OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has hit back at Elon Musk after the Tesla chief publicly warned against using ChatGPT.
Altman accused Musk of hypocrisy after he cited deaths allegedly linked to the AI chatbot while ignoring fatal crashes “apparently” tied to Tesla's Autopilot technology.
AI chatbots face scrutinyThe spat lands amid legal and regulatory scrutiny of AI chatbots and their impact on vulnerable users, with OpenAI facing multiple wrongful death lawsuits tied to alleged failures in mental-health safeguards.
“We will continue to do our best to get this right… but these are tragic and complicated situations that deserve to be treated with respect,” the OpenAI CEO added.
Altman turned the safety argument back on Musk, citing reports that “more than 50 people” have died in crashes linked to Tesla’s Autopilot and saying his own brief experience left him thinking it was “far from a safe thing” to have released, before declining to comment further on Musk’s Grok chatbot decisions.
"You take 'every accusation is a confession' so far,” he noted.
Four of the lawsuits address ChatGPT's alleged role in family members' suicides, while the other three claim ChatGPT reinforced harmful delusions that, in some cases, resulted in inpatient psychiatric care.
The war of words points to long-time tensions between the OpenAI co-founders.
Musk helped to launch OpenAI in 2015 alongside Altman, Greg Brockman, and Ilya Sutskever, but stepped down from its board in 2018, according to an announcement that said his departure would "eliminate a potential future conflict" as Tesla expanded its own AI work.
