[digbybk]

Ironically, OpenAI was conceived as a way to balance Google's dominance in AI.

[kccqzy]

Balance is too weak of a word. OpenAI was conceived specifically to prevent Google from getting AGI first. That was its original goal. At the time of its founding Google was the undisputed leader of AI anywhere in the world. Musk was then very worried about AGI being developed behind closed doors particularly Google, which was why he was the driving force behind the founding of OpenAI.

[kranke155]

The book Empire of AI describes him as being particularly fixated on Demis as some kind of evil genius. From the book, early OAI employees couldn’t take the entire thing too seriously and just focused on the work.

[wraptile]

> Musk was then very worried about AGI being developed behind closed doors

*closed doors that aren't his

[dragonwriter]

I thought it was a workaround to Google's complete disinterest in productizing the AI research it was doing and publishing, rather than a way to balance their dominance in a market which didn't meaningfully exist.

[mattnewton]

That’s how it turned out, but IIRC at the time of OpenAI’s founding, “AI” was search and RL which Google and deep mind were dominating, and self driving, which Waymo was leading. And OpenAI was conceptualized as a research org to compete. A lot has changed and OpenAI has been good at seeing around those corners.

[jonny_eh]

That was actually Character.ai's founding story. Two researchers at Google that were frustrated by a lack of resources and the inability to launch an LLM based chatbot. The founders are now back at Google. OpenAI was founded based on fears that Google would completely own AI in the future.

[sgt101]

I think that Google didn't see the business case in that generation of models, and also saw significant safety concerns. If AI had been delayed by... 5 years... would the world really be a worse place?

Yes - less exciting! But worse?

[jpadkins]

Elon Musk specifically gave OAI $150M early on because of the risk of Google being the only Corp that has AGI or super-intelligence. These emails were part of the record in the lawsuit.

[CobrastanJorji]

Pffft. OpenAI was conceived to be Open, too.

[lemoncucumber]

It’s a common pattern for upstarts to embrace openness as a way to differentiate and gain a foothold then become progressively less open once they get bigger. Android is a great example.