- Elon Musk says he wants to rebuild his friendship with Google cofounder Larry Page.
- Page reportedly once called Musk a speciesist in a discussion about humanity and AI safeguards.
- “I haven’t seen him in ages. We were friends for a very long time,” Musk said of Page on Lex Fridman’s podcast.
Elon Musk wants to be on good terms with Larry Page again after the two fought over AI safeguards.
In a new episode of Lex Fridman’s podcast released Thursday, Musk said, “I would like to be friends again with Larry. I haven’t seen him in ages. We were friends for a very long time.”
“Really, the breaking of the friendship was over OpenAI,” he added.
The argument reportedly dates back to 2013.
Walter Isaacson’s biography of Musk details an exchange between Musk and Page at the former’s birthday party that year, where they disagreed on the possibility that AI could replace humans.
Page reportedly called Musk as a speciesist, meaning someone who favors humanity over all other species, while Musk said, “Well, yes, I am pro-human, I fucking like humanity, dude,” according to the biography.
Page, however, thought machines could represent a new phase of evolution if they outpaced human intelligence.
After their spat, Musk approached DeepMind cofounder and CEO Demis Hassabis later that year, trying to convince him not to sign a deal with Google, where Page was CEO at the time.
“The future of AI should not be controlled by Larry,” Musk told Hassabis, according to the biography.
Google announced its acquisition of DeepMind in 2014.
Musk has discussed his strained friendship with Page before.
In April, he told Tucker Carlson that Page “doesn’t want to talk to me anymore” and “got very upset with me about OpenAI.”
“When OpenAI was created, it did shift things from a unipolar world where Google’s DeepMind controlled like three-quarters of all AI talent to where there is now sort of a bipolar world of OpenAI and Google DeepMind,” Musk said at the time. “Now, we’re at least seeing OpenAI is maybe ahead.”
Musk helped cofound OpenAI along with CEO Sam Altman and others in 2015 before starting a new venture recently, xAI, which released a generative AI chatbot called Grok this month.
On Fridman’s podcast, Musk also talked about personal challenges in his life.
“My mind is a storm,” he said. I don’t think most people would want to be me. They may think they’d want to be me but they don’t know, they don’t understand.”
Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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