Elon Musk has a contentious relationship with AI technology — he helped to cofound OpenAI beside Sam Altman before their famous falling out and signed an open letter asking for a “pause” on AI development. Then, in November 2023, Musk launched a chatbot through his x.AI company called Grok, available for premium X users.
But after Apple revealed during Monday’s 2024 Worldwide Developer Conference that OpenAI and its software will be integrated into new Apple products, Musk is threatening to ban Apple products at all of his companies.
In response to the presentation, Musk posted a series of thoughts on his social media platform X, noting that employees at Tesla and X would have to check their devices into a “cage” upon entering the office if they used Apple for any of their personal devices.
And visitors will have to check their Apple devices at the door, where they will be stored in a Faraday cage
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 10, 2024
“It’s patently absurd that Apple isn’t smart enough to make their own AI, yet is somehow capable of ensuring that OpenAI will protect your security & privacy,” Musk penned in one post. “Apple has no clue what’s actually going on once they hand your data over to OpenAI. They’re selling you down the river.”
Musk then reposted a clip of a sit-down interview he had with Walter Isaacson for Vanity Fair in 2014, where he warned about the “rise and dangers” of AI before he joined forces with Altman to launch what would become Open AI.
“I don’t think most people understand just how quickly machine intelligence is advancing,” the billionaire cautioned. “If there’s some digital super-intelligence, and its optimization or utility function is something that’s detrimental to humanity, then it would have a very bad effect.”
Musk infamously sued Altman and OpenAI in March claiming the company is no longer working on its founding principles to work towards the greater “benefit of humanity” and instead has shifted to a for-profit focus.
The suit claims OpenAI did this through its agreement with Microsoft and the release of Chat GPT-4.
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“Under its new Board, [OpenAI] is not just developing but is actually refining an AGI [Artificial General Intelligence] to maximize profits for Microsoft, rather than for the benefit of humanity,” the lawsuit stated.
In response, OpenAI released an open letter slamming the “frivolous” lawsuit.
“Musk’s claims rest on convoluted – often incoherent – factual premises,” the company said at the time. “Musk says his Founding Agreement was ‘memorialized,’ but any actual agreement is conspicuously missing from the pleading.”