In his case for OpenAI, Musk brought back an old friendship

One of the most interesting aspects of Elon Musk’s testimony Tuesday in his lawsuit against OpenAI wasn’t the charity he claims was stolen from him (we all know. who was coming). It was about an old friend.

Musk testified that one of his reasons for starting OpenAI was to disagree with Google’s Larry Page on the safety of AI – specifically, a conversation in which Musk raised the prospect of AI destroying humanity and Page dismissed it as “fine,” as long as AI survived. Page calls Musk “exceptional” for being a “good guy.” Musk called the idea “crazy.”

This is very famous because the two were close. Fortune included them on its 2016 list of business leaders who are secretly friends; Musk was so comfortable with Page that he regularly dropped by his Palo Alto home. Page once told Charlie Rose that he would love her giving his money to Musk more than charity.

Friendship did not survive OpenAI. When Musk recruited Google AI star Ilya Sutskever to help launch the company in 2015, Page felt betrayed and dropped contact.

It’s a story Musk has talked about before — including to author Walter Isaacson for his excellent Musk biography — but Tuesday was the first time he made the vow. Page never responded, and I have to remember everything Musk said that was on trial. However, as recently as 2023 he told tech expert Lex Fridman that he wanted to patch things up: “We’ve been friends for a long time.”