Benzinga - by Ananya Gairola, Benzinga Staff Writer.
Just days after slamming Marc Andreessen over his stance on Elon Musk's lawsuit against OpenAI, venture capitalist Vinod Khosla has now shared a series of posts responding to the Tesla CEO's comments about him.
What Happened: Khosla, who is an early OpenAI investor, on Wednesday took to X, formerly Twitter, saying, "Elon Musk said ‘Vinod doesn't know what he is talking about!" but can explain some points.
He then went on to say that Musk left OpenAI after reneging on his word to "cover whatever of the initial $1B anyone else doesn't provide." He made that decision simply because ChatGPT-parent won't get merged with his company, Tesla.
#2 @elonmusk is being self-righteous about the ills of prioritizing profit over benefit to humanity. To the less naive, timelines show Elon left @OpenAI & reneged on his word to "cover whatever of the initial $1B anyone else doesn't provide". He reneged simply because he wanted…— Vinod Khosla (@vkhosla) March 6, 2024
"This lawsuit seems like nothing more than @elonmusk trying to put some salve on a bruised ego because no one wanted him running @OpenAI. So what's left for him to do? Sue … @elonmusk once told @JeffBezos that you can't ‘sue your way to the moon.' @elonmusk you can’t sue your way to AGI! You'd be wise to take some of your own advice," Khosla posted.
#5 Now @elonmusk is being a curmudgeon about OpenAI's subsequent creation of a for-profit subsidiary – how rich! How else do you advance the cause of creating AGI to benefit humanity without any funding? If he was so sincere, why did he pull the plug and leave them stranded?— Vinod Khosla (@vkhosla) March 6, 2024
He then spoke about OpenAI needing the secure venture-scale funding to create the expensive models."The only way to keep the non-profit mission was to create the subsidiary that ended up taking investor capital (including @khoslaventures)."
#7 @elonmusk, This structure of a non-profit owning parts or all of a for-profit arm isn't unique to @OpenAI – look at Bosch, Ikea, Rolex, Mozilla, Patagonia, National Geographic, Hershey, Heineken, Novo Nordisk, Maersk, Lindt, Lego, Tata, Victorinox, etc. Anything wrong with…— Vinod Khosla (@vkhosla) March 6, 2024
He said, "It was @elonmusk who pushed for the need for orders of magnitude more funding in order for OpenAI to compete with Google/DeepMind," and with regard to "openness," the tech mogul also agreed with Ilya Sutskever.
#9 With regard to "openness" – when @ilyasut told Elon that "As we get closer to building AI, it will make sense to start being less open. The Open in openAI means that everyone should benefit from the fruits of AI after it's built, but it's totally OK to not share the science."…— Vinod Khosla (@vkhosla) March 6, 2024
#11 As I said to @sama and my partners when we committed to invest in @OpenAI in 2018, some things are too important for humanity to not try. Even a 90% chance of failure was worth 10% chance of changing the world and @khoslaventures could only lose 1x its money but make a 100X— Vinod Khosla (@vkhosla) March 6, 2024
He concluded the thread by praising the tech billionaire who co-founded OpenAI in 2015 and left in 2018, saying, "admire @elonmusk's achievements at @tesla and @spacex. At @boringcompany and @neuralink I think there are better solutions but kudos for electrifying the world of cars and making space accessible."
Why It's Important: This conversation stems from Musk's lawsuit against OpenAI for their "stark betrayal" of the start-up's "Founding Agreement." The tech mogul also accused OpenAI of refining AGI to maximize profits, especially for its biggest backer, Microsoft Corporation.
The Tesla CEO has long been against OpenAI's relationship with the Satya Nadella-led company. He previously said, "They own the code, the weights, everything! And GPT runs in a Microsoft data center."
He has previously also alleged that Microsoft can "cut off OpenAI whenever they want."
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