for the venture, Altman and Brockman assured him OpenAI would remain a non-profit organization committed to developing artificial intelligence openly and transparently.

Yet today, it has become a profit-making entity with a decidedly closed-off approach to development.

While it is easy to see why Musk feels betrayed by OpenAI’s direction, the defendants insist no such “founding agreement” exists and that Musk has failed to identify a specific legal contract that has been breached.

However, in the latest disclosures, Musk’s lawyers are trying to demonstrate the existence of such an agreement, even if no formal contract was signed.

The Email That Started It All

One email published by Transformer News appears to show the moment when Altman first approached Musk about the prospect of working together to develop AI.

“Been thinking a lot about whether it’s possible to stop humanity from developing AI” he wrote. “I think the answer is almost definitely not. If it’s going to happen anyway, it seems like it would be good for someone other than Google to do it first.

In his initial proposal, Altman suggested using Y Combinator, which he was then President of, to start a “Manhattan Project for AI.”

Musk responded to the email, saying it was “probably worth a conversation.”

OpenAI Founders Against Big Tech

From Altman’s initial email onward, the idea that Google DeepMind would develop the world’s most powerful AI unchecked was a concern for OpenAI’s founders.

“DeepMind is causing me extreme mental stress,” Musk wrote in 2016. “If they win, it will be really bad news with their one mind to rule the world philosophy.”

Meanwhile, according to Brockman and another co-founder, Ilya Sutskever, Musk was “concerned that [DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis] could create an AGI dictatorship.”

However, Google DeepMind wasn’t the only Big Tech AI firm Musk had reservations about.

In emails between Musk and his associate Sam Teller, Musk said he felt “nauseous” about the prospect of entering into a partnership with Microsoft.

However, he eventually agreed to move forward with a deal as long as the Silicon Valley giant didn’t use it in their marketing.

“Would be worth way more than $50 million not to seem like Microsoft’s marketing bitch,” he insisted.