The animosity that spilled out between tech billionaire Elon Musk and OpenAI’s Sam Altman has less to do with politics and more to do with who is first in the artificial intelligence race.
Musk on Wednesday came out swinging against Altman after he appeared next to President Donald Trump for the announcement of the Stargate Project, which is being touted as "a new company which intends to invest $500 billion over the next four years building new AI infrastructure for OpenAI in the United States."
That opened an online bickering fest just mere days after Trump’s inauguration that included Musk attacking Altman’s company for being broke, while Altman lobbed his own insults toward Musk.
As Politico’s Derek Robertson pointed out, “Stargate quickly went from a political victory lap for Trump to an almost comical illustration of what billionaires will fight over in public.”
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“Clearly, more is at stake than a few minutes onstage with the new president,” Robertson told readers. He added: “That’s a lot of drama for a feel-good photo op.”
The real reason for the brewing billionaire battle has to do with the high-stakes future of AI development, and which tech entrepreneur can achieve the quickest success, Robertson suggested hours after the public feud broke out.
“Now, really, what they’re jostling for is bragging rights over the biggest and most impressive artificial minds being built — systems that claim to approach ‘artificial general intelligence,’ the ambiguously defined, hypothetical AI system that can match or surpass human capabilities,” he told readers Wednesday.
Both Musk and Altman have in their own right “been Washington’s chosen authority on the human future.” But Robertson views Musk as “winning the scaling war right now. Informally, from what I hear from people, he’s managed to get more chips online faster than anyone else.”
He concluded: “He’s very critical of OpenAI because he wants to win the race. But again, no one’s articulated what the end point of the race looks like, so I don’t know what winning means for them.”
