One of the most interesting parts of Elon Musk’s testimony Tuesday in his lawsuit against OpenAI wasn’t the charity he claims was stolen from him (we all knew that was coming). It was a story about an old friend.
Musk testified that one of his key motivations for co-founding OpenAI was a confrontation with Google’s Larry Page over AI safety. Specifically, Musk raised the possibility that AI will wipe out humanity, which Page dismissed as “okay” as long as AI itself survives. Page called Musk a “servant” for being “pro human.” Musk called this attitude “insane.”
This is most notable considering how close the two once were. Fortune included them on its list of secretly friendliest business leaders in 2016. Musk was so close with Page that they regularly crashed at her Palo Alto home. Page once told Charlie Rose that she would rather donate her money to Musk than charity.
Friendship did not survive OpenAI. When Musk recruited Google AI star Ilya Sutskever to help launch the company in 2015, Page felt personally betrayed and lost touch.
It’s a story Musk has told before, including to Walter Isaacson, who wrote a best-selling biography of Musk, but this is the first time he’s been sworn in. Page didn’t comment, and it’s worth remembering everything Musk said he leveraged in the lawsuit. But as recently as 2023, he told tech podcaster Lex Fridman he wanted to improve things. “We’ve been friends for a very long time.”
