Newly-revealed courtroom exhibits in the blockbuster case between Elon Musk and Sam Altman show how OpenAI nearly ended up with a different name — one intended as a jab at an AI rival.
Musk and Altman, along with others, founded OpenAI in December 2015 as a nonprofit AI research lab.
A November 2015 email exchange between the two shows how Musk pitched calling the firm “Freemind,” framing the name as “partly an intentional philosophical counter” to Google’s DeepMind AI lab.
“Least bad name I have thought of so far is Freemind. Conveys the sense that we are trying to create digital intelligence that will be freely available to all — the opposite of Deepmind’s one-ring-to-rule-them-all approach,” Musk wrote to Altman, trial exhibits submitted by Musk’s legal team show.
Altman wasn’t completely sold, saying the name was “a little too close to Deepmind.”
“I really like the word free here thought—freethink? Freemerge?” Altman’s email read. The OpenAI CEO said his “best idea” for a name so far was “Axon.”
In response, Musk said he liked Axon as an option, “although it does slightly sound like Google Brain or, more generally, that we think digital intelligence consists of brain emulation.”
“Pretty much all names suck in the beginning though,” Musk wrote. “Given several choices, I tend to favor names that convey the mission of the company and hopefully have a positive impact on recruitment.”
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Altman told the Tesla and SpaceX CEO in another email that he was “warming up fast” to the idea of Freemind.
“It definitely coveys [sic] the right spirit. Also thinking about names related to Turing somehow,” Altman wrote, referring to famed computer scientist Alan Turing, who devised a test in the 1950s to assess whether a machine could pass as human.
Musk responded, “Something Turing-related that doesn’t sound too ominous might be good. Want to avoid the Turing Test association though, as that sounds too much like we are replacing humans.”
The high-stakes federal civil trial in Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI and Altman over the company’s transition to a for-profit entity kicked off Monday with opening arguments in an Oakland, California, courtroom.
Musk, the world’s richest person, was called as the first witness on Monday by his attorneys, and he continued his testimony on Tuesday.
While under questioning by his lead trial attorney, Steven Molo, Musk told the nine-person jury about his AI concerns and what led him to cofound OpenAI.
“I thought it was extremely important to have a counterbalance to Google,” Musk testified. “Google did not seem to care about AI safety at that time.”
Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment by Business Insider on Wednesday.
