the reason for starting OpenAI was to create a counterweight to Google and DeepMind, which at the time had two-thirds of all AI talent and basically infinite money and compute. And there was no counterweight. It was a unipolar world. And Larry Page and I used to be very close friends, and I would stay at his house, and I would talk to Larry into the late hours of the night about AI safety. And it became apparent to me that Larry [Page] did not care about AI safety. I think perhaps the thing that gave it away was when he called me a speciest for being pro-humanity, as in a racist, but for species. So I’m like, “Wait a second, what side are you on, Larry?” And then I’m like, okay, listen, this guy’s calling me a speciest. He doesn’t care about AI safety. We’ve got to have some counterpoint here because this seems like we could be, this is no good.
I’m posting here because I remember reading a claim that Elon started OpenAI after getting bad vibes from Demis Hassabis. But he claims that his actual motivation was that Larry Page is an extinctionist. That seems like a better reason.
By the time Musk (and Altman et al) was starting OA, it was in response to Page buying Hassabis. So there is no real contradiction here between being spurred by Page’s attitude and treating Hassabis as the specific enemy. It’s not like Page was personally overseeing DeepMind (or Google Brain) research projects, and Page quasi-retired about a year after the DM purchase anyway (and about half a year before OA officially became a thing).
I was watching the recent DealBook Summit interview with Elon Musk, and he said the following about OpenAI (emphasis mine):
I’m posting here because I remember reading a claim that Elon started OpenAI after getting bad vibes from Demis Hassabis. But he claims that his actual motivation was that Larry Page is an extinctionist. That seems like a better reason.
By the time Musk (and Altman et al) was starting OA, it was in response to Page buying Hassabis. So there is no real contradiction here between being spurred by Page’s attitude and treating Hassabis as the specific enemy. It’s not like Page was personally overseeing DeepMind (or Google Brain) research projects, and Page quasi-retired about a year after the DM purchase anyway (and about half a year before OA officially became a thing).