Featured Image Credit: Tomohiro Ohsumi / Stringer / Getty
Emails between former OpenAI co-founders Sam Altman and Elon Musk have revealed the former's plans to create what he calls a 'Manhattan Project for AI' - and many believe this to be a precursor for what would become ChatGPT.
Sam Altman is undeniably one of the most important people in the world of artificial intelligence, as his team at OpenAI arguably began the AI boom with the release of ChatGPT in 2022.
The sophisticated chatbot laid the foundations for what we see across almost every single AI product today, and we can perhaps see the nucleus of this idea within emails that have now been revealed through a court case.
Dated May 25, 2015, Altman emailed his then-friend Elon Musk about the development of artificial intelligence with signs pointing towards the beginning of OpenAI as a company.
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Sam Altman emails Elon Musk
— Internal Tech Emails (@TechEmails) November 15, 2024
May 25, 2015 pic.twitter.com/L1F5bMkqkd
"Been thinking a lot about whether it's possible to stop humanity from developing AI," Altman begins, quickly answering his own question with: "I think the answer is most definitely not."
Continuing on, Altman argues that "if it's going to happen anyway, it seems like it would be good for someone other than Google to do it first," likely pointing towards the company's Google Brain project where Geoffrey Hinton, otherwise known as the 'Godfather of AI' worked.
Altman's initial proposal is for Y Combinator (or 'YC'), Altman's own startup accelerator company, to begin development in what he calls a "Manhattan Project for AI."
Connections made to the Manhattan Project are particularly intriguing due to his language a few sentences beforehand, where he almost appears to treat AI like a 'weapon' of sorts, akin to the atomic bomb that could (and inevitably would) change the world.
He continues on, adding that this company should be a nonprofit "so that the tech belongs to the world," adding that they'd "comply with/aggressively support all regulation," and it's then easy to see how OpenAI came to be by the end of the same year.
Musk, in response, simply added: "Probably worth a conversation."
From there history was certainly made, but it also sparked what has turned into a decade-long feud between Altman and Musk, resulting in multiple tense lawsuits and even conflict in the White House.
Musk also now finds himself at the head of rival project xAI, and continues to fire shots at Altman through his social media channels, although Altman doesn't appear to be too fazed by the criticism, insisting that Musk's frustration comes from a 'position of insecurity'.
