OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who is in a legal dispute with rival Elon Musk, said he is “not that concerned” about Musk’s influence on the incoming Trump administration.
Altman told a New York Times briefing Wednesday that he “could be wrong,” but he strongly believes Musk will do the right thing.
“It would be profoundly un-American to use political power, to the degree that Elon has, to harm competitors and benefit your own businesses,” Altman said. “And I don’t think people would tolerate that. I don’t think Elon would do it
Musk, an early OpenAI investor and board member, sued the AI company earlier this year alleging that ChatGPT’s creator betrayed its founding goals of benefiting the public good rather than pursuing profits.
Musk recently escalated the lawsuit by asking a federal judge to halt OpenAI’s plans to turn itself into a profitable business.
President-elect Donald Trump is putting Musk, the world’s richest man, and Vivek Ramaswamy, an entrepreneur and former Republican presidential candidate, to head the new Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, which is a committee of external advisor who will work with people inside the government to reduce costs and regulations.
Musk, whose companies include Tesla, SpaceX and social media platform X, has created his own rival AI company, xAI, which Altman said he considers a serious competitor.
Asked about his broken relationship with Musk, Altman said he felt “extremely sad” but also characterized Musk’s legal battle as a battle for business competition.
“He’s a competitor and we’re doing well,” Altman said.
Altman also addressed another pending lawsuit against OpenAI by The New York Times, host of Wednesday’s DealBook summit of business and policy leaders.
The Times is among several media outlets that have sued San Francisco-based OpenAI and its business partner Microsoft for copyright infringement in using news articles to train AI systems like ChatGPT. The companies have argued that they are protected by the “fair use” doctrine of copyright law.
“If an AI reads something — a physics book — it can learn physics, it can use it for other things like a human can,” Altman said.
Lawyers for both sides gathered before a New York federal judge on Tuesday for more than four hours to resolve disagreements over how they would gather potential evidence from each other. Deposits are set to begin in January. A lawyer for the newspapers told the court that the publications have confirmed that millions of news articles were used to train the AI.
“Look, I don’t believe in showing up at somebody else’s house and being rude, but I will say, I think the New York Times is on the wrong side of history in a lot of ways.” €€ Altman told Times reporter Andrew Ross Sorkin during an on-stage interview Wednesday.
“We can discuss and argue and we will, I think, in court,” Sorkin replied, drawing laughter from the audience.
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