An OpenAI executive told a federal jury Wednesday how Elon Musk once called him a “jackass” during a heated clash over AI safety.
Joshua Achiam, OpenAI’s chief futurist, recalled the “pretty tense exchange” during testimony in the California civil trial between Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
“He snapped and called me a jackass,” Achiam testified.
Achiam said that around 50 to 60 employees had gathered during a February 2018 company all-hands meeting for a question-and-answer session ahead of Musk’s planned departure from the startup he cofounded with Altman.
According to Achiam, then a research scientist at OpenAI, Musk said he was leaving because Tesla, Musk’s electric car company, would soon compete with OpenAI for elite AI talent, creating a “conflict of interest.”
“He also indicated a general lack of confidence in OpenAI’s overall path,” Achiam said, adding that Musk “wanted to go and do his own thing and sort of pursue AGI in his own way.”
“It sounded like he wanted to race towards AGI, like he wanted to build it very fast, because he was very worried that someone else, if they got it, would do the wrong thing with it,” Achiam said.
Achiam said he and a few others were concerned that racing toward AGI was a “fairly unsafe proposition,” telling the jury that Musk was proposing something that seemed “reckless.”
“We didn’t know whether a science fiction super intelligence bootstrapping event where you set the thing running one night, and you come back the next morning, and it’s so unbelievably smart it can crack encryption and take over the world was a science fiction scenario or not?” he said.
Musk has accused Altman and OpenAI of stealing the “charity” they cofounded together in 2015 through its shift to a for-profit structure, while Altman has argued that Musk’s lawsuit was driven by a desire to take down an AI competitor.
The testimony from Achiman, called to the stand by Altman and OpenAI’s lawyers, appeared aimed at undercutting Musk’s portrayal of himself as focused on AI safety concerns.
When an OpenAI lawyer asked whether Musk may have been trying to push him out of his “comfort zone” by calling him a jackass — as Musk has alluded to in his own previous testimony in the case — Achiam said no.
“I don’t think that was why he called me that. I think he was just upset that he had been challenged,” Achiam said.
After the meeting, Achiam told the jury that a few colleagues expressed their gratitude to him. At the next company all-hands, he was presented with a trophy “to commemorate the exchange, and in thanks for having stood up to Elon.”
The trophy, Achiam said, was a gold statue depicting a “jackass” with an inscription: “Never stop being a jackass for safety.”
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