OpenAI cofounder Wojciech Zaremba said it’s been “sad” to witness Elon Musk and Sam Altman engage in an “unnecessary fight.”
The computer scientist made the remark in an X post on Saturday after Musk sued OpenAI and its CEO.
Zaremba wrote, “I deeply respect @elonmusk, and I love @sama. It’s sad to see an unnecessary fight. It would be so much better to put your creative energy into building the future you dream of over a quarrel. May you (both) be happy and find peace.”
Zaremba joined four other OpenAI founders in posting private emails between them and Musk on its blog on Tuesday.
The blog suggested that Musk supported its plans to pivot to a for-profit company structure.
“We’re sad that it’s come to this with someone whom we’ve deeply admired—someone who inspired us to aim higher, then told us we would fail, started a competitor, and then sued us when we started making meaningful progress towards OpenAI’s mission without him,” the authors wrote.
Musk’s lawyers argued in the lawsuit against OpenAI, filed Thursday, that it had become a “closed-source de facto subsidiary” of Microsoft and that it had jeopardized its mission to build AI for the benefit of humanity.
The cofounders fired back in their blog post, saying: “In late 2017, we and Elon decided the next step for the mission was to create a for-profit entity. Elon wanted majority equity, initial board control, and to be CEO. In the middle of these discussions, he withheld funding.”
They also said Musk forwarded them an email that proposed they should “attach to Tesla as its cash cow,” and that he wanted to be CEO of OpenAI and have majority control. “Elon wanted majority equity, initial board control, and to be CEO. In the middle of these discussions, he withheld funding,” they said.
OpenAI said Musk left the company in late February 2018, but his lawyers claim he “continued to make contributions to OpenAI” until mid-September 2020.
OpenAI didn’t immediately respond to Business Insider’s request for comment, made outside of normal working hours.
