Elon Musk last week sued two of his OpenAI cofounders, Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, accusing them of “flagrant breaches” of the trio’s original agreement that the company would develop artificial intelligence openly and without chasing profits. Late on Tuesday, OpenAI released partially redacted emails between Musk, Altman, Brockman, and others that provide a counternarrative.
A month before the nonprofit was incorporated, Google’s AI program AlphaGo had learned to play the devilishly tricky board game Go well enough to defeat a champion human player for the first time. The feat shocked many AI experts who had thought Go too subtle for computers to master anytime soon. It also showed the potential for AI to master many seemingly impossible tasks.