Altman and Musk trade safety barbs over ChatGPT and Tesla Autopilot

Businessinsider: Sam Altman and Elon Musk escalated their long-running feud on Tuesday in a series of posts on X, trading barbs about deaths and safety concerns tied to each other's products. Musk appeared to start the latest escalation early on Tuesday morning when he posted "Don't let your loved ones use ChatGPT" in response to a post that said use of OpenAI's chatbot had been linked to the deaths of nine children and adults since it was released in 2022.

Altman fired back, defending ChatGPT and OpenAI's desire to protect users and saying, "It is genuinely hard; we need to protect vulnerable users, while also making sure our guardrails still allow all of our users to benefit from our tools." Altman also criticized Tesla's Autopilot, writing, "I only ever rode in a car using it once, some time ago, but my first thought was that it was far from a safe thing for Tesla to have released," and adding, "I won't even start on some of the Grok decisions." There have been at least eight wrongful-death lawsuits filed against OpenAI alleging ChatGPT contributed to worsening mental-health conditions, and safety concerns around Tesla's self-driving technology have been central to multiple wrongful-death suits, including a 2019 Florida crash in which a jury determined Tesla was 33% liable and awarded plaintiffs $329 million in total damages.

Key Topics

Tech, Sam Altman, Elon Musk, Openai, Chatgpt, Tesla Autopilot