OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is ‘not that worried’ about Musk’s influence in the Trump administration

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who is in a legal dispute with rival Elon Musk, said he is “not that worried” about Musk’s influence in the incoming Trump administration.

Altman told a New York Times conference Wednesday that he “may turn out to be wrong” but he strongly believes that Musk will do the right thing.

“It would be profoundly un-American to use political power, to the degree that Elon has it, to hurt your competitors and advantage your own businesses,” Altman said. “And I don’t think people would tolerate that. I don’t think Elon would do it.”

Musk, an early OpenAI investor and board member, sued the artificial intelligence company earlier this year alleging that the maker of ChatGPT betrayed its founding aims of benefiting the public good rather than pursuing profits. Musk recently escalated the lawsuit by asking a federal judge to stop OpenAI’s plans to convert itself into a for-profit business more fully.

President-elect Donald Trump is putting Musk, the world’s richest man, and Vivek Ramaswamy, an entrepreneur and former Republican presidential candidate, in charge of the new Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, which is an outside advisory committee that will work with people inside the government to reduce spending and regulations.

Musk, whose companies include Tesla, SpaceX and social media platform X, has started his own rival AI company, xAI, that Altman said he considers a serious competitor.

Asked about his frayed relationship with Musk, Altman said he felt “tremendously sad” but also characterized Musk’s legal fight as one about business competition.

“He’s a competitor and we’re doing well,” Altman said.

Altman also addressed another pending lawsuit against OpenAI from The New York Times, host of Wednesday’s DealBook summit of business and political leaders.

The Times is among several news outlets that have sued San Francisco-based OpenAI and its business partner Microsoft for copyright infringement in the use of news articles to train AI systems like ChatGPT. The companies have argued they are protected by the “fair use” doctrine of copyright law.

“If an AI reads something — a physics textbook — it can learn physics, it can use that for other things like a human can,” Altman said.

Lawyers for both sides gathered before a New York federal magistrate judge Tuesday for more than four hours to work out disagreements over how they would collect potential evidence from one another. Depositions are set to begin in January. A lawyer for the newspapers said in court that the publications have confirmed millions of news articles were used for AI training.

“Look, I don’t believe in showing up in someone else’s house as a guest and being rude, but I will say, I think The New York Times is on the wrong side of history in many ways,” Altman told Times journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin during the on-stage interview Wednesday.

“We could discuss and debate that and we’ll do that, I think, in court,” Sorkin responded, to laughter from the audience.

—Matt O’Brien, AP technology writer

Larry Neumeister contributed to this report.

https://www.fastcompany.com/91240566/openai-ceo-sam-altman-elon-musk-trump-administration?partner=rss&utm_source=rss&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=rss+fastcompany&utm_content=rss

Utworzony 5mo | 4 gru 2024, 20:10:02


Zaloguj się, aby dodać komentarz

Inne posty w tej grupie

Who is Aaron Parnas? He’s the guy breaking news to Gen Z

If you’re not on TikTok, you may not have heard of Aaron Parnas. But for many young people across the U.S., he’s a prominent political news source, with over 3.5 million followers on TikTok and ju

28 kwi 2025, 10:40:09 | Fast company - tech
Inside a single day on TikTok: 117 million videos, billions of views

Getting a sense of the scale of social media platforms can be tricky. While tech companies often share self-serving metrics—like monthly active users or how likely users are to buy products after

28 kwi 2025, 10:40:08 | Fast company - tech
Is social media hurting teens’ mental health? It’s complicated

Social media is terrible for teens’ mental health—or is it?

At the same time that

28 kwi 2025, 06:10:07 | Fast company - tech
3 quick, easy AI chatbot prompts that can help you do your job better

Fun fact: The saying “work smarter, not harder” is coming up on its 100th birthday. Coined

28 kwi 2025, 06:10:06 | Fast company - tech
Is Apple falling behind on hardware?

If you’ve followed Apple for any length of time, you’ve no doubt come across the notion that the company doesn’t rush into adopting cutting-

27 kwi 2025, 11:30:07 | Fast company - tech
This free audio enhancer will totally transform your voice memos

Every now and then, you run into a tool that truly wows you.

It’s rare—especially nowadays, when everyone and their cousin is coming out with overhyped AI-centric codswallop tha

26 kwi 2025, 12:20:10 | Fast company - tech