The most interesting parts of Elon Musk’s testimony in his lawsuit against OpenAI on Tuesday weren’t the charity he claimed was stolen from him (we all knew that). it was coming). It was about an old friend.
Musk stated that one of his main motivations for co-founding OpenAI was his disagreement with Google’s Larry Page over the issue of AI safety — specifically, a conversation in which Musk brought up the prospect of AI destroying humanity, and Page dismissed it as “good” as long as AI survives. Page called Musk “most special” for being “professional.” Musk called this attitude “madness”.
That’s mostly remarkable considering how close the two once were. Fortune included them on its 2016 Secret Best Friends list of business leaders; Musk was so comfortable with Page that he regularly crashed at his home in Palo Alto. Page once told Charlie Rose that he wanted more give your money to Mask rather than charity.
Friendship did not escape OpenAI. When Musk hired Google AI star Ilya Sutskever to help found the company in 2015, Page felt personally betrayed and cut ties.
It’s a story Musk has told before, including to author Walter Isaacson for his best-selling biography of Musk — but Tuesday was the first time he told it under oath. The page didn’t comment, and it’s worth noting that everything Musk said served the claim. Back in 2023, he told tech podcaster Lex Friedman that he wanted to make things right: “We’ve been friends for a long time.”
