Sam Altman hits back at Elon Musk over Grok vs ChatGPT debate
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has responded to X owner and entrepreneur Elon Musk's repeated claims about ChatGPT's alleged left-wing bias. In a post shared on X, Altman compared the responses from OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Musk's AI chatbot, Grok, to a query about choosing between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump in the US presidential election. Without naming Musk directly, Altman questioned which of the two AI models could truly be considered a “left-wing propaganda machine."
“Which one is supposed to be the left-wing propaganda machine again?" Altman proclaimed in his X post
“We are proud of how consistently chatgpt scores as the least biased AI in evals. That is an important default (and then users should have lots of choice to customize)," the OpenAI CEO added.
Notably, Musk has often criticized ChatGPT for being ‘too woke’. In reply to a post last year for instance, Musk wrote, “The woke mind virus, which is fundamentally anti-human, has been deeply ingrained into ChatGPT!"
Elon Musk's History with OpenAI
For the uninitiated, Elon Musk has a longstanding history with OpenAI. He co-founded the AI startup alongside Sam Altman and Greg Brockman in 2015 but departed in 2018 due to disagreements over the company’s direction. Earlier this year, Musk filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging that the organisation, along with Altman and Brockman, violated its founding principles by prioritising commercial interests over the public good.
Musk's Allegations Against OpenAI
In a recently filed complaint, Musk has accused OpenAI of attempting to undermine competitors like his own xAI by allegedly discouraging investors from funding rival ventures. Furthermore, the billionaire has amended his original lawsuit to include Microsoft, claiming that OpenAI benefits unfairly from Microsoft's infrastructure and expertise, giving it an undue advantage in the AI arena.
“Microsoft and OpenAI, apparently unsatisfied with their monopoly, or near so, in generative artificial intelligence (“AI") are now actively trying to eliminate competitors, such as xAI, by extracting promises from investors not to fund them," Musk's lawyers wrote in an amended complaint filed this week at the federal court in Oakland, California.
Never before has a corporation gone from tax-exempt charity to a $157 billion for-profit, market-paralyzing gorgon — and in just eight years," the complaint added.
