(Note: I don’t believe this is the only explanation, or even the most likely one; if pushed I’d assign it maybe 20%, though with large uncertainty bars, of the counterfactual force behind the FLI letter coming into existence. Note also: I’ve signed the letter, I think it’s net positive.)
Some excerpts:
OpenAI was founded as a nonprofit in 2015, with Elon Musk as the public face of the organization. [...] OpenAI was co-founded by Sam Altman, who butted heads with Musk in 2018 when Musk decided he wasn’t happy with OpenAI’s progress. [...] Musk worried that OpenAI was running behind Google and reportedly told Altman he wanted to take over the company to accelerate development. But Altman and the board at OpenAI rejected the idea that Musk—already the head of Tesla, The Boring Company and SpaceX—would have control of yet another company.
“Musk, in turn, walked away from the company—and reneged on a massive planned donation. The fallout from that conflict, culminating in the announcement of Musk’s departure on Feb 20, 2018, [...],” Semafor reported last week.
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When Musk left his stated reason was that AI technology being developed at Tesla created a conflict of interest. [...] And while the real reason Musk left OpenAI likely had more to do with the power struggle reported by Semafor, there’s almost certainly some truth to the fact that Tesla is working on powerful AI tech.
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The fact that Musk is so far behind in the AI race needs to be kept in mind when you see him warn that this technology is untested. Musk has had no problem with deploying beta software in Tesla cars that essentially make everyone on the road a beta tester, whether they’ve signed up for it or not.
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Rather than issuing a statement solely under his own name, it seems like Musk has tried to launder his concern about OpenAI through a nonprofit called the Future of Life Institute. But as Reuters points out, the Future of Life Institute is primarily funded by the Musk Foundation.
Of course, there’s also legitimate concern about these AI tools. [...]
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Musk was perfectly happy with developing artificial intelligence tools at a breakneck speed when he was funding OpenAI. But now that he’s left OpenAI and has seen it become the frontrunner in a race for the most cutting edge tech to change the world, he wants everything to pause for six months.
The Forbes article “Elon Musk’s AI History May Be Behind His Call To Pause Development” discusses some interesting OpenAI history and an explanation for how this FLI open letter may have come to be.
(Note: I don’t believe this is the only explanation, or even the most likely one; if pushed I’d assign it maybe 20%, though with large uncertainty bars, of the counterfactual force behind the FLI letter coming into existence. Note also: I’ve signed the letter, I think it’s net positive.)
Some excerpts:
Update (April 14th; 23 days after the open letter was published): Musk starts new AI company called X.AI.