At his OpenAI trial, Musk relitigates an outdated friendship

Among the many most fascinating components of Elon Musk’s testimony Tuesday in his lawsuit in opposition to OpenAI wasn’t the charity he claims was stolen from him (all of us knew that was coming). It was about an outdated good friend.

Musk testified that considered one of his core motivations for co-founding OpenAI was a falling-out with Google’s Larry Web page over AI security — particularly, a dialog during which Musk raised the prospect of AI wiping out humanity and Web page shrugged it off as “positive,” as long as AI itself survived. Web page known as Musk a “speciest” for being “professional human.” Musk known as the angle “insane.”

That’s largely notable given how shut the 2 as soon as had been. Fortune included them on its 2016 listing of secretly best-friend enterprise leaders; Musk was so comfy with Web page that he repeatedly crashed at his Palo Alto dwelling. Web page as soon as instructed Charlie Rose that he’d moderately give his cash to Musk than to charity.

The friendship didn’t survive OpenAI. When Musk recruited Google AI star Ilya Sutskever to assist launch the corporate in 2015, Web page felt personally betrayed and lower off contact.

It’s a narrative Musk has instructed earlier than — together with to creator Walter Isaacson for his bestselling biography of Musk — however Tuesday was the primary time he stated it beneath oath. Web page hasn’t commented, and it’s price remembering every thing that Musk stated was in service of a lawsuit. Nonetheless, as lately as 2023 he instructed tech podcaster Lex Fridman he needed to patch issues up: “We had been mates for a really very long time.”