Elon Musk Calls for OpenAI Ex-CEO Investigation After Receiving These Documents

Tech mogul, Tesla CEO and owner of X app, as well as several other innovative companies, Elon Musk has had his attention caught by a letter about OpenAI that he had just received.

Musk did not mention who exactly the sender of this letter was but he stated that he believes this case is “worth investigating”. The link shared by Musk shows the “404 error”, however, screenshots of the letter were shared by a commentator under Musk’s tweet.

This letter about OpenAI was just sent to me. These seem like concerns worth investigating.https://t.co/hnAepyfLE6
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 21, 2023

Elon Musk shares OpenAI former employees’ letter

The screenshots of the letter from “Concerned Former OpenAI Employees”. The authors of the letter who preferred to stay anonymous, claimed that a large amount of the company’s staffers were pushed out in 2018, when OpenAI transitioned to the “for-profit” model from a “non-profit” one.

The letter was addressed to the board of directors of OpenAI, calling for them to investigate these actions of the former CEO Sam Altman and president Greg Brockman. At present, both have left OpenAI but negotiations are underway with the board for them to come back.

Sharing these because the link now gives a 404 - thanks @pitdesi for them! pic.twitter.com/82hgVqPgrf
— Ajay Juneja (@ajayjuneja) November 22, 2023

The letter particularly claims that the attrition of OpenAI staff during the aforementioned transition period for a new operational model was 50% 0 between January 2018 and July 2020; they gave this as a proof of the company ousting a lot of employees and terminating contracts with them.

The letter also claims that the “concerned former employees” witnessed “a disturbing pattern of deceit and manipulation by Sam Altman and Greg Brockman driven by their insatiable pursuit of achieving Artificial General Intelligence (AGI).” “Their methods, however, raised serious doubts about their true intentions and the extent to which they generally prioritize the benefit of all humanity,” the letter further states.

Elon Musk gets a mention

Those employees, who dared to raise their concerns while seeing this, were silenced ot pushed out, the authors of the letter openly state. And this constant and systematic silencing created an atmosphere of “fear and intimidation, effectively stifling any meaningful discussion about the ethical implications of OpenAI’s work”.

Another quote here and here’s where Elon Musk mentioned: “Sam’s discreet, yet routine exploitation of OpenAI’s non-profit resources to advance his personal goals, particularly motivated by his grudge against Elon following their falling out.”

Musk contributed a substantial amount of funds as a cofouder of OpenAI in 2015 when it was still a non-profit but then the Tesla CEO left since he did not like the idea of OpenAI plans to begin working for profit. Later, Microsoft picked interest in OpenAI and invested in it heavily several times.

Dogecoin co-founder Billy Markus left a comment under Musk’s tweet, supporting his suggestion of having this case investigated, adding that “that gist was very unconvincing”, stating that he did not quite trust the contents of the anonymous letter.