ChatGPT CEO Sam Altman castigates Elon Musk for criticising firm: 'A jerk on Twitter'

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman hit back at the incessant criticism that ChatGPT has received from its former funder Elon Musk. In an episode of “On With Kara Swisher” podcast on Thursday, Altman called the Tesla CEO a "jerk" after the latter tweeted earlier in February that OpenAI had gone from a non-profit company to a maximum-profit one.

“OpenAI was created as an open source (which is why I named it “Open” AI), a non-profit company to serve as a counterweight to Google, but now it has become a closed source, maximum-profit company effectively controlled by Microsoft. Not what I intended at all,” he wrote.

When asked in the interview about it, Altman said that the claims about his company are "not true," and Tesla CEO Musk is well aware of it. "We’re not controlled by Microsoft. Microsoft doesn’t even have a board seat on us, we are an independent company. We have an unusual structure where we can make very different decisions than what most companies do. I think a fair part of that is we don’t open-source everything anymore. We’ve been clear about why we think we were wrong there originally," he told podcaster Kara Fisher, according to New York Magazine.

"I don’t think it would be good right now for us to open-source GPT-4, for example. I think that would cause some degree of havoc in the world, or at least there’s a chance of that — we can’t be certain that it wouldn’t," he added. 

Sam Altman says he is not a fan of Elon Musk's 'style'

When asked if he has respect for the billionaire and has confronted him about the latest critiques, Altman said: "I do. We’ve spoken directly recently." Sharing his thoughts on Musk's strong opinions about the chatbot, the OpenAI CEO said, "He’s got his style. He has a style that is not a style that I’d want to have for myself."

Altman was also asked to name one good thing about Musk, to which he responded, "I think he really does care about a good future with AGI." Meanwhile, Musk and OpenAI have a history that dates back to 2015. He co-founded the artificial intelligence company eight years ago, and eventually left its board three years after the company's inception as he envisioned Tesla's expansion into the world of artificial intelligence.