Recently, the legal dispute between Elon Musk and OpenAI has exposed early internal emails, revealing a fierce conflict between OpenAI founders over control of artificial intelligence. The content of the email shows that co-founder Ilya Suzkovel expressed strong concerns about Musk’s desire to control artificial intelligence, believing that this may lead to the dictatorship of artificial intelligence in the future. This email was written shortly after Musk left OpenAI, highlighting its importance and triggering people's thinking about the development direction of artificial intelligence.
Recently, as Elon Musk filed a lawsuit against Sam Altman, early internal OpenAI emails were exposed, triggering widespread attention on the power struggle between the company's founders. In the email, OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever expressed deep concerns about Musk’s strong desire to control artificial intelligence.
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In an email to Musk and Altman in September 2017, Suzkowir pointed out that Musk's desire for control may pose a potential threat to future human-level artificial intelligence (AGI). He emphasized in the email that "the current structure provides a path for you to eventually have unilateral absolute control of AGI." Although Musk has said that he does not want to control the final AGI, Suzkville believes that he behavior shows a focus on absolute control.
Notably, the email came less than six months after Musk resigned from OpenAI over disagreements over how the company was funded. Sutskower made clear his concerns in the email, saying, "As the company makes real progress with AGI, you may choose to maintain absolute control of the company, even if that is not your current intention."
In the second half of the email, Suzkwer further pointed out that OpenAI’s goal is to create a better future and avoid the emergence of AGI dictatorship. He mentioned Musk's concerns that Demis Hassabis, the founder of Google DeepMind, might create an AGI dictatorship, and believed that this concern was reasonable. He therefore called for the creation of a structure that would prevent Musk from becoming a dictator, especially in the context of technology enabling this possibility.
The content of the email is particularly striking today because it reveals that the issue of control is a complex and sensitive topic when it comes to creating artificial intelligence with human intelligence. As time went on, Suzkowir himself left OpenAI to form a new company focused on artificial intelligence security, a change that added weight to the content of the email.
Highlight:
Early internal OpenAI emails show that employees were worried about Musk’s desire to control the field of artificial intelligence.
Suzkowir warned that Musk’s absolute control over AGI could have serious consequences.
OpenAI's goal is to create a better future that avoids AGI dictatorship.
The exposure of this email makes us once again examine the issues of power and control in the development of artificial intelligence. How to balance innovation and security and how to avoid the abuse of artificial intelligence technology are key issues worthy of our consideration. The future direction of artificial intelligence will depend on how effectively we manage and control this powerful technology.