Venture capitalists Vinod Khosla AND Marc Andreessen they fought each other over the tech billionaire Elon Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI AND Sam Altmann.
What happened: Khosla, an early investor in OpenAI, questioned Andreessen on his stance on open sourcing critical technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), saying it is critical to protect it for national security.
“We are in an economic and technological war with China and artificial intelligence that we must win. That’s exactly what patriotism is about, not slogans.”
Khosla was responding to Andreessen’s accusations that he is “lobbying to ban open source.”
He went a step further and compared AI to the Manhattan Project: it was a crucial development project undertaken during World War II to be the first to produce nuclear weapons.
See also: Elon Musk went to war with Sam Altman, but the OpenAI CEO once thought it would be ‘really helpful’ to have Musk on board
The United States led the project in collaboration with the United Kingdom. The project was successful and helped ensure Allied victory.
Khosla compares it to the ongoing war for dominance in artificial intelligence, but this time there is no Axis on the other side: the venture capitalist thinks the United States is at war with China.
“And @pmarca would you make the Manhattan project open source? This is more serious for national security.”
Because matter: At the heart of this dispute is Khosla’s support for OpenAI and Altman. He called Musk’s lawsuit a “huge distraction” and bolstered his confidence in Altman and his team.
“Even with all these obstacles, especially considering this week, Sam, Greg and the team have built better products faster than anyone else in AI.”
To recall, Musk is suing OpenAI and Altman for their “crude betrayal” of the AI startup’s “Charter Agreement.”
He further said that OpenAI is “perfecting AGI” to maximize profits for its largest investor, Microsoft Corp. MSFT.
Musk instead wants OpenAI to return to its open source roots and for courts to block Microsoft from using GPT-4, Q* and other large future-generation language models.
Musk has openly expressed his disapproval of OpenAI and Altman: he left the company in 2018, just three years after Altman said he thought Musk would be “really helpful” in recruiting and attracting talent to OpenAI.
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