In his experience with OpenAI, Musk is abandoning his old friendship

Among the most interesting parts of Elon Musk’s testimony Tuesday in his lawsuit against OpenAI was not the charity he claims was stolen from him (we all knew it was coming). It was about an old friend.

Musk testified that one of his primary motivations for co-founding OpenAI was a disagreement with Google’s Larry Page over the safety of AI — specifically, a conversation in which Musk raised the possibility that AI could wipe out humanity, and Page dismissed it as “fine,” as long as the AI ​​itself survives. Big described Musk as a “kind” for being “pro-human.” Musk described this situation as “crazy.”

This is mostly noticeable given how close they were before. Fortune magazine included them on their 2016 Best Secret Friends of Business Leaders list; Musk was so comfortable with Page that he regularly crashed at his home in Palo Alto. Page once told Charlie Rose that he would rather donate his money to Musk than to charity.

Friendship did not survive OpenAI. When Musk hired Google AI star Ilya Sutskever to help launch the company in 2015, Page felt personally betrayed and cut off contact with him.

It’s a story Musk has told before — including to author Walter Isaacson for his best-selling biography of Musk — but Tuesday was the first time he said it under oath. Page did not comment, and it is worth noting that everything Musk said was in the service of a lawsuit. However, as of 2023, he told tech presenter Lex Friedman that he wants to patch things up: “We’ve been friends for a very long time.”