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OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has reiterated his disdain for Elon Musk as he commented on a gesture the Tesla billionaire made toward Amazon chief Jeff Bezos in 2021.
When Musk surpassed Bezos as the richest person in the world, he sent him an emoji of a silver medal to outline his own new-found status in a manner typical of the controversial South African-born entrepreneur.
Altman’s comments, during an interview with podcaster Lex Fridman, extended to complaints over a lack of collaboration on artificial intelligence (AI). His comments mark another chapter in the ongoing dispute between the influential pair, on the back of recent legal action taken by Musk to sue Altman and OpenAI for supposedly reneging on its original mission of developing responsible AI technology.
As expected, the Microsoft-backed company made a court filing to counter the lawsuit.
What did Sam Altman say about Elon Musk?
In a conversation on the Lez Fridman podcast, the host put to Altman that all of the AI heavyweights should be working together on matters of interest and toward the goal of artificial general intelligence (AGI) but the boss of the ChatGPT maker said this wasn’t “really the thing [Musk is] most known for.”
He continued, “I was thinking, someone just reminded me the other day about how the day that he surpassed Jeff Bezos for richest person in the world, he tweeted a silver medal at Jeff Bezos.”
“I hope we have less stuff like that as people start to work towards AGI,” said Altman.
Bezos would later retake the number one spot, after a surge in the price of Amazon shares, but the oneupmanship witnessed in this incident is a theme that extends to Musk’s business dealings and relationships, just like he wants to have the upper hand on OpenAI, the company he co-founded with Altman before a parting of the ways led to the creation of his own xAI startup.
This week, it confirmed the open release of its Grok artificial intelligence (AI) model, detailing the weights and architecture of the system.
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