OpenAI worries that Musk could use his political power to influence industry competition

According to BlockBeats, on December 15, the Financial Times reported that Sam Altman said at a conference last week (New York Times): "I firmly believe that Elon will do the right thing. If he uses political power to hurt competitors and profit for his own business, it will be extremely un-American behavior." Trump himself has said that Musk will put national interests 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, who co-founded OpenAI in 2015, have a fractured relationship. Musk has described Altman as "Liar Sam" and filed a lawsuit against Altman and OpenAI, accusing them of "systematic lying" while seeking to cancel its multibillion-dollar business partnership with Microsoft.

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 itself 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 dangerous conflicts of interest” if Musk blurs the lines between his personal views and the larger geopolitical rules and structures.

But people close to Musk say he is too principled to use his new role to impose onerous regulations on OpenAI, and that doing so would make little sense given that his job as co-chair of the U.S.’s new “Department of Government Effectiveness” is to find ways to cut regulations.

“You’re going to 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 their 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 competitors. (FT)