Odaily Planet Daily News Since Trump's victory in November, OpenAI management has been preparing to deal with the incoming US government, and Elon Musk has become a key confidant of Trump, complicating the process. OpenAI has been one of Musk's competitors, who have tried to predict how Musk will use his new advantages in Washington, from pushing new regulations against the company to influencing the award of government contracts that may boost Musk's artificial intelligence startup xAI. "I firmly believe that Elon will do the right thing. If political power is used to hurt competitors and benefit his own business, it will be extremely un-American behavior," Sam Altman said at a conference (New York Times) last week. Trump himself has said that Musk will put the national interest above the interests of the company, and Musk said on his social media platform X that competitors are "right" to expect him to be magnanimous. "No one will believe this," said a lawyer who once angered Musk. Musk and Altman co-founded OpenAI in 2015, and now their relationship has broken down. Musk has described Altman as "Sam the Liar" and filed a lawsuit against Altman and OpenAI, accusing them of "systemic lying" while seeking to cancel its multibillion-dollar business partnership with Microsoft. OpenAI's policy director Chris Lehane said Musk is "unique." Lehane is a political veteran who has helped companies such as Airbnb and Coinbase overcome thorny regulatory hurdles. He added that OpenAI's approach is to "control what we can control." According to Lehane, the company has highlighted its importance to Trump's agenda in three areas: improving America's competitiveness, rebuilding the economy and strengthening national security. Altman has also donated $1 million of his own money to Trump's inaugural fund. “Ultimately, every American, whether in government or outside of government, wants to put America’s interests first, and this administration has talked about the need for American-led AI to prevail during the campaign and since,” Lehane said. “If you want that to happen, then OpenAI has to be involved.” OpenAI has been at the forefront of AI companies since launching ChatGPT in November 2022.It is currently changing its structure, in part to accommodate more outside investment to stay ahead, and Musk's lawsuit says the move betrays OpenAI's original mission. On Friday, OpenAI hit back in a blog post, saying Musk himself had pushed for a similar structure in 2017 when he was still co-chairman. The company said Musk "should be competing in the marketplace, not in court." Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn and a board member at Microsoft, OpenAI's biggest backer, said he was "certainly concerned" that Musk's hostility toward Altman would manifest in Trump's AI policies. "Obviously, people of integrity and character would say that since I'm involved in these types of lawsuits, I should distance myself from the government's operations on these things," Hoffman said, adding that it "suggests potentially dangerous shortsightedness and a dangerous conflict of interest" if Musk blurs his personal views and larger geopolitical rules and structures. But people close to Musk say he is too principled to use his new role to impose onerous regulation on OpenAI, and that it would make little sense to do so given his role as co-chair of the US’s new “Department of Government Efficiency” to find ways to cut regulation. “You’ll see a lot of red tape cut out, and OpenAI will have a streamlined process to get its data centers up and running quickly,” said one person who has invested in Musk and Altman’s companies. “It will apply to all of its competitors as well.” However, according to an investor in one of Musk’s companies, Musk could use his central position in the new administration to push xAI, and Hoffman, a former OpenAI board member, speculated that Musk could use his position to slow down xAI’s competitors. (FT)