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What would Sam Altman do if he could go back in time? Change OpenAI's name to…
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said that he doesn't really understand what Elon Musk's "real motivations" are behind the lawsuit.
Sam Altman said that OpenAI may not be the most ideal name for the artificial intelligence company. The CEO who cofounded the company along with Elon Musk and others in 2015 shared his view about the name of the company on Lex Fridman's podcast. He said that when the company was just getting started, they didn't quite know what it was going to be owing to which they did not think much about the name.
“Speaking of going back with an Oracle, I'd pick a different name,” he said.
Read more: Elon Musk says will drop lawsuit if OpenAI changes name to…
What Sam Altman said on OpenAI's name?
"We started off just thinking we were going to be a research lab and having no idea about how this technology was going to go," he said, adding, "This was before we had any idea about an API or selling access to a chatbot. It was before we had any idea we were going to productize at all."
This comes after Elon Musk filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and said that it had breached its "founding agreement" and violated its original nonprofit mission. On X (formerly Twitter), Tesla CEO said that he would drop the lawsuit against OpenAI if they change their name to “ClosedAI”.
Read more: Sam Altman says he texted Elon Musk after OpenAI lawsuit. Then this happened
"Change your name….To ClosedAI and I will drop the lawsuit," he wrote in a series of posts.
What Sam Altman said on Elon Musk's lawsuit?
Sam Altman said that he doesn't really understand what Elon Musk's "real motivations" are. Defending OpenAI, he said that the company went through a natural transition process as "it became clear that we were going to need to do different things and also have huge amounts more capital."
“So we said, 'Okay, well, the structure doesn't quite work for that. How do we patch the structure?' I think with many fundamentally new things, you start fumbling through the dark and you make some assumptions, most of which turned out to be wrong,” he said.
Read more: OpenAI's Sam Altman picks this lawyer to fight Elon Musk case
What Sam Altman said on OpenAI and his plans?
OpenAI may not be completely open-source but it is open in other ways, he said, adding, “So if we can keep putting free or low cost or free and low cost powerful AI tools out in the world, I think that's a huge deal for how we fulfill the mission.”
