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February 18, 2023
Sam Altman
i remember seeing you in a tv interview a long time ago (maybe 60 minutes?) where you being attacked by some guys, and you said they were heroes of yours and it was really tough.
well, you’re my hero and that’s what it feels like when you attack openai. totally get we have some screwed some stuff up, but we have worked incredibly hard to do the right thing, and i think we have ensured that neither google nor anyone else is on a path to have unilateral control over AGI, which i believe we both think is critical.
i am tremendously thankful for everything you’ve done to help—i dont think openai would have happened without you—and it really fucking hurts when you publicly attack openai.
Elon Musk
I hear you and it is certainly not my intention to be hurtful, for which I apologize, but the fate of civilization is at stake.
Sam Altman
i agree with that, and i would really love to hear the things you think we should be doing differently/better.
it’s also not clear to me how the attacks on twitter help the fate of civilization, but that’s less important to me that getting to the right substance.
also, i checked with our team on recruiting from tesla. we really are doing very little relative to the size of the company, but i will make sure we don’t hurt tesla, i obviously think it’s a super important company.
[This document is from Musk v. Altman (2026).]
Previously: Sam Altman: “BTW, good idea for me to tweet something nice about Elon?” (February 9, 2023)
From: Kevin Scott
Sent: Sunday, November 19, 2023 7:31 AM
To: Frank X. Shaw, Satya Nadella, Brad Smith, Amy Hood, Caitlin McCabe
Frank,
I can help you with the timeline and with our best understanding of what was going on. I think the reality was that a member of the board, Ilya Sutskever, had been increasingly at odds with his boss, Sam, over a variety of issues.