Sam Altman emails Elon Musk

🌈 Abstract

The article discusses an email exchange between Sam Altman and Elon Musk regarding the creation of an AI lab with the mission of developing the first general AI for individual empowerment and safety. The key points include:

🙋 Q&A

[01] Sam Altman's Email to Elon Musk

1. What is the proposed mission of the AI lab?

• The mission would be to create the first general AI and use it for individual empowerment, with safety as a first-class requirement.

2. What is the proposed governance structure for the AI lab?

• The lab would start with a group of 7-10 people, with a governance structure of 5 people including Altman, Musk, and others.
• The technology would be owned by a foundation and used "for the good of the world", with the 5-person governance board deciding on cases where it's not obvious how to apply this.
• Researchers would have significant financial upside but it would be uncorrelated to what they build, to eliminate conflicts of interest.
• There would be an ongoing conversation about what work should be open-sourced and what shouldn't.

3. What is the proposed role for Elon Musk?

• Altman suggests Musk be involved in addition to just governance, to help get the work pointed in the right direction and attract the best people.
• Musk could come by and talk to the team about progress once a month, or be publicly supportive even if he can't spend much time on it.

4. What is the plan regarding the regulation letter?

• Altman suggests waiting until the AI lab is up and running, then releasing the regulation letter with a message about the need for safety constraints.
• Altman is happy to leave Musk off as a signatory, and suspects more people will be willing to get behind the letter after it's out.

[02] Elon Musk's Response

1. What is Elon Musk's response to Altman's proposal?

• Musk responds "Agree on all", indicating he is in agreement with Altman's proposed plan.

[03] Additional Context

1. What is the context provided by the New York Times article?

• The article states that Musk sued OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman, accusing them of breaching a contract by prioritizing profits and commercial interests over the public good in developing AI.
• Musk said OpenAI's partnership with Microsoft represented an abandonment of their founding pledge to carefully develop AI and make it publicly available.

2. What is the additional context provided by the Bloomberg article?

• The Bloomberg article is titled "OpenAI Isn't Open Enough for Elon", suggesting Musk's lawsuit was related to OpenAI not being open enough in its development of AI technology.

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