Elon Musk is opening new fronts in his ongoing streak of high-profile disputes, this time sparking a fresh feud with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, while already locked in a heated public battle with Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary. In a tweet, Musk bashed ChatGPT, prompting the OpenAI CEO to lash out at Musk.
How did it all start?
Elon Musk tweeted, “Don’t let your loved ones use ChatGPT”, while reacting to a claim from crypto-focused influencer account DogeDesigner. The X user alleged, “ChatGPT has now been linked to 9 deaths tied to its use, and in 5 cases its interactions are alleged to have led to death by suicide, including teens and adults.” HT.com was unable to independently verify the statistics mentioned by the X user.
Just a few hours later, Sam Altman lashed out at Elon Musk, mentioning Tesla Autopilot-related deaths and the controversy involving the creation of nonconsensual sexual imagery by Grok AI.
“Sometimes you complain about ChatGPT being too restrictive, and then in cases like this you claim it’s too relaxed. Almost a billion people use it and some of them may be in very fragile mental states. We will continue to do our best to get this right and we feel huge responsibility to do the best we can, but these are tragic and complicated situations that deserve to be treated with respect,” Sam Atlman tweeted.
He continued, “It is genuinely hard; we need to protect vulnerable users, while also making sure our guardrails still allow all of our users to benefit from our tools.”
Bashing Musk’s products, he wrote, “Apparently more than 50 people have died from crashes related to Autopilot. I only ever rode in a car using it once, some time ago, but my first thought was that it was far from a safe thing for Tesla to have released. I won’t even start on some of the Grok decisions.”
Sam Altman added, “You take ‘every accusation is a confession’ so far.”
The clash between the two tech leaders came amid Musk’s escalated lawsuit against OpenAI. The xAI founder and CEO accused OpenAI of abandoning its nonprofit mission. He also alleged that the tech company sidelined him despite his early involvement.
The world’s richest man now wants OpenAI and its largest backer, Microsoft, to pay him damages in the range of $79 billion to $134 billion.
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