TL;DR: Karen Hao the investigative journalist who interviewed 300+ people (including 90+ current/former OpenAI employees) for her book Empire of AI — just went on Diary of a CEO with Steven Bartlett. In this clip she details how Altman allegedly mirrored Musk’s exact language on AI existential risk to get him to co-found OpenAI… then allegedly helped push him out in a backroom CEO power play. Here’s the key excerpt from the actual interview (paraphrased/quoted directly where possible): In 2015, Altman needed Musk on board. Musk was obsessed with AI as an existential threat. So Altman wrote blog posts calling superhuman AI “one of the greatest existential threats” — language that mirrored Musk’s famous “summon the demon” speeches almost word-for-word. Musk bought in, donated millions, and co-founded the company. Then, when they were forming the for-profit arm, co-founders Ilya Sutskever and Greg Brockman initially chose Musk as CEO. Altman (a personal friend of Brockman’s) allegedly appealed to him: “Don’t you think it would be a little bit dangerous to have Musk as CEO of this new entity… He’s famous, he has a lot of pressures… He could act erratically, he can be unpredictable. Do we really want a technology that could be super powerful in the hands of this man?” Brockman flipped. Then convinced Ilya. Musk found out and left. Hao notes that lawsuit documents later showed Musk felt “muscled out a little bit,” which is why he has such an intense vendetta. The bigger picture from her 300+ interviews (expanded in the full episode): Every major OpenAI builder eventually left feeling used and started direct competitors (Dario Amodei → Anthropic, Ilya Sutskever → SSI, Mira Murati → Thinking Machines Lab). No other tech giant has seen its entire original builder team walk and compete head-on. She also describes the pattern: Altman tailors the AGI message depending on the audience (cure cancer for Congress, best assistant for consumers, $100B revenue machine for Microsoft). And the company has been aggressive with critics via subpoenas and pressure on ex-employees. submitted by /u/jason_digital
Originally posted by u/jason_digital on r/ArtificialInteligence