Open AI is one of the most fascinating companies in the world right now, as evidenced by the uproar during CEO Sam Altman’s visit to Germany on Thursday (which I and colleagues reported on here). The company has released what is arguably the fastest-growing program ever, Chat-GPT, and it’s somewhat forgotten that Elon Musk was instrumental in the founding of Open AI. This Semafor article breaks down the conflict again after talking to insiders: the conflict of interest between Musk’s parent company Tesla – which, like Open AI, wanted to bring in the best AI developers -, Musk’s plans to take over the leadership of Open AI – what a part supported by the leadership group – then the strange departure from Musk, which irritated employees. Musk got into a fight in 2018, and since then he has been attacking Altman for turning the nonprofit into a billion-dollar company.
As is typical for Semafor, the article has a clear structure and is the perfect length to get through the complex situation – for those in a hurry who want to read a bit of Silicon Valley soap between all the chat GPT prompts.