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Demis Hassabis emails Elon Musk
From: Demis Hassabis
Date: January 2, 2016 at 10:12:32 AM CST
To: Elon Musk
Subject: congrats on the falcon 9
Hi Elon
Happy new year to you, Talulah and the boys!
Congratulations on landing the Falcon 9, what an amazing achievement. Time to build out the fleet now!
I’ve seen you (and Sam and other OpenAI people) doing a lot of interviews recently extolling the virtues of open sourcing AI, but I presume you realise that this is not some sort of panacea that will somehow magically solve the safety problem? There are many good arguments as to why the approach you are taking is actually very dangerous and in fact may increase the risk to the world. Some of the more obvious points are well articulated in this blog post, that I’m sure you’ve seen, but there are also other important considerations:
http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/12/17/should-ai-be-open/
I’d be interested to hear your counter-arguments to these points.
Best
Demis
On Sat, Jan 2, 2016 at 8:18 AM Elon Musk wrote:
Begin forwarded message:
On Jan 2, 2016, at 11:06 AM, Ilya Sutskever wrote:
The article is concerned with a hard takeoff scenario: if a hard takeoff occurs, and a safe AI is harder to build than an unsafe one, then by opensorucing everything, we make it easy for someone unscrupulous with access to overwhelming amount of hardware to build an unsafe AI, which will experience a hard takeoff.
As we get closer to building AI, it will make sense to start being less open. The Open in openAI means that everyone should benefit from the fruits of AI after its built, but it’s totally OK to not share the science (even though sharing everything is definitely the right strategy in the short and possibly medium term for recruitment purposes).
From: Elon Musk
To: Ilya Sutskever
Cc: Sam Altman, Greg Brockman
Subject: Re: congrats on the falcon 9
Date: Sat, 02 Jan 2016 17:11:18 -0000
Yup
[This document is from Musk v. Altman (2026).]
X link
Threads link
Previously: 65+ documents from Musk v. Altman and Elon Musk in the full archive
Previously: Elon Musk: “Deepmind is causing me extreme mental stress” (February 22, 2016)
Previously: Ilya Sutskever to Elon Musk: “You are concerned that Demis could create an AGI dictatorship” (September 20, 2017)
Previously: Elon Musk: “Unfortunately, humanity’s future is in the hands of Demis” (December 26, 2018)
Previously: Sam Altman: “there’s no way we can hold a candle to DeepMind without many billions of dollars” (October 1, 2020)
Further reading from Slate Star Codex: Should AI Be Open? (December 17, 2015)
Further reading from The New York Times: Google Shakes Up A.I. Leadership (August 5, 2026)
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Steve Jobs and Google’s hiring
Date: Tue, 28 Mar 2006 09:19:31 -0800
From: Alan Eustace
To: Steve Jobs
Cc: Bill Campbell, Sergey Brin, Larry Page
Steve,
Google would like to make an offer to Jean-Marie Hullot to run a small engineering center in Paris. Bill, Larry, Sergey, and Jean-Marie believe it is important to get your blessing before moving forward with this offer.
Jean-Marie has worked very hard to leave Apple on the best possible terms, and has agreed to abide by the terms of his non-solicit and non-compete clauses. He loves Apple, and would not do anything to hurt you or the company.
Google’s relationship with Apple is extremely important to us. If that relationship is any way threatened by this hire, please let me know, and we will pass on this opportunity.
Thanks.
Alan Eustace
SVP, Engineering
Google, Inc.
From: Jean-Marie Hullot
Sent: Tuesday, April 04, 2006 2:22 PM
To: Kim Sterling; Alan Eustace
Subject: Re: Offer
Alan, Kim,
Any update on Steve’s reaction?
Thanks,
Jean-Marie
On 4/4/06, Kim Sterling wrote:
Jean-Marie
Steve has not responded to Alan’s calls. We are trying another approach and hopefully we’ll be successful. I’ll keep you posted.
-Kim
On Apr 5, 2006, at 12:29 PM, Alan Eustace wrote:
Jean-Marie,
Steve didn’t respond to my email, but Bill Campbell promised to call him and verify that we are OK. He’s on the board at Apple and Google, so Steve will probably return his call :-) I’m on my way to India right now. This message is brought to you courtesy of wireless internet access on my flight. Now that is progress :-)
Alan
From: Jean-Marie Hullot
Sent: Wednesday, April 05, 2006 2:17 PM
To: Alan Eustace
Cc: Kim Sterling; Jean-Marie Hullot
Subject: Re: Offer
Alan,
I was not expecting this last step to be the easiest one... Let see how it goes with Bill Campbell’s help.
I’ll continue to take advantage of this interim period to do things one never gets time to do when working! During the next 2 weeks (spring school break in France) I’ll be away with my wife and 2 kids trekking in the Himalayas. Once again unlikely to get connected to my email or cell phone on a regular basis.
If there is a positive outcome with Steve during this period - which I hope! - I suggest you send offers to the other guys as soon as you can without waiting for me to be back. It has already been a really long stretch from them between 2 employments and I fear we will start to lose some soon. Let me know by email as well as soon as you know, I might be able to connect to the Internet.
I’ll leave tomorrow thursday and will be back in Paris on April 22nd.
Jean-Marie
From: Kim Sterling
Date: Apr 7, 2006 4:51 PM
Subject: FW: Offer
To: Jeff Huber
Jeff
Any word from Bill Campbell? I’m getting a bit worried about the chance of losing the rest of the team.
Kim
From: Jeff Huber
Sent: Friday, April 07, 2006 5:35 PM
To: Bill Campbell
Cc: Alan Eustace
Subject: Fwd: FW: Offer
Bill,
Just wanted to close the loop with you... Were you able to connect with Steve Jobs on Jean-Marie Hullot?
Thanks,
-Jeff
From: Bill Campbell
Sent: Saturday, April 08, 2006 12:40 AM
To: Jeff Huber; Bill Campbell
Cc: Alan Eustace
Subject: RE: FW: Offer
Jeff
I am seeing him on Sunday....
Bill
On 4/9/06, Steve Jobs wrote:
