OpenAI Might Change its Name Soon

Recently, Elon Musk posted on X that he would drop the lawsuit if OpenAI changed its name to ClosedAI, saying that the company needs to stop living a lie.

However, OpenAI firmly accepts that not open-sourcing the models is the right way to go ahead. In an email dated January 2, 2016, chief scientist Ilya Sutskevar told Musk, “As we get closer to building AI, it will make sense to start being less open.”

“The ‘Open’ in OpenAI means that everyone should benefit from the fruits of AI after it’s built, but it’s totally OK to not share the science [even though sharing everything is definitely the right strategy in the short and possibly medium term for recruitment purposes],” Sutskevar told Musk.

To this, Musk replied with a simple, “Yup!”

Back in 2015, Musk, in a conversation with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, had said, “No one company or small set of individuals should have control over advanced AI technology; this is very dangerous.” On the contrary, the company claims that both Musk and OpenAI were aligned in making the entity for-profit, and that as they get closer to AGI, the entity would become increasingly ‘more closed’.

Elon has a DeepMind Problem, Not OpenAI

On the surface, Musk appears to strongly dislike OpenAI since it shifted to a for-profit model, choosing to be closed-source. Musk suing the hottest AI startup – now valued at $80 billion – certainly does not make sense, as he went back to the initial conversations accusing it of deviating from its original mission and becoming a de facto subsidiary of its investor company, Microsoft.

However, the reality is that way back in 2015, Musk tried building a Google DeepMind rival in which OpenAI was supposed to play a key role. Musk was close friends with Google founder Larry Page, who used to have deep discussions about AI and its impact on the future.

“I used to be close friends with Page. I would stay at his house in Palo Alto, and we would talk late into the night about AI safety. I would constantly urge him to be careful about the dangers of AI, but he was not really concerned. He was quite cavalier about it,” said Musk in an interview. According to Musk, Page instead ‘wanted a sort of digital super-intelligence’, hoping to become “a digital god, if you will, as soon as possible”.

The Birth of OpenAI

This was the turning point in Musk and Page’s relationship, which led to the birth of OpenAI. OpenAI’s recently published blog, containing the email exchanges between Altman, Musk, Sutskever, and president of OpenAI Greg Brockman kind of completes the puzzle.

Musk built OpenAI to challenge Google’s monopoly. Initially, Brockman and Altman had planned to raise $100M. However, Musk felt that the amount was too little, to begin with, and forwarded an email to OpenAI, saying, “We need to go with a much bigger number than $100M to avoid sounding hopeless… I think we should say that we are starting with a $1B funding commitment… I will cover whatever anyone else doesn’t provide.”

However, according to OpenAI, it only received $45M from Musk and more than $90M from other donors. Cut to 2018, Musk felt that OpenAI would require more money. “My probability assessment of OpenAI being relevant to DeepMind/Google without a dramatic change in execution and resources is 0%. Not 1%. I wish it were otherwise,” Musk told Sutskever, in an email interaction.

He emphasised the need for billions in funding annually, indicating that several hundred million won’t be enough. Musk even proposed merging OpenAI with Tesla. In early February 2018, he forwarded an email suggesting that OpenAI should “attach to Tesla as its cash cow”, commenting that it was “exactly right… Tesla is the only path that could even hope to hold a candle to Google”.

In 2018, Musk, sensing OpenAI’s inability to compete with Google, left the organisation to fend for itself. Subsequently, he accelerated AI development at Tesla and founded an AI entity known as xAI.

In a series of events last year, Altman was dismissed from the board, later rehired, and ultimately took charge by replacing the board at OpenAI, likely moving the board from being fully aligned with the initial mission of open source, non-profit to closed source, for-profit with a strong backing from Microsoft.

Cut to the present, the suing of OpenAI seems a little too intentional or a measure to stall its growth and progress, so Musk’s xAI and other rivals pick up pace with the company. Microsoft is paying the price.

The post OpenAI Might Change its Name Soon appeared first on Analytics India Magazine.