How Elon Musk left OpenAI, according to Greg Brockman
How Elon Musk left OpenAI, according to Greg Brockman
根据格雷格·布罗克曼（Greg Brockman）的说法，埃隆·马斯克是如何离开 OpenAI 的
In late August 2017, key figures at OpenAI (then a small nonprofit research lab) gathered to discuss how they would create a for-profit to commercialize its technology and raise the funds needed to realize AGI. Elon Musk was demanding full control of the company and had just given each of his co-founders a Tesla Model 3. CTO Greg Brockman said he saw that as way of buttering them up at a time when Musk and Sam Altman were vying to win support for their respective visions of the company’s future.
2017 年 8 月下旬，OpenAI（当时还是一个小型非营利研究实验室）的关键人物齐聚一堂，讨论如何创建一家营利性实体，以实现其技术的商业化并筹集实现通用人工智能（AGI）所需的资金。当时，埃隆·马斯克要求对公司拥有完全控制权，并刚刚送给每位联合创始人一辆特斯拉 Model 3。首席技术官格雷格·布罗克曼表示，他认为这是马斯克在试图讨好他们，因为当时马斯克和萨姆·奥特曼（Sam Altman）正在争夺对公司未来愿景的支持。
OpenAI’s head of research, Ilya Sutskever, had commissioned a painting of a Tesla to give Musk during the meeting as a friendly gesture. The conversation didn’t follow that mood: When Musk was told the others would not accede to his demand for control of the company, Brockman said he got angry and upset. He sat for several minutes thinking quietly. Then, in Brockman’s telling, Musk said, “I decline.” The SpaceX and Tesla founder “stood up and stormed around the table…I thought he was going to hit me. He grabbed the painting and started to storm out of the room. And then he turned around and said, ‘When will you be departing OpenAI?’”
OpenAI 的研究主管伊利亚·苏茨克维（Ilya Sutskever）曾委托人画了一幅特斯拉的画，打算在会议期间作为友好姿态送给马斯克。但谈话的氛围并未如预期般和谐：当马斯克被告知其他人不会同意他控制公司的要求时，布罗克曼说他变得愤怒且沮丧。他静静地坐了几分钟。随后，据布罗克曼描述，马斯克说：“我拒绝。”这位 SpaceX 和特斯拉的创始人“站起来，绕着桌子横冲直撞……我以为他要打我。他抓起那幅画，开始冲出房间。然后他转过身说：‘你们什么时候离开 OpenAI？’”
Brockman and Sutskever didn’t leave or commit to Musk’s vision. Musk stopped his regular donations to the company’s operating budget, and within six months, he would leave the board, though he paid for office space the company shared with Neuralink until 2020. As today’s legal battle over the future of OpenAI proceeds, scrutiny has settled on a key period in 2017 when the organization’s original co-founders disagreed about who would control its future, eventually bringing us Musk’s lawsuit against his co-founders.
布罗克曼和苏茨克维并没有离开，也没有承诺支持马斯克的愿景。马斯克停止了对公司运营预算的定期捐款，并在六个月内离开了董事会，尽管他一直支付着公司与 Neuralink 共享办公空间的费用，直到 2020 年。随着今天围绕 OpenAI 未来的法律斗争持续进行，审查的焦点集中在 2017 年的一个关键时期，当时该组织的原始联合创始人就谁将控制其未来产生了分歧，最终导致了马斯克对他的联合创始人提起诉讼。
We have yet to hear from Sam Altman, but OpenAI president Greg Brockman testified for two days, often referencing a personal journal that offers a rare insight into what it’s like to be a 30-year-old tech executive in a pitched battle with Elon Musk.
我们尚未听到萨姆·奥特曼的证词，但 OpenAI 总裁格雷格·布罗克曼已经作证了两天。他经常引用一本个人日记，这为了解一名 30 岁的科技高管在与埃隆·马斯克的激烈斗争中是何种感受提供了难得的视角。
“It’s very painful,” Brockman said of the publicity around the journal, which he called “deeply personal writings that were never meant for the world to see. [But] there’s nothing in there I’m ashamed of.”
“这非常痛苦，”布罗克曼在谈到围绕这本日记的公开报道时说。他称这些是“从未打算让世人看到的极其私人的文字。[但是]里面没有任何让我感到羞愧的内容。”
Cutthroat negotiations between startup founders are rarely shared so publicly, especially when a company becomes as world-changing as OpenAI. We saw a recent taste of this rancor when OpenAI’s lawyers shared a text message Musk sent to Brockman two days before the trial began: “By the end of this week, you and Sam will be the most hated men in America. If you insist, so it will be.”
初创公司创始人之间残酷的谈判很少被如此公开，尤其是当一家公司变得像 OpenAI 这样具有改变世界的影响力时。我们最近领略到了这种怨恨，当时 OpenAI 的律师分享了马斯克在审判开始前两天发给布罗克曼的一条短信：“到本周末，你和萨姆将成为美国最令人憎恨的人。如果你们坚持，那就这样吧。”
The jury won’t see that note, but Musk’s lawyers have done their best to realize its spirit. They are trying to show the court that Altman and Brockman “stole a charity,” while OpenAI’s legal team tries to show that Musk had the exact same plan in mind.
陪审团不会看到那条短信，但马斯克的律师已尽其所能去实现其精神。他们试图向法庭证明奥特曼和布罗克曼“窃取了一家慈善机构”，而 OpenAI 的法律团队则试图证明马斯克当时怀有完全相同的计划。
The inciting incident for all of this was when an OpenAI model defeated the top human player in the video game DOTA II. Brockman said that convinced everyone in the organization that compute was the key resource to create powerful AI tools, but that fundraising purely as a nonprofit would be insufficient. That led to talks about a for-profit subsidiary, of which Musk wanted “unequivocal” control, at least at the start. The other founders proposed equal shares, and perhaps more equity commensurate with a cash investment.
这一切的导火索是 OpenAI 的一个模型击败了电子游戏《DOTA II》的顶尖人类玩家。布罗克曼说，这让组织里的每个人都确信，计算能力是创造强大 AI 工具的关键资源，但仅作为非营利组织进行筹款是不够的。这引发了关于成立营利性子公司的讨论，马斯克希望至少在初期对该公司拥有“明确的”控制权。其他创始人则提议平分股份，或者根据现金投资比例分配更多股权。
Another idea on the table was somehow connecting OpenAI to Tesla’s AI work. Shivon Zilis, an OpenAI advisor who acted as a go-between for Musk and the team there, said there were more than 20 variations on the plan. But when the other founders wouldn’t give Musk control, their partnership unraveled. “It should not be the case that there exists one person with full and absolute control over OpenAI,” Brockman testified.
桌上的另一个想法是将 OpenAI 与特斯拉的 AI 工作以某种方式联系起来。作为马斯克与 OpenAI 团队之间中间人的顾问希冯·齐利斯（Shivon Zilis）表示，该计划有 20 多种变体。但当其他创始人拒绝给予马斯克控制权时，他们的合作关系便破裂了。布罗克曼作证说：“不应该存在一个人对 OpenAI 拥有完全且绝对控制权的情况。”
Brockman and Sutskever discussed a plan to kick Elon off OpenAI’s board in order to move forward, resulting in November 2017 journal entries that Musk’s lawyers have focused on. ‘[C]an’t see us turning this into a for-profit without a very nasty fight,” Brockman wrote. “[I’m] just thinking about the office and we’re in the office. and his story will correctly be that we weren’t honest with him in the end about still wanting to do the for profit just without him….btw another realization from this is that it’d be wrong to steal the non-profit from him. to convert to a b-corp without him. that’d be pretty morally bankrupt. and he’s really not an idiot.”
布罗克曼和苏茨克维讨论了一项将埃隆踢出 OpenAI 董事会的计划，以便继续推进工作，这导致了 2017 年 11 月的日记条目，而这些条目正是马斯克律师关注的焦点。布罗克曼写道：“我看不到我们在不发生激烈冲突的情况下将其转为营利性机构的可能性。”“我只是在想办公室的事，我们就在办公室里。他的说法将是正确的，即我们最终对他不诚实，因为我们仍然想做营利性业务，只是不想带上他……顺便说一句，由此产生的另一个认识是，从他手中窃取非营利组织是错误的。在没有他的情况下转为共益企业（B-corp）。那在道德上是相当破产的。而且他真的不是傻瓜。”
That “steal the non-profit” line may seem damning, but the context, according to Brockman, was whether or not to try and toss Musk off the board. They ultimately did not do that. Musk left the board voluntarily in February 2018, concluding that “OpenAI is on a path of certain failure,” saying he planned to focus more on AI at Tesla.
那句“窃取非营利组织”的话看起来似乎很有罪证，但据布罗克曼称，其背景是关于是否要尝试将马斯克踢出董事会。他们最终并没有那样做。马斯克于 2018 年 2 月自愿离开董事会，断言“OpenAI 走在注定失败的道路上”，并表示他计划更多地专注于特斯拉的 AI 工作。
Brockman described his reflections as an effort to determine whether he would be satisfied with his work life. “This is the only chance we have to get out from Elon,” he wrote during the talks. “Is he the ‘glorious leader’ that I would pick? We truly have a chance to make this happen. Financially what will take me to $1B?” That last reflection was also seized on by Musk’s lawyers as a sign that Brockman was thinking more about his personal wealth than the nonprofit’s mission.
布罗克曼将他的反思描述为确定自己是否对工作生活感到满意的一种努力。他在谈判期间写道：“这是我们摆脱埃隆的唯一机会。”“他是我会选择的‘光荣领袖’吗？我们确实有机会实现这一目标。在财务上，什么能让我达到 10 亿美元？”最后这一反思也被马斯克的律师抓住，作为布罗克曼考虑个人财富多于非营利组织使命的证据。