Elon Musk Credits Himself For ChatGPT-Parent's Success: 'I Am The Reason OpenAI Exists'

Elon Musk credited himself as the driving force behind the establishment of OpenAI during an interview on Tuesday.

What Happened: Musk said that he was the driving force behind the existence and success of OpenAI, attributing it partly to his past investment and the role he played in recruiting top talent, while speaking with CNBC's David Faber during Tesla Inc.'s TSLA annual shareholder meeting.

"I am the reason OpenAI exists," Musk said, adding, "I came up with the name." 

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During the discussion, Musk revealed that he used to be friends with Larry Page, the co-founder of Alphabet Inc.‘s GOOG GOOGL Google, and they had conversations about artificial intelligence. Musk said he was "quite cavalier" about AI safety, but the final straw in their friendship was when called him "species-ist" for advocating human consciousness over machine's. 

The Tesla CEO said that the name OpenAI refers to open source. He said that considering Google had a monopoly at the time with their acquisition of DeepMind, he wanted to build a company that would be the opposite of the tech giant. That means an open-sourced, non-profit entity. 

The tech billionaire stated that he invested close to $50 million in OpenAI and then compared the transition of ChatGPT-parent from being a non-profit to a for-profit organization with an example related to Amazon rainforest. "Let's say you funded an organization to save the Amazon rainforest and they said they became a lumbar company and chopped down the forest." 

Musk also reasserted his questions about Microsoft and OpenAI's deal. He questioned, "What exactly is the relationship between OpenAI and Microsoft." 

The tech mogul believes that Microsoft Corporation MSFT might be more in control of OpenAI. "At any point, Microsoft can cutoff OpenAI"

Why It's Important: In the past, Musk has repeatedly stated that Microsoft has control over OpenAI and criticized the startup’s capped-profit model. Microsoft first plowed $1 billion into OpenAI in 2019 and reinvented it in 2021. The tech giant added $10 billion to the investment tally earlier this year. 

It was previously reported that Musk wanted to run OpenAI, the company he co-founded in 2015 and left in 2018 over some disagreements — by himself, but fellow co-founder Sam Altman and others turned down his proposal.

Despite being a signatory to a letter calling for an immediate pause in AI developments "more powerful" than OpenAI's GPT-4, Musk plans to launch his own AI-powered chatbot, called "TruthGPT." 

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